1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,220 So welcome to the first Teaching Tuesday here at Hub City Vineyard. 2 00:00:18,220 --> 00:00:22,300 My intention with these classes is to bring what I'm learning at seminary back to the 3 00:00:22,300 --> 00:00:23,660 church. 4 00:00:23,660 --> 00:00:30,680 So many of you have given me advice, prayed for me, supported me, encouraged me, and even 5 00:00:30,680 --> 00:00:33,040 helped me by participating in some of my assignments. 6 00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:38,040 I felt like it was the least I could do to share what I'm learning at seminary with you. 7 00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:45,000 I've loved going deeper into Christian theology, apologetics, history, and so many other fascinating 8 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:46,000 areas of Christianity. 9 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,100 And I find that some people worry that when they delve into theology or apologetics that 10 00:00:52,100 --> 00:00:55,000 the faith becomes dry or too religious. 11 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,360 But I have found that every single thing I learned has helped me grow closer to God. 12 00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:02,640 And I hope that it does the same for you. 13 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:08,280 So the topic of this first session is how to read and interpret the Bible. 14 00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:13,200 And every month I'm going to be sharing with you at least one resource. 15 00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:19,040 And today's resource is called Grasping God's Word, and it's by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel 16 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:20,040 Hayes. 17 00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:23,280 So I'm going to go through a bunch of the key parts of this book today, and I'm going 18 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:28,640 to show you how the tools and the roadmap they give you for reading and interpreting 19 00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:34,740 the Bible can really change your faith and help you grow in it significantly. 20 00:01:34,740 --> 00:01:39,080 The first question I want to ask and I want us to think about is why do people read the 21 00:01:39,080 --> 00:01:40,080 Bible? 22 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:45,120 You know, some people read the Bible to learn more about God, maybe in a factual sense or 23 00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:48,880 to learn about the things that He did and continues to do. 24 00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:51,840 Some people read it to deepen their relationship with God. 25 00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:59,080 I find that no matter what part of the Bible I'm reading, even if it is Old Testament 26 00:01:59,080 --> 00:02:05,200 prophecy or Paul's letters, every single thing that I read, there is something in probably 27 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:10,000 every verse of the Bible that makes me grateful and makes me appreciate what God has done 28 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:11,000 for us. 29 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,320 And so I find that no matter what my other goals are in reading the Bible, especially 30 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:20,080 when I'm learning it for school and I'm focused on it academically, no matter what the reason 31 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:25,440 I go in is, the outcome is that it deepens my relationship with God. 32 00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:26,680 There are other good reasons too. 33 00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:30,400 You might want to understand how God wants us to act in certain situations. 34 00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:35,560 And some people might even be reading the Bible from a secular perspective to read the 35 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:40,320 history of the world and learn about the people who used to live in it. 36 00:02:40,320 --> 00:02:46,920 Now no matter what reason we're reading the Bible, none of these are just plain reading. 37 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:50,760 Every single one of these involves us doing some kind of interpretation. 38 00:02:50,760 --> 00:02:56,040 We don't just take what the text says at face value and never think about it again. 39 00:02:56,040 --> 00:03:03,440 We have to understand, you know, what is it telling us and what do we do with that information? 40 00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:09,960 And a warning that it's very important to be aware of is that it's very easy for us 41 00:03:09,960 --> 00:03:13,080 to go off track if we don't have a system for interpreting Scripture. 42 00:03:13,080 --> 00:03:16,400 And let me give you one of the most popular examples. 43 00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:24,000 So if we look at Revelation 3, 15 to 16 in the NLT translation, this is Jesus writing 44 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:27,400 the letters to the churches in Revelation. 45 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:30,920 And this one in particular, he's talking to the church in Laodicea. 46 00:03:30,920 --> 00:03:35,240 And he says, I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. 47 00:03:35,240 --> 00:03:38,880 I wish that you were one or the other, but since you are lukewarm water, neither hot 48 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:41,680 nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 49 00:03:41,680 --> 00:03:46,240 And so if we take this at the surface level, what do we have? 50 00:03:46,240 --> 00:03:50,960 So we probably have a good idea of what it means to be lukewarm. 51 00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:54,840 If you think of a lukewarm Christian, you think of somebody who might be a Christian 52 00:03:54,840 --> 00:03:56,480 in name only. 53 00:03:56,480 --> 00:03:59,660 Maybe they reluctantly go to church when their family makes them go. 54 00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:04,480 Maybe they don't do any Bible reading or prayer on their own time. 55 00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:08,360 You might even think of somebody who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter. 56 00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:13,880 So we have a pretty good idea of what lukewarm means, and our initial impression there is 57 00:04:13,880 --> 00:04:15,520 pretty accurate. 