Okay, well welcome this morning. Let's get started with prayer. I'm very glad that you're here, and I'll explain what we're doing and why we're doing it in just a moment. Our God in heaven, we bless you this morning. We thank you that today, as we arose, though many things continue to change, we know that you are the changeless, glorious, and sovereign One. We thank you that you are the God who speaks. and that You spoke this world into existence. We thank You for sending the Lord Jesus, our Savior. Help us now as we study how to study Your Word, that You give us great understanding and insight and equip us to live lives fully pleasing unto You as we live in union with Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. All right, well, welcome to the beginning of this class. The origins of this class happen like this. I asked around, kind of, what would you like to do? Someone I respect very much said, can you do something just to teach us how to read the Bible? And I said, yes. So that's what we're doing. A couple of things about the text. Let the reader understand. This is a book that I'm just going to be quite, I'm not going to, I'm not being at all kind of pejorative, but the first three chapters, it's kind of heavy lifting. It's pretty, I mean, it's a bit technical, okay? So this textbook, or this work, it's not like second grade level introduction to hermeneutics. It's like a pretty legit, weighty, substantial book. You're fully capable. I believe that part of our endeavor to study, and one of the reasons why we're in such a bad position is people are unwilling to be challenged in their studies. And so I encourage you to wade through the first three chapters if you want to. The reason I say if you want to is I'm going to be covering the content of the first three chapters this morning. Next week, and I'll get you a course schedule hopefully eventually, next week we're going to get into more of a look at the historical interpretation, kind of the movement and development of hermeneutics through the ages of the church. But today we're just going to be looking at some basic principles. The design for this class, the thing that I want to accomplish is really to equip you all to approach the scriptures well. I want you to be able to take your Bibles to open them. to be able to read and comprehend, and especially as I, a couple weeks ago, was exhorting all of you all toward family worship, I want to see the leaders and heads of households to be able to conduct themselves in family worship with excellence and with confidence, a biblical confidence. And so there's some very good practical applications that we can derive from this class. You'll see at the top of your outline, Nehemiah 8, 7, and 8. It's kind of our driving thematic text for this study over the next several weeks. And just so you know, I learned once that several meant anywhere between 3 and 20. So that's what I mean by several. You'll see these names of different leaders that God had raised up and that Nehemiah had surrounded himself with. And what they did is they gathered that assembly, is they helped the people to understand the law. Now, don't be a narrow-minded legalist. Understand that when the Bible, especially in the times of Nehemiah and following, when they refer to the law, they're not referring merely to the Ten Commandments. They're not referring merely to this rigid list of rules. They're referring to the whole of God's revelation. And one of the things as we talk about the scriptures and work to understand them is you need to see that everything builds upon the law. What Moses revealed, or like what God revealed rather through Moses, is the standard by which you measure the historical developments through the life of Israel. This is an accounting especially of how did God's nation abide by God's words and promises, okay? The prophets, one of the ways that you can think about the prophets, both major and minor, and just so you remember children, when we say major prophets, we don't mean important. and minor prophets unimportant. What we mean is they just made larger contributions in terms of their literary output than the minor prophets. They were essentially covenantal prosecuting attorneys. They came and what they were doing was they were announcing and applying the law of God to the people. And then, when we have the New Testament, what we find is that Jesus Christ has come according to the promises revealed in the law and is himself going to endure the curses of the law so that his people might be delivered and brought into communion with the God of the law. And so, what we're seeking to do is we want to understand the law, And it says here, the people stood in their place, so they, not the people, but the leaders of God's people, read distinctly from the book in the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading. That is my major reason for existence among you. And that is not to create my personality cult. It is to set forth the Word of God before you, to the best of my ability and in faithfulness to the Scriptures, to help you understand the sense, that is, what does this mean, and understand the reading. So what we're going to be doing as we look at all of these principles this morning, this is going to be more of your subterranean work. We're going to be talking about presuppositions, And so, in different ways that we need to think as we approach the Word of God. So that's