58 00:04:15,520 --> 00:04:20,560 But the problem comes when Jesus says hot and cold. 59 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:27,300 Now we do actually have a pretty good modern understanding of what Jesus means by hot. 60 00:04:27,300 --> 00:04:32,680 And so if we think of a Christian who is hot or on fire for God, we think of somebody who 61 00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:37,080 is out there sharing the gospel happily. 62 00:04:37,080 --> 00:04:39,200 They're out there making a difference in the world. 63 00:04:39,200 --> 00:04:40,640 They're on fire for Jesus. 64 00:04:40,640 --> 00:04:45,960 They're worshiping, and people can see the passion for Jesus in them. 65 00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:49,560 Another option for hot could be soothing. 66 00:04:49,560 --> 00:04:53,620 So we could be warm and inviting. 67 00:04:53,620 --> 00:04:59,800 Think of the feeling when it's cold out and you get a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. 68 00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:02,400 That's a good understanding of hot. 69 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:03,960 Problem comes with cold. 70 00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:08,760 And so if we look at the word cold and we think of what's the first thing you think 71 00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:10,240 of in our modern understanding? 72 00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:14,040 Well, that would probably be if you ask somebody out and they say no. 73 00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:19,000 We might say that they gave you the cold shoulder, or you try to talk to somebody and they ignore 74 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:20,000 you. 75 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,000 We would say the person is being cold to us. 76 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:27,480 But unfortunately, this leads us to a really dangerous misunderstanding. 77 00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:31,480 So we might look at this and we know what lukewarm means, and we have a good understanding 78 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:35,560 of what hot means, and we think we have a good understanding of cold. 79 00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:42,240 And so if we apply cold to our faith, we might say, well, cold would be an atheist. 80 00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:47,280 It's what Jesus is saying in this passage that instead of a lukewarm Christian, he either 81 00:05:47,280 --> 00:05:51,440 wants somebody who's completely on fire for God or he wants an honest atheist. 82 00:05:51,440 --> 00:05:54,280 That was one of the interpretations I heard of it. 83 00:05:54,280 --> 00:05:57,160 Now that should stand out to us as a problem. 84 00:05:57,160 --> 00:06:01,760 There is no way if you have read through the Bible and you really understand God that he 85 00:06:01,760 --> 00:06:06,160 would in any way want someone to be an atheist. 86 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:12,120 So we should already have some warning signs that our interpretation isn't correct. 87 00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:15,200 And it turns out that our understanding is incorrect. 88 00:06:15,200 --> 00:06:20,880 And so what we've come to learn through archaeology and history is that there was a very specific 89 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:24,360 situation in Laodicea that Jesus was referring to. 90 00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:27,920 So this map here can help us understand that. 91 00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:32,720 Now Christians up until very recently didn't have access to this information. 92 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:34,480 These are things that we discovered. 93 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:37,900 But what was really going on there is fascinating. 94 00:06:37,900 --> 00:06:40,920 So Laodicea was sort of right between two other cities. 95 00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:43,640 One was called Hierapolis and one was called Colosse. 96 00:06:43,640 --> 00:06:45,400 Now Hierapolis was famous. 97 00:06:45,400 --> 00:06:48,280 It had these amazing hot springs. 98 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:53,040 And if we think about going to a hot spring, we think about nice warm water, it soothes 99 00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:55,320 aches, it heals pains. 100 00:06:55,320 --> 00:07:00,800 It's the same reason that people might go to a spa or a sauna today to get relief through 101 00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:02,120 heat. 102 00:07:02,120 --> 00:07:08,000 Similarly, Colosse was famous for its natural cold springs. 103 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:09,960 They didn't have refrigerators back then. 104 00:07:09,960 --> 00:07:15,040 So this fresh cold water that came down from the mountains was a real draw for people. 105 00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:18,320 It was a real important thing about the town. 106 00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:21,120 Now Laodicea didn't have either of these things. 107 00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:27,600 And so they built these huge systems of aqueducts to transport water from Hierapolis and Colosse. 108 00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:29,080 But there's another problem. 109 00:07:29,080 --> 00:07:31,160 They didn't have insulated piping back then. 110 00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:33,900 And these were miles and miles of aqueducts. 111 00:07:33,900 --> 00:07:36,680 And so what you might expect to happen is exactly what happened. 112 00:07:36,680 --> 00:07:41,600 By the time the hot water from Hierapolis got to Laodicea, it was room temperature or 113 00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:42,960 lukewarm. 114 00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:47,680 And by the time the cold water from Colosse got to Laodicea, it was also room temperature 115 00:07:47,680 --> 00:07:48,980 or lukewarm. 116 00:07:48,980 --> 00:07:53,900 And so Jesus is using the contemporary situation that these people will be very familiar with 117 00:07:53,900 --> 00:07:56,160 to illustrate this point. 118 00:07:56,160 --> 00:08:02,040 And in this, you know, in this letter, hot and cold are both positive things. 119 00:08:02,040 --> 00:08:06,320 So the hot is warm and soothing, inviting, passionate. 120 00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:08,480 Our modern understanding of it is pretty good. 121 00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:11,580 But cold in this case is refreshing. 122 00:08:11,580 --> 00:08:17,080 In this case, cold is a welcome change or a refreshing change of pace from the way the 123 00:08:17,080 --> 00:08:18,080 world is. 124 00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:20,920 Cold back then was a deeply, deeply sinful place. 125 00:08:20,920 --> 00:08:23,720 Honestly, it's pretty much still the same. 126 00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:26,060 It's a deeply, deeply sinful place. 127 00:08:26,060 --> 00:08:31,880 And so we're called to be cold in the sense that we're called to be shocking and refreshing 128 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:34,240 because we're different from the world. 129 00:08:34,240 --> 00:08:40,740 And so Jesus was not saying, I want either an on fire Christian or I want an honest atheist. 130 00:08:40,740 --> 00:08:46,720 He was saying, I want you to be soothing and healing and welcoming to the world and on 131 00:08:46,720 --> 00:08:48,020 fire for me. 132 00:08:48,020 --> 00:08:54,640 And I also want you to be a refreshing and shocking, you know, difference from the world. 133 00:08:54,640 --> 00:08:59,720 He was not saying he wanted an honest atheist. 134 00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:05,220 And so our understanding of that scripture up until very modern times was quite wrong. 135 00:09:05,220 --> 00:09:09,720 So what we need is we need a tool that will help us avoid these mistakes in the future. 136 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:12,440 And that's what we're going to be talking about today. 137 00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:16,080 And the tool that the authors give us in that book that I mentioned earlier is called the 138 00:09:16,080 --> 00:09:18,600 five step interpretive journey. 139 00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:21,960 And what this does is it walks us through five steps that will take us from the original 140 00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:26,320 text to a modern application. 141 00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:31,600 Now I actually like to add in sort of a step zero, which isn't included in their five steps. 142 00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:33,280 And I call this the pre trip. 143 00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:35,440 So if we're going on a journey, we have to pack our bags. 144 00:09:35,440 --> 00:09:39,140 And the two things that we want to do before we even set out on a trip is we will identify 145 00:09:39,140 --> 00:09:42,240 our hermeneutic and pick a suitable Bible translation. 146 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:46,800 I'll start with the hermeneutic one because that sounds like it's going to be some horribly 147 00:09:46,800 --> 00:09:50,080 complicated theological thing, but it's actually very simple. 148 00:09:50,080 --> 00:09:56,320 The hermeneutic is the position or the philosophy that we use for Bible interpretation. 149 00:09:56,320 --> 00:09:59,760 And so the philosophy that we're going to be using today that you'll find at Vineyard 150 00:09:59,760 --> 00:10:05,960 churches and genuinely a philosophy that is compatible with 99% of the churches that you'll 151 00:10:05,960 --> 00:10:09,680 be around is conservative evangelical. 152 00:10:09,680 --> 00:10:13,960 Now it's important to note that when I say conservative, I mean theologically. 153 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:15,120 I don't mean politically. 154 00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:16,920 I don't mean socially. 155 00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:24,320 When we say a conservative theological position, we say the Bible means what it says. 156 00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:29,800 This is opposed to a liberal theological position, which kind of picks and chooses what it wants 157 00:10:29,800 --> 00:10:30,800 to take literally. 158 00:10:30,800 --> 00:10:33,500 Let me give you an example. 159 00:10:33,500 --> 00:10:39,340 So under a conservative theology, when we read in the Bible that Jesus died on the cross 160 00:10:39,340 --> 00:10:43,760 and came back to life, we believe that he literally died on the cross and came back 161 00:10:43,760 --> 00:10:45,040 to life. 162 00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:50,080 A liberal theologian might take that to say, well, yes, Jesus died on the cross, but nobody 163 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:52,480 can actually come back to life. 164 00:10:52,480 --> 00:10:56,200 And so the Bible says that Jesus came back to life. 165 00:10:56,200 --> 00:11:03,320 What it means is that Jesus's teachings and influence lives on in humanity forever. 166 00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:05,280 That's clearly not what the Bible says. 167 00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:11,400 Similarly, when the Bible says that Jesus literally healed people, says he healed a 168 00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:15,680 blind person or healed a person who couldn't walk, we believe that he really did those 169 00:11:15,680 --> 00:11:16,680 things. 170 00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:20,640 Whereas a liberal theologian might say, well, Jesus was a really smart guy. 171 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:26,360 And so while he was on earth, he gave the healers and the doctors of the time a knowledge 172 00:11:26,360 --> 00:11:30,680 that they didn't have before so that they could treat the blind or treat people who 173 00:11:30,680 --> 00:11:33,280 had some kind of disability. 174 00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:34,960 Clearly not what the Bible says. 175 00:11:34,960 --> 00:11:41,920 And so we want to go, when we are doing our hermeneutic, it is one of the Bible means 176 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:43,280 what it says. 177 00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:49,240 The evangelical just means Protestant with a focus on evangelism. 178 00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:52,640 We understand the Bible to be the final authority on everything. 