kind of the gist of this course. We are going to be, as we move forward, we're going to be talking about how does history influence our interpretation of Scripture. how do the different genre of scripture interpret or guide us as how do we approach this particular word, various different things. I hope this to be very practical, not strictly theoretical, though admittedly today we're going to be a bit more theoretical. Okay, does that make sense? I hope you're following. Now, I want to begin with this analogy because I've entitled this class, The Rules of the Word, and that is an intentional play on, at least phonetics, with the rules of the road. My oldest son here is, to my shock, only three and a half years away from a legal permitted driving age. And I think for some of you, you have already passed through that initial time of teaching children how to drive. And one of the things that academics help us to do is think about things that we don't always think about. When you approach a vehicle, though you have been driving your children around for a decade and a half, Though they might have picked up from you various approaches to the ethics of driving, be they good or bad, I don't think any sane parent or driving instructor will simply say, here are the keys, let's go. Right? It is prudent and it is sensible. Unless you grew up in the jungle of Brazil, probably it was different for you. I don't know. But it is prudent and wise for you to learn certain things. You need to learn certain things. What are some basic rules of driving, yielding, merging, right? How does the car work? Basics of these things. When we drive, we also, you probably don't think about this because what presuppositions are is they're underlying truths that we hold to and upon which we function, but we rarely actually think very carefully about. When you all got into your vehicles and drove here this morning, you were functioning on various presuppositions. Presuppositions of physics, of kind of the uniformity of the laws of nature that God has established. You went out here assuming that the cars that you'd be passing will generally seek to stay in their lane as you seek to stay in yours. There is a very complex process of internal combustion and pistons firing and drivetrains turning and wheels spinning and inertia working so that you can get from point A to point B. You also presuppose that when you push that pedal on the right that the injection of fuel would help you accelerate and most importantly when you push the pedal either on the left or in the middle For those of you who don't know what that means, that is, if you drive a stick shift, your brake pedal's in the middle, you assume that that's going to make you slow down. These are presuppositions upon which we function. And it is foolish for us to think that we can really approach anything of any substance or meaning in our lives without at least giving one course worth of instruction on what are our presuppositions and what ought they to be as we approach the Word of God. And so what we're going to look at this morning, there you have four points. I will do my very best to get through them. We're going to talk a little bit about some very important presuppositions with respect to the rules of the Word. Generally speaking, what is the place in the role of presuppositions? I said generally speaking, but what I want to talk about is particularly what role do they have as we come to the Scriptures themselves. Much of this, not all of this, much of this is derived from and consolidated from the book that you have by McCartney and Clayton. So this is just a blanket citation so I don't get charged like Votie Bauckham did of plagiarism. If you don't know about that controversy, just, it's fine. It's unbelievable. Anyway. The authors tell us, ask this question on page 5, what kind of intellectual baggage and what sort of ideological agenda are we bringing with us consciously or unconsciously, and how do these presuppositions influence, for good or ill, our understanding of the Bible? That's a question we need to ask. When we approach the Word of God, we are approaching it standing upon certain underlying assumptions or beliefs. And we need to make sure that those things are right. So there are two assumptions that the authors point out, generally speaking, with respect to texts, to the written communication. First, there are assumptions about life and ultimate realities. you bring with you certain underlying belief about existence, to make it a little bit more tangible, about God, yes or no, okay? You will bring with you certain underlying beliefs about the validity or helpfulness of written communication and about the ability for a human to look at that and understand it, okay? You're functioning in that way. So when you open the word of God and you read it and you believe that this is true, You're functioning upon a supposition that written communication can accurately and helpfully communicate realities of which the words are merely symbols and vehicles. Does that make sense? These are things that we bring to a text. More narrowly, with respect to the text itself, we're going to bring certain underlying ideas as well. When I open up the Word of God and I turn to Matthew chapter 13 and I read, I am reading things with an underlying conviction that what I'm reading is true, that what Jesus says carries divine weight. When I open up The Green Ember