179 00:11:52,640 --> 00:11:58,720 This is in contrast to, say, Roman Catholics, where the pope or the magisterium, which are 180 00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:04,920 scholars who help interpret the Bible, they can reinterpret an understanding of the Bible 181 00:12:04,920 --> 00:12:11,480 that may disagree with what the Bible plainly says, or they may say that the understanding 182 00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:15,660 of the Bible needs to change over time to match modern circumstances. 183 00:12:15,660 --> 00:12:21,520 We say that the Bible is the final authority on everything in the form that it was written. 184 00:12:21,520 --> 00:12:27,200 And so when Jesus says that he is the only way to the Father, we don't believe that 185 00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:29,320 can ever change. 186 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:34,840 And when God says something is good or something is bad, that does not change based on society. 187 00:12:34,840 --> 00:12:43,120 Then the second part of our pre-trip is picking a suitable Bible translation for study. 188 00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:47,800 Generally there are three types that are categorized or accepted. 189 00:12:47,800 --> 00:12:51,200 Scholarly, there's the word for word, thought for thought, and paraphrase. 190 00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:55,400 You can see that I've added a fourth one that I call trash, which is not very nice, but 191 00:12:55,400 --> 00:12:57,920 I'll explain why in just a minute. 192 00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:03,200 So word for word takes the original language of it, the Greek or the Hebrew, and it breaks 193 00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:07,560 it up into the words and the proper tenses and so on, and identifies the corresponding 194 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:09,920 English word for that word. 195 00:13:09,920 --> 00:13:15,280 And once it has all the words in a sentence or a paragraph, it rearranges them and changes 196 00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:20,120 things the bare minimum so that it is understandable in English while trying to capture as much 197 00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:22,480 of the original language as possible. 198 00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:27,280 You know, very good word for word translations would be the ESV or the NASV. 199 00:13:27,280 --> 00:13:30,140 You can't go wrong with either of those. 200 00:13:30,140 --> 00:13:32,400 There's the thought for thought translation. 201 00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:35,240 What this does is it starts off the same way. 202 00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:38,920 It takes the original language, it translates word for word, but then it looks at what the 203 00:13:38,920 --> 00:13:40,880 author is trying to convey. 204 00:13:40,880 --> 00:13:46,400 And so where possible, they go word for word, but where things may be ambiguous, they will 205 00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:50,720 go in a more, you know, they try to capture the thought. 206 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:54,880 And I'm going to show an example and it'll make a little bit more sense. 207 00:13:54,880 --> 00:14:00,200 Two really good thought for thought translations would be the NIV or the NLT. 208 00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:03,420 Now paraphrase treats things a little bit differently. 209 00:14:03,420 --> 00:14:07,540 It may or may not start with the original languages, or it could start with another 210 00:14:07,540 --> 00:14:11,660 type of translation like a word for word or thought for thought. 211 00:14:11,660 --> 00:14:16,600 It looks at what the Bible is trying to say in either a sentence or a paragraph, and it 212 00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:19,200 presents it with sort of a commentary built in. 213 00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:22,860 One of the most common ones is the message. 214 00:14:22,860 --> 00:14:25,960 The benefit to these is they can be very easy to read. 215 00:14:25,960 --> 00:14:30,880 The downside is that because it comes with a built in commentary, you are getting that 216 00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:37,740 translator's philosophy or opinion on things instead of looking at directly what was written 217 00:14:37,740 --> 00:14:39,360 by the biblical authors. 218 00:14:39,360 --> 00:14:45,560 And then the reason that I have a trash category, which you're not going to find in any textbooks, 219 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:50,320 is because there are some translations that are actually damaging for people to use. 220 00:14:50,320 --> 00:14:55,920 These sort of fall into the paraphrase category, in some cases. 221 00:14:55,920 --> 00:15:01,680 Others like the Watchtower would pretend to be a word for word translation, but they do 222 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:03,480 some very disingenuous stuff. 223 00:15:03,480 --> 00:15:08,920 The Passion translation, for instance, is actually banned for many schools and many churches 224 00:15:08,920 --> 00:15:12,000 because it changes the theology of the Bible. 225 00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:18,760 It really downplays the damaging effects of sin and sort of presents us a story of a God 226 00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:22,240 that really likes people and He's doing all this nice stuff for us. 227 00:15:22,240 --> 00:15:27,480 He's just not that worried about sin, which we know is, you know, sin's a big deal. 228 00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:32,240 And that's a very major change to make that can really damage your theology. 229 00:15:32,240 --> 00:15:37,280 You know, on the other hand, the Watchtower pretends to be a word for word translation, 230 00:15:37,280 --> 00:15:42,480 but to match the Jehovah's Witness theology, they add things or they remove things. 231 00:15:42,480 --> 00:15:47,480 I'm going to show you an example in just a minute of a very dangerous addition that they 232 00:15:47,480 --> 00:15:48,840 make. 233 00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:53,720 So to sort of show you how these four translations work in a practical sense, let's look at John 234 00:15:53,720 --> 00:15:55,360 1-1. 235 00:15:55,360 --> 00:16:01,960 You can see here, this is a Greek original manuscript of John 1-1 that I got off the 236 00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:02,960 internet. 237 00:16:02,960 --> 00:16:05,000 You can see this is very challenging to work with. 238 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:08,760 This is not something that you would be reading for fun. 239 00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:11,840 There are no uppercase and lowercase letters. 240 00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:12,840 There is no spacing. 241 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:14,440 There is no punctuation. 242 00:16:14,440 --> 00:16:20,000 It's all just one long string of uppercase Greek letters pushed together. 243 00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:25,960 So the first step for any translator is what you see on this slide. 244 00:16:25,960 --> 00:16:30,040 This is from what is called a Greek Interlinear Bible. 245 00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:35,080 This is people who are Greek language experts and they do the hard work of figuring out 246 00:16:35,080 --> 00:16:36,920 what the individual Greek words were. 247 00:16:36,920 --> 00:16:42,360 They identify the root word, the tense, the context of it, and they break it down and 248 00:16:42,360 --> 00:16:46,880 they show you what it should be in English and they also have audio samples and links 249 00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:48,520 to reference libraries. 250 00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:54,680 And so you can see that big string of Greek characters, when they break it down and parse 251 00:16:54,680 --> 00:16:56,840 it, what we get is the following. 252 00:16:56,840 --> 00:17:02,480 In beginning was the word, in the word was with God, in God was the word. 253 00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:07,800 And if you're familiar with John 1-1, this sounds a whole lot like the one that you're 254 00:17:07,800 --> 00:17:13,320 used to with just the very end being in a different order. 255 00:17:13,320 --> 00:17:18,600 So the ESV, when they go to translate it, they take the Greek, they look at the words, 256 00:17:18,600 --> 00:17:23,020 and the only thing they change is the order of the words at the end to reflect the subject 257 00:17:23,020 --> 00:17:24,640 and object of the verb. 258 00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:29,500 And so we get the ESV translation of in the beginning was the word, in the word was with 259 00:17:29,500 --> 00:17:31,720 God, in the word was God. 260 00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:33,800 Pretty close to the original Greek. 261 00:17:33,800 --> 00:17:37,480 NLT is also very similar to the original Greek. 262 00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:42,280 It reads, in the beginning the word already existed, the word was with God, and the word 263 00:17:42,280 --> 00:17:43,280 was God. 264 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:45,840 So you can see they really made two changes here. 265 00:17:45,840 --> 00:17:52,720 They flipped the nouns at the end so that there is subject-object agreement, but then 266 00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:59,300 in the beginning it doesn't say in the beginning was the word, they change it to say the word 267 00:17:59,300 --> 00:18:00,300 already existed. 268 00:18:00,300 --> 00:18:06,000 That is because the context of the Greek verb used there is already exist. 269 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:10,680 They want to make sure that by just saying was, they aren't confusing the reader. 270 00:18:10,680 --> 00:18:15,640 It's a small change for readability and understanding that doesn't detract from the theological 271 00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:18,160 message. 272 00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:23,320 Now we can look at how the message translates this, and it says the word was first, the 273 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:27,560 word present to God, God present to the word, the word was God. 274 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:29,920 Some people find this to be easier to understand. 275 00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:31,380 I am not one of them. 276 00:18:31,380 --> 00:18:35,560 I think that this muddies the theological message a little bit, but some people do genuinely 277 00:18:35,560 --> 00:18:41,480 find this easier to read, but it does significantly change the passage. 278 00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:44,960 And then finally we have the watchtower. 279 00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:48,740 And so you can spot exactly what they did here. 280 00:18:48,740 --> 00:18:54,020 It looks just like the ESV with one massive change. 281 00:18:54,020 --> 00:19:00,080 They added the letter A at the very end, it says, and the word was a God, and they put 282 00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:02,080 a lowercase G. 283 00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:07,200 Now if we look at the Greek, there is no A anywhere in there. 284 00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:10,760 There is no indicator that it should say, A God. 285 00:19:10,760 --> 00:19:13,360 The word was God. 286 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:16,140 The word was not A God. 287 00:19:16,140 --> 00:19:23,040 They are making a challenge to Jesus's equality with God, his pre-existence, his eternality. 288 00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:29,480 It is a major theological change, and it is a really dangerous one because it demonstrates 289 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:32,980 why the Jehovah's Witness theology is so wrong and so dangerous. 290 00:19:32,980 --> 00:19:37,040 This is a big enough change that it could threaten somebody's salvation. 291 00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:41,880 And so what we get from this is that if we want a suitable Bible study for translation, 292 00:19:41,880 --> 00:19:45,880 we need to be using a word for word or a thought for thought. 293 00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:49,680 What I typically recommend to people is that we want to use a word for word and a thought 294 00:19:49,680 --> 00:19:50,760 for thought. 295 00:19:50,760 --> 00:19:55,120 And so if you were trying to find two translations that you could use for your study, I would 296 00:19:55,120 --> 00:19:58,400 say the ESV and the NLT. 297 00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:02,640 Anytime you want to study a passage, read it in both of those translations and it will 298 00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:07,720 help you get the original word for word as well as a good understanding of what the authors 299 00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:08,920 were going for. 300 00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:12,900 Now that we're done packing our bags, we can start the actual interpretive journey that 301 00:20:12,900 --> 00:20:15,400 you'll find in the book. 302 00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:18,320 And so step one is called grasping the text in their own town. 303 00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:22,840 And the goal of this step is to understand what the passage meant to the original audience. 