by S.D. Smith, reading about rabbits fighting wolves and hawks and these different things, and I read it to my children, I do not have the same underlying conviction about the book. Actually, my underlying conviction is that this is not true, or I should say, S.D. Smith kind of helpfully says, it's not real, but it's true, in that it communicates truth but not by holding to or presenting itself as something that actually historically happened, okay? So we do come, so if you're reading a book that you think is a book of fiction, and then you find it's actually nonfiction, it's going to change the way you interact with that book. Now, when you think about those two things, generally speaking, underlying assumptions about life and reality, these things are core convictions of our very being, okay, in our understanding of life. And then secondly, more subjectively with respect to that text we're interacting with, which category does the Bible fall into? What do you think? Into which of those two categories should we place the Bible? You can answer. Go ahead. Be brave. Say it louder. So, okay, so probably a vague question. You're right. There are different, so what Brian just touched on, there's a variety of things within scripture, and so even when we're there, because it's such a large and diverse book, we're going to have to have an understanding of those variances within the content of scripture. But as the Scriptures as a whole, we actually, the Bible falls into both categories. Because when we ask, when we approach the Bible, it's from the Bible that we actually derive those principles by which we can understand life and reality. It's the Scriptures that reveal who God is and who we are, beyond what God reveals generally in nature. And so the takeaway here on this first point in the place and role of presuppositions... Oh, I'm going to talk about two approaches in a second. One of the big takeaways is you cannot approach this book the way you approach any other book. This is a different book. And the reason for that is this is the book that contains and communicates the very divine revelation of God Almighty. That is a presupposition, and the thing about presuppositions is this. Please, please take this to heart, because this is where those who would oppose or, yeah, those who would oppose would be more antagonistic toward a presuppositional understanding of these kinds of things and apologetics. Here's what I'm not saying. Just because something is your presupposition, it is right and unchallengeable. That's not right. OK, your presuppositions are challengeable. Okay? The key here is you must be conscious of what those presuppositions are, and you must have a standard that measures or directs those presuppositions. And you must, and this is, it's going to come very clear in the next point, we must be very self-aware. What are those underlying convictions? Mine is, well, let's talk about it in this way. There are two approaches at work in this world. Okay, this is point B. Supernaturalism, and I could have put naturalism, but I'm going to put subjectivism. And this is the difference between the objective, unchanging revelation of God Almighty and the always-changing, navel-gazing, naturalistic, self-aggrandizing approach of man. These are the two great approaches. You really have no other, okay? When it comes down to it, either God is the determiner and arbiter of truth, or who? Man, it's either God who is the glorious giver of truth, who is truth, who is infinitely eternal and unchangeable in His truth, or it is man. Man was made to receive truth from God, as we'll get to in a moment. God is the one, though, who determines it. And so these are the two great approaches that we have. Now, here's the thing. If you approach the scriptures with a purely naturalistic, materialistic, subjective worldview, you're already coming to the scriptures in a wrong way. You are setting yourself over the scriptures, and you determine whether it's true or not. But when you come to the Scriptures in a posture of creaturely and redeemed humility, understanding you need the Spirit to understand these things, then you're coming to the Scriptures in the right way. So this is very, very important that you understand how these things work and that you become very aware of what your presuppositions are. Finally, you also need, as you're interacting with others, you need to think about and understand and interact with them so that you might understand what their presuppositions are. And ultimately, it really does come down to one of these two categories. Any questions or comments on that point before we move on to the second section? Very good. Four things here about truth, language, and sin. A pillar. A pillar of understanding is truth itself. You need to understand here is that as we approach truth, we need to approach truth as such as Christians. And what you see there and what the authors in this book helpfully point out is, and they wrote this book initially in 1991. They republished it, I think they reprinted it and edited it up in 2006, if I'm not mistaken. So it's been around a little bit, but in light of what I just taught you all from our critical theory class, it's a uniquely applicatory thing here, is they were interacting with a lot of these ideas in their earlier developments, and then they revised it 15 years ago. It's interesting, again, if you read it, you can kind of pick out some