304 00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:25,840 You've probably heard Chris say the following. 305 00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:29,080 The Bible was written for us. 306 00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:30,680 It was not written to us. 307 00:20:30,680 --> 00:20:32,840 And there's a big distinction there. 308 00:20:32,840 --> 00:20:37,980 It was written in another language, to another people, very long ago. 309 00:20:37,980 --> 00:20:40,300 But the message of it is for us. 310 00:20:40,300 --> 00:20:45,000 And so we need to understand the context in which it was written in order to understand 311 00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:48,800 what it should mean for us now. 312 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:52,160 So there are four things that we do as part of this step. 313 00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:55,500 First, we read the passage in multiple translations. 314 00:20:55,500 --> 00:21:01,760 I always look at a word for word, a thought for thought, and then I will look at the interlinear 315 00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:07,360 Bible as well to make sure that I am seeing exactly what the original authors wrote. 316 00:21:07,360 --> 00:21:10,280 We're going to do this step together. 317 00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:14,840 Next is a step that we're actually going to skip today because it's very involved. 318 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:16,800 And I've picked a passage that doesn't require it. 319 00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:20,700 And this step is identifying keywords and doing original language word studies. 320 00:21:20,700 --> 00:21:25,640 I'm going to do a class entirely on how to do this in both Greek and Hebrew. 321 00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:27,760 And like I said, we'll skip it today. 322 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:33,600 But the other two that we will do today are researching the historical context and establishing 323 00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:35,220 the literary context. 324 00:21:35,220 --> 00:21:39,200 So let's start by reading our passage, which is Numbers 20, 11 to 12. 325 00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,000 We'll start with the ESV. 326 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,080 It says, And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice. 327 00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:49,800 And water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank in their livestock. 328 00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:53,400 And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as 329 00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:58,060 holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly 330 00:21:58,060 --> 00:22:00,880 into the land that I have given them. 331 00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:01,880 And then we're going to do the same thing. 332 00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:07,200 We're going to read it in the NLT, which says, Then Moses raised his hand and struck the 333 00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:10,040 rock twice with the staff, and water gushed out. 334 00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:13,120 So the entire community and their livestock drank their fill. 335 00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:16,840 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust me enough to demonstrate 336 00:22:16,840 --> 00:22:24,400 my holiness to the people of Israel, you will not lead them into the land I am giving them. 337 00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:26,960 Let's think about the literary context. 338 00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:32,840 This is coming from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible that Moses wrote. 339 00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:39,920 He wrote these down to record the history of the beginning of the universe, up to, you 340 00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:48,840 know, God's people being taken captive in Egypt, set free, and establishing Israel. 341 00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:55,080 Now the literary context of these books is called a historical narrative. 342 00:22:55,080 --> 00:23:00,800 These are real events recorded, you know, as a story or a narrative. 343 00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:04,920 So when we say story or narrative, we don't mean that they are fake or fictional. 344 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:10,260 We mean that they are real events written down, you know, as we would record events 345 00:23:10,260 --> 00:23:16,060 and dialogue in a story. 346 00:23:16,060 --> 00:23:19,340 We also want to look at the historical context. 347 00:23:19,340 --> 00:23:24,660 And so the historical context, there's two things we want to look at. 348 00:23:24,660 --> 00:23:26,440 First are the events that led up to this. 349 00:23:26,440 --> 00:23:31,840 And so, you know, Moses has been in the desert with the people of Israel for almost 40 years 350 00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:36,280 at this point, and they were just getting ready to go into the land that God had promised 351 00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:38,800 them that would become Israel. 352 00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:45,040 Now in this verse, Moses gets angry because the people are upset with him. 353 00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:49,040 They're complaining that they don't have water to drink, and Moses gets mad. 354 00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:50,660 He lifts up his staff. 355 00:23:50,660 --> 00:23:52,640 He hits the rock with his staff. 356 00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:53,980 Water pours out. 357 00:23:53,980 --> 00:23:58,100 And we see that, you know, God gets upset with Moses and Aaron. 