of those themes. But you have three worldly presuppositions, ideological, methodological, and attitudinal, and I can briefly fill in for you what they mean by those things. The worldly presupposition in an ideological category is that man is the measure of all things, or as Van Til liked to say, man believes he is autonomous, that is, he is self-ruled. That ideology will affect everything. If you believe that man is the measure, man is the arbiter, man is the pinnacle, that will change the way you view and interact with the world. Secondly, methodological, that is, the worldly presupposition is that the scientific method is the only valid method for ascertaining truth. The scientific method being pure empiricism. That is, you need to be able to observe, demonstrate, and repeat something for it to be considered true. Okay? Now those two things have been at work for a long time. This is classic enlightenment, post-enlightenment thought. Again, I will qualify that term enlightenment. I really appreciate how Chris Jeevil calls it the endarkenment, where when man puts reason upon the throne in the place of God, he might boast of his enlightenment, but he's the blind leading the blind. There's a third worldly presupposition, which is attitudinal. And this is a more recent development in terms of its primacy. And the attitudinal presupposition is that there is no knowable absolute truth and truth is always relative to the knower. Now here's what's interesting, if truth is relative to the knower, that is, you can only, this is kind of the development of Rene Descartes whole thing, that I can't know anything, but what I can know is that I doubt, okay, or I think. I think, therefore I am. I can't doubt that, because I'm thinking about my doubt, right? But once you make, here's what's interesting, is once you make that your starting point, It actually, this has become the primary presupposition, but it's also undermined the previous two. The pure rote subjectivism actually, and what I told you in critical theory, our critical theory class, is that actually the scientific method now proper, that is, the pursuit of scientific empirical truth where we can observe, we can demonstrate, we can repeat, That is now being classified as whiteness and wrong, and how people in the hegemony, in the power structure, use that to maintain their power. So even like these kind of previously universally agreed upon principles of approach, science, if you will, is being undermined by the pure and crazy autonomous subjectivity of unbelieving thought. And I think that's actually inevitable. This is how God judges people, is he gives them over to a debased and depraved mind. The biblical presuppositions counter to that is that God is the measure of all things. God is the source of truth. Human reason is dependent upon Him and it is limited. That is, it can be used consistently, logically, and rightly, but it must be used in submission to God's almighty rule. Man can only truly know things if he's in union with Christ. And here's what I mean. Man can only really and truly know things if he's in union with Christ. Let me give you a for instance. An unbeliever with an unregenerate mind can know a lot of things about a horse. I'm sure there are many. I don't know what the word is for the official doctrine of studying horses. Does anybody know what that word is? I'm sure there is a word. I don't know. Equestrianality or something, okay? You can know a lot of things. You can know how to cure horse problems. You can know how to keep them from getting mad cow disease. If that's a thing for horses, I don't know. Okay? You can know their anatomy. You can know how to train them. You can be the most accomplished, unbelieving horse whisperer that ever was. But if you don't look at that horse as the product of God's divine creation, as something distinct in itself, not a product of random evolutionary process, but a majestic beast made to display strength and honor and the swiftness that He has invested it with, you don't really know that horse, do you? You don't know the real ness of hoarseness, if you will. The Christian can. Now, we're talking down here at a more of a metaphysical and fundamentally epistemological level, not just ethics, okay? But these are presuppositions we need to take into account. And our method, then, as we seek knowledge is that Sorry, I got ahead of myself. So those are some biblical presuppositions. So the pillar of understanding is truth. God is truth. He is the source of truth. The second thing is the substance of our understanding. What are we seeking? We're seeking knowledge. Now, what is truth? Does anybody remember how I define truth? I think taking from Greg Monson. Yes, sir? Truth is whatever conforms to the mind of God. If God is truth, then we can have truth as we seek to conform our thoughts to the mind of God. So what true knowledge is, and what the true pursuit of knowledge is, is the endeavor to think God's thoughts after Him. This is what we need to do. Think God's thoughts after Him. Proverbs 2.6 tells us, for the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. The substance of our understanding is the knowledge, that is, the acquisition of facts, not brute facts, unrelated, but facts that come from the God who is the creator of those things. This is what we acquire, and this is what we need to grow in. You have that quote there from page 16. You can read that for yourselves. This is where Anselm's statement is so important. He said, I believe that I might understand. It's faith seeking understanding. What is the beginning of knowledge? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And what that means is, the starting point, the most basic square one of understanding is, you live in the fear of God. Now, what are the two constituent parts Calvin teaches us about the fear of God? Does anyone remember? I thought you guys, do you know? What are the two parts of the fear of God? The fear of God is principally summarized or surmised under these two headings. Love of righteousness and Come on, guys. Very good. Reverence of His Majesty. This is what the fear of God is. Love of righteousness. That is what God says, I love it. Who He is, I love Him. And reverence for His Majesty. That my posture before Him is one of humility and humble adoration. And when we approach God in that way, and we approach His world in that way, this is how we can acquire true, substantial knowledge. Knowledge is transmitted by language. True and living knowledge is transmitted by language. It's not a wordless enterprise, though God reveals himself wordlessly in creation. Man is made to put words to that creation. God has communicated about that creation with words. He then reveals himself with words. And one of the things that is a great help in our crazy postmodern milieu is that God is the creator also of language. Language means something. Words mean something. If you want a further discussion on my own philosophy of language, you can go back and listen to my lecture I gave to you on that, on critical theory and language. God created language. It is a right and proper mode of communication of ideas and of truths. Now, this then gives birth or gives way to reason. This is how do we work through and process through these ideas and principles communicated through language. God made us to be able to do these things. This is something unique and distinct among humans. Alright, so our conclusion here, I'm getting ahead of myself. Vehicle of understanding, I'm sorry. You can read those points there under 4. What I meant to do is, now I'm going to talk about the spoiler of understanding. So we have faith. We need faith to understand. We have language. God gave us language to communicate principles and truths. We have reason, which is the capacity to sort through and work through, compile and organize and receive and interact with these principles. But the spoiler of understanding is sin. Let me make a quick little hobby horse but pedagogical point here. We have there in your outline, oh, I don't have it there. Does anybody know the Greek word for mine? Noose, not noose, but noose, N-O-U-S would be in English. What is the most popular approach to therapy and dealing with people today? We call it what? Psychology. Now what do most people define psychology as? The study of the mind. But what is the Greek word for mind, nous? What is the Greek word for soul, for life, psychos? So I'm actually of the persuasion that psychology, that is, worldly humanistic psychology is a usurper. And while they say they're trying to deal with the mind, they're actually stealing and discounting the soul. And you need to be very, very, very careful about this whole world of secular psychology. I was listening to a popular psychology person yesterday explaining some principles of something. And I once again came to the conviction psychology is very good at one thing. It's very good at labeling problems. It's very good at that. They have a whole manual, full. I forget what it's called. What's it called? The what? Please explain. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, says the psychologist, the study of the soul. I think it's very heavy on identification, and no offense to any of you in psychology world, short on remedy. Okay? And how can you be full of holistic remedy when, as an industry and as an institution, you essentially discount the existence of the soul? It's very important to consider this. Anyway, sin is the great spoiler of understanding. There is no neutrality. Okay? This is where Taylor taught you a year or two ago, and I've said this, we push the antithesis. There is no neutral ground here. Psychologists, moralistic, therapeutic deists, they're not neutral. If they're not in union with Christ, they don't know Christ. The effect of sin on the mind, does anyone know what that is called? What's the term for that, classically or theologically? The noetic effects of sin. It has nothing to do with Noah, the one who created the ark, or built the ark. The noetic effects of sin are the effects of sin on the mind. And the way sin affects the mind is now our capacity purely to receive language, not completely, but purely. Our capacity to reason, among other things, is now corrupted. It's twisted. We don't reason aright. And in fact, one of the ways God judges is by giving over someone to a more and more and more depraved reasoning faculty, or in-faculty, if you will. And so, for example, when you look at 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 9 through 11, The judgment upon those who refuse to love the truth and so be saved is that He gives them over to a strong delusion. The effect of that is they continue to love lies. It's a scary thing. Sin is the great spoiler of understanding. This is why, when we approach knowledge, this is not a neutral thing. We don't