358 00:23:58,100 --> 00:24:03,140 And he says, because you didn't do this the way I told you to, you're not going to make 359 00:24:03,140 --> 00:24:04,740 it into the promised land. 360 00:24:04,740 --> 00:24:06,480 Why is this such a big deal? 361 00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:12,080 Well, the reason that it's a big deal is that much earlier in their journey, right when 362 00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:17,500 they first got out of Egypt, the people are complaining and saying the same thing. 363 00:24:17,500 --> 00:24:20,940 And they're saying to Moses, why did you take us out of Egypt? 364 00:24:20,940 --> 00:24:23,960 We had housing and we had food and we had water. 365 00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:26,640 Sure, we were slaves, but we weren't going to die. 366 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:29,440 You've brought us out to the desert to die. 367 00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:33,760 So Moses, he goes to God and explains what's going on. 368 00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:37,200 He says, God, what should I do to take care of these people? 369 00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:38,200 They're upset. 370 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,800 And God tells him to do something very specific. 371 00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:48,580 He tells him to go to a stone and to speak to the stone, and water will come out of it. 372 00:24:48,580 --> 00:24:53,680 And Moses listens to God, and he goes up to a stone and he speaks to the stone. 373 00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,960 And just like God promised, water comes out of it and everybody's able to drink their 374 00:24:57,960 --> 00:24:58,960 fill. 375 00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:05,560 And so this gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on in our verses. 376 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:11,000 This is almost the same situation, but instead of being at the beginning of the 40 years 377 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:12,760 of wandering, it's at the end of the 40 years. 378 00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:17,640 And Moses had to put up with these people complaining and belittling him and getting 379 00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:21,120 angry at him for almost 40 years now. 380 00:25:21,120 --> 00:25:25,520 He's an old man now, even older than he was when he started and he wasn't young then. 381 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:27,760 And he is at his wits end. 382 00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:31,120 And they're just about to go into the land that God has promised them. 383 00:25:31,120 --> 00:25:33,060 The people should be excited. 384 00:25:33,060 --> 00:25:40,520 They should know that God's promise is about to come true, but instead they're still complaining. 385 00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:44,200 Moses, he's at his wits end. 386 00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:47,720 And they come up and they get mad and they complain. 387 00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,320 And he loses his temper. 388 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:56,480 He knows what God did almost 40 years ago to get them water, but he doesn't do it. 389 00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:57,640 He reacts out of anger. 390 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:03,320 He walks up to the rock and instead of talking to God first, or praying for the people, or 391 00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:09,360 speaking to the rock, he loses his temper and he hits the rock with his staff. 392 00:26:09,360 --> 00:26:14,000 Now, God is not going to punish the people for Moses' anger. 393 00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:19,580 So water still comes out and the congregation drinks everything that they need. 394 00:26:19,580 --> 00:26:22,640 Moses has sinned very gravely in this case. 395 00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,000 He has not followed God's instructions. 396 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,920 He used his spiritual gifts in anger. 397 00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,320 And for this he has to be punished. 398 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:35,100 Now that we've understood what the passage means to the original audience, it's time 399 00:26:35,100 --> 00:26:39,160 to move on to step two, which is called measuring the width of the river to cross. 400 00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,740 Our goal here is to understand the differences between us and the original audience. 401 00:26:42,740 --> 00:26:48,520 There are going to be situations in life that are very, very different for us 6,000 years 402 00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:50,520 later. 403 00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,420 What's also interesting is that there are probably going to be plenty of situations 404 00:26:53,420 --> 00:26:56,480 that are almost identical for us 6,000 years later. 405 00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,520 So we need to figure out which parts of this story are specific to that people in that 406 00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:04,280 time and which parts are universal. 407 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,800 Now to figure this out, we answer five questions. 408 00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:11,680 First, how long ago did the original audience live? 409 00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:17,400 Depending on whether you take Genesis literally or figuratively, you may answer this question 410 00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,040 differently. 411 00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:22,140 Second question, what is the cultural situation of the original audience? 412 00:27:22,140 --> 00:27:25,440 We talked about this a little bit in the first step. 413 00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,920 Basically, the people of Israel have been freed from slavery in Egypt. 414 00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,720 They've been wandering the desert for 40 years. 415 00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,980 They have not been happy campers that entire time. 416 00:27:34,980 --> 00:27:39,400 They've basically been angry at Moses and complaining the entire time. 417 00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:44,960 And they're just about, just about days away from going into the promised land and they're 418 00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:47,380 still complaining to Moses. 