think of it generically. We have to do it as we think God's thoughts after Him. Now, I don't expect you to go through this and have this checklist in your mind every time you wake up in the morning and open up your Bibles. But there are times for us to take accounting of our basic approaches. And you must be thinking, take away here, how am I approaching the Scriptures? What is at work here? Am I coming to the Scriptures with a renewed mind? As you're evangelizing someone, as you're talking with an unbeliever, you can do that because God has made that person with an inherent capacity, marred by the fall as it is, to receive the Word of God. This is why, if you're consistent here, this is why we must all be Calvinists. Because the depraved reason will never receive the things of God, and yet, God's ordained the communication of His truth, blessed by the Spirit, to bring about regeneration in faith. This is why we don't have to explain ourselves in every possible way. This is why in evangelism we don't have to necessarily, it's good to answer objections, but it's really good to just speak what is true. Incidentally, what's under great attack today? Speaking what is true. Okay, it's very important. Any thoughts or questions on that point before we move on? Yeah, I'm covering about 70 pages worth of the book and so it's kind of a quick skim through. All right. Knowing God, then. Presuppositions about the Bible and creation. And I want to talk about a few things here. First is authority. Now, your little half-sheet here, this is an adaptation and with some additions by me. I gave it to a men's study that met six years ago, so I don't expect all of you guys who were there, even if you were, to have memorized this. But this is just a little cheat sheet for you with some theological terms and concepts that have to do particularly with studying God's Word. I would just encourage you not to just crumble this up or make a paper airplane out of it. You can keep it in your book, your household book that you've been given, and refer to it from time to time so you can have a good working kind of concept and understanding of what these terms actually mean. Now, when we talk about authority, you see there number three, when we refer to scriptural or divine authority, it's the power that the Bible possesses, having been issued from God, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed. God makes no apology, that is, He's not asking for permission, when He declares the beginning of the Word of God in the beginning God created. He does not say, now let me explain to you my origin. Let me give to you my credentialing for authority. He doesn't do that. He simply asserts. And if God is God and He is, then what He says is in itself inherently self-attesting and self-authenticating. God looks to no witness. He leans on no beam of support to uphold His divine power. Does that make sense? God is self-sufficient. His words are His words because they're His words. Is that circular reasoning? Yes. But there are some things, especially when we talk about ultimate realities and truths, metaphysical realities, they are necessarily circular because you can only go back so far. Is the Bible God's Word? The answer must be an emphatic yes. And the Word of God gives clear testimony to it, and the Spirit Himself bearing witness helps us to see that. The second question with veracity, that's the question, is the Bible true? Is the Bible true? If God is true, His words must be true. Now, there have been many attacks against the Word of God. This should not surprise you. This was Satan's first attack. He used the attack of the Word to attack something more fundamental. When Satan questioned God's Word, what was he really questioning? God's character. When he questioned God's Word, he's questioning God's character. And what you need to understand is there are legitimate questions to ask about text transmission and text preservation, okay? But there's a way to ask them rightly, in faith, seeking understanding. And there's a way to ask them wrongly, that is, with an unbelieving, critical, that is, scholarly, quote-unquote, critical, deconstructionary approach. Okay? These are some of the presuppositions to become. God's word is authoritative. God's word is true. A third thing is, can we understand God's word? Is it clear? This is where we get to the doctrine of perspicuity. That's in your little sheet there. That would be number 12. The easy way to understand the doctrine of perspicuity is it simply means this. You don't need an MDiv to know the Bible truly. You don't need an MDiv to know the Bible truly. You can read the Word of God with help by the Spirit of God, faithfully through your life, and you will come to a true and saving acquisition of the truths of God. Now, does additional training sometimes help? Are there some people more gifted than others and called to teach and to expound and preach? Yes, clearly. Jesus gave those gifts to the Church. But, you don't have to be ordained. or schooled to understand God's Word. God's Word is clear. Not all things in Scripture are like plain. There are some things difficult. Daniel 10 and 11, for example, some cryptic things. It's not quite as clear as Mark 15, where we have Jesus there, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus going into Mark 16. But all things, all things necessary to believe for salvation are plain unto all, is what our confession teaches. So the doctrine of perspicuity is clear. God doesn't speak with a stutter. That's another way to remember the doctrine of perspicuity. He speaks clearly. Now, if there's anything on this list that I want you to, on this sheet rather, on the back of your sheet that I want you to memorize and internalize, it is this. When you look at point C to A, B, and C, content, focus, and force, this will be one of the most practical, helpful takeaways for you as you read the Word of God. As we talk about the clarity of God's Word, its perspicuity, and its content, the clarity with which God communicates, and then the content of that communication, this will help you in all of your Bible reading. You're asking the question, what's the Bible about? Who is the Bible about? And what's the Bible for? The Bible, this is, these are three principles. I put the label on the front, but the principles are from the book. First, you need to understand the Bible is redemptive historical in character. What that means is the Bible is an intentionally communicated series of acts that God has done in history. and they have a direction. It's not aimless and cyclical. It's clear and directional and purposeful. And what God is doing is He made the world, and He made the world with a plan. And when did He create that plan? God doesn't do things like I often do things, like I'm gonna figure out when I have a renovation project, I'll figure it out as I go. That's not how God works. It was before the foundation of the world, wasn't it? Okay? And God had a plan to redeem, to elect the people in Christ, and to send Christ to save those He elect, to send the Spirit to apply the redemption purchased by Christ to them. And He has ordained the means by which He would gather them, and gather in His people and judge His enemies. You see, this is the redemptive historical that is. God's purposes of redemption are working out in history and developing. to this very day. Now the Bible gives us that account right up until the gospel goes from Jerusalem to Rome. And we are called then to enter into that stream and continue that work. Okay? Always remember this. As you're reading God's Word, you're asking this question, where am I in the course of redemptive history? So you're going to read the book of Judges differently than you read the book of Acts. Notably, what's one of the themes in the book of Judges that explains the insanity of the age? There's no king in Israel. Everyone's doing what's right in their own eyes. But in the book of Acts, there's a king in heaven. And the gospel's advancing and subduing the nations, right? Okay? The focus then, what's the... I told you in my sermon and article on Christian meditation, what is the Arkenstone of the content of divine revelation? It's Jesus Himself, the content, it's all about Christ. The great text here is in Luke 24, at the end of the chapter, what does Jesus tell His disciples? The Psalms for Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets, who are they written about? Me. Again, those people who say Jesus is a good teacher, that was a tremendously arrogant, egotistical statement if it's not true. That the Bible is written about me. And actually what's ironic is that the people who say that will read the Bible as if it's written about them. Okay? No, no. We read the Bible. It's redemptive, historical in its character. it's Christological in its focus, that is the exaltation of Christ as the revelation of the Father, and then it's applicable to the covenant people in its force. It's not fodder for vain, vague speculation. It calls us to faith and obedience and holiness. This is what the Bible is about. Why should you memorize these three things? Because these are going to be the three pistons that are going to be moving as you read. Ask yourself, how does this fit in the redemptive historical purposes of God? How does this teach me of Christ? What does this teach me to do? And this is just a small development on Catechism No. 2, isn't it? The Scriptures principally teach what we're to believe concerning God, how He's worked in history, how He's teaching us of Christ, and what duty God requires of man. What am I supposed to do in light of this? So I'd encourage you to imbibe that and to internalize it. We're going to skip history, because we'll talk about that a bit more next week. Just understand that the Bible is a historical document. It arose in history, and uniquely, it interprets history. And so, just remember that as learning history is important. Now, I will read one thing for you, just to let you know how much I have an antipathy toward silly dispensationalism. I read this some time ago. I think I told you, if you remember, what was my label for the Silly Men, John Darby and C.I. Schofield? Yeah, Brian? The not-so-handy man of history, right? The not-so-handy man of history. You go into a room and you're like, who in the world hooked up the wiring like this? It must have been Paul Davis or something. Like, who? Like, who put the fan there? Why is the light switch behind the hinges? Like, these are minus the Paul Davis wiring. These are like things that I experience in my own house. Like, why would somebody do this? When you walk into the room of eschatological thought and historical development, and you find Darby's and Schofield's innovations, you're thinking, what in the universe? That's my question for things I don't understand. Well, O.T. Alice quoted John Darby in his book, The Prophecy and the Church. Here's what Alice quotes Darby as saying, I do not want history to tell me Nineveh or Babylon is ruined, of Jerusalem in the hands of Gentiles. I do not admit history to be in any sense necessary to the understanding of prophecy. Which is the very reason he doesn't understand prophecy. Okay? I'm going to be preaching through Daniel after I finish the series on marriage, and you're going to see just how important history is to the interpretation of prophecy. Alright? So, history and revelation interact with one another. Now, the last thing I want to touch on, we have just a couple of minutes, and I will not get through it all. is this last section here, Foundation, Frame, Presuppositions, and Interpretation. This is just the title of chapter three in the book. Remember those three points, please. Remember, character, focus, and force of the Bible. But I want to show you these nine things very quickly about how we approach the Word of God, and especially how we see God's Word itself teaching us how we ought to read it. First, with respect to translations, are translations legitimate? Are they valid? This begs the question or assumes the question of the accurate transmission of language. And language is a fascinating thing if you really think about it. It's through symbols and sounds that you can communicate realities. And I could communicate the exact same reality in Swahili if I could use those sounds and symbols. Now, there's a lot going on there. But language does communicate. And so translation is not a change of the substance. but of the medium of communication. And the way the Bible actually teaches us this is that, especially even in the New Testament, what version of the Old Testament were most New Testament writers using? They were using the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew. Now that does get us into some difficulty sometimes, but it does demonstrate that even the inspired apostolic writers They, there, are giving us a warrant for the validity of translation. It's an interesting point. Internal witness. That is, the Word of God considers itself the Word of God from Old and New Testaments. So when the New Testament says, God has said, and quotes the Old Testament, or thus said the Lord, or says the Lord, or what does God say, or the Spirit also says through David, The New Testament is referring back to the Old Testament as divinely given revelation. So we ought to approach the Word of God as such. Historicity. The New Testament regards the Old Testament as valid history. We're going to consider it today. Jesus refers back to Moses. and the text in Genesis 2 as a valid historical account of the first marriage and of the two becoming one flesh. Therefore, we ought also to approach the Scriptures as a historical document. in terms of redemptive historical development. History in the Bible is understood to be under sovereign control, and its direction and thrust is redemptive and doxological. It's moving to a point. You cannot read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and not see a redemptive, historical, eschatological, and doxological development. Meaning, we're moving to something, and the goal of that something is the praise of God. Okay? Does that make sense? Typological. The Bible is progressively revealing the truths, particularly of Christ. And so we will find, now people go way crazy in this area, but we're going to talk about it in a future class, but the Bible presents Jesus Christ with types and shadows. Hebrews is a perfect example. Typology and typological interpretation is a valid approach in Scripture. So we need to be at least familiar with that. It's a covenantal document. That is, God gave it to a people. The Word of God was given to and written for a covenant people, so we need to approach it as a covenant document, not indiscriminately given and applied, but particularly intended. It's Christological. That is, it's focused on Christ. Jesus himself saying that the Scriptures were written about me teaches us we need to read looking for Him. And then, eighthly, We need this expositional approach as the Word of God presents itself and explains itself. The way we determine truth is by working through it and extracting from it, not injecting into it. That's how we need to approach Scripture. Ninthly, this is my addition to what they put in their own words, is spiritual. 1 Corinthians teaches us you cannot understand the Scriptures without what? Or without whom? Without the Spirit's work. You must have the Spirit. So it's not, if you just approach it as a text, you're already wrong. You approach it with the Spirit's help to believe. I'm over time. That's where we're going to have to stop for now. That's a quick sketch. I encourage you to read the first three chapters if you wish. Next week we'll be getting to History of Interpretation, how this has played out throughout the last two millennia. Any questions or thoughts as we close this morning? So I assume it was all crystal clear. Your presuppositions are straight as arrows, right? Come to the Word of God humbly and believe in Him. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We pray as we draw near to You and study it this morning that You'd bless us richly and that we would go about it in all the ways that we've even considered now. Lord, how we thank You for Your kindness. In Jesus' name, Amen.