419 00:27:47,380 --> 00:27:50,120 What language did the original audience speak? 420 00:27:50,120 --> 00:27:52,200 In this case, they spoke Hebrew. 421 00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:56,540 This really isn't relevant to our understanding of the passage. 422 00:27:56,540 --> 00:28:01,320 This passage doesn't contain any words or phrases that would be specific or really different 423 00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:02,320 in Hebrew. 424 00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:06,880 And so we can pretty much ignore the language difference for now. 425 00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:09,640 What covenant did the original audience fall under? 426 00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:14,480 This is a big deal because Jesus came to fulfill the old covenant. 427 00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:18,680 And so the way that people under the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant lived, was very different 428 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:20,240 to the way that we live now. 429 00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:23,560 Now, these people had already gotten the Ten Commandments. 430 00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:27,840 They were already aware of all of the rules that God expected them to live under. 431 00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,500 We would say that they were under the old covenant. 432 00:28:30,500 --> 00:28:32,260 We are under the new covenant. 433 00:28:32,260 --> 00:28:38,000 So there may be, if there are theological parts of this passage that deal with the way 434 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:40,680 we are supposed to live, there may be differences there. 435 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:42,040 We'll see if there are later. 436 00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:46,960 And then a fifth question that we need to ask ourselves is, who would we be in the passage 437 00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:48,120 if anyone? 438 00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:53,160 And the truth is that we should try our best to put ourselves in the shoes of everybody 439 00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:59,280 in the passage because we probably fit in all of those shoes at some point in our life. 440 00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:03,320 Everybody in this room is or has been a leader at some point in their life. 441 00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:09,040 Now Moses is leading a crowd of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. 442 00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,920 We may have never been in that situation, but we could be parents or we could be teachers. 443 00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:18,440 At work we could be a supervisor or a business owner. 444 00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,780 We all have situations where we are leaders in one way or another. 445 00:29:21,780 --> 00:29:28,080 But I think that most of us have also fell in the shoes of the congregation. 446 00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:31,920 I know that I used to be a very negative person who complained about everything. 447 00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:36,960 And I can very easily see myself in that passage as the people complaining to Moses, even though 448 00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,600 he's been working hard for 40 years to take care of them. 449 00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:46,360 Now when we continue to parse this passage, I'm going to pick a perspective and I'm going 450 00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:51,720 to pick the perspective of Moses when I talk about what the theological principles are. 451 00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:57,920 And that's actually a good segue to step three, which is called crossing the principlizing 452 00:29:57,920 --> 00:29:58,920 bridge. 453 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:04,360 We want to identify the timeless theological principles inside this passage and we're going 454 00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,560 to do it with two ideas. 455 00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,480 First we're going to list all the theological principles in the passage in present or future 456 00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:12,560 tense. 457 00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:18,080 That means we want to not say Moses lost his temper. 458 00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:22,320 We want to talk about people in the present losing their temper, or we're going to talk 459 00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:26,920 about people in the future who will or could lose their temper. 460 00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:32,120 But we also want to make sure that our principles are not specific to a region, culture, language, 461 00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:37,560 time, or individual person, unless we're talking about God or Jesus. 462 00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:43,000 So in that case, we wouldn't even talk about Moses having lost his temper in the past. 463 00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,640 It would be if a person lost their temper in the past. 464 00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:53,440 But again, we also want it to be in present or future tense, so it would be a person loses 465 00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:58,120 their temper or a portion will or could lose their temper. 466 00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:03,880 And again, if I take the perspective of Moses here, I've picked out two of what could be 467 00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,320 possibly many more theological principles. 468 00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:11,500 And they are, we should not use God's spiritual gifts carelessly or in anger, which is what 469 00:31:11,500 --> 00:31:12,840 Moses did in that passage. 470 00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,680 It had very negative repercussions. 471 00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:20,820 And the second principle could be, as leaders, we cannot allow people's shortcomings to cause 472 00:31:20,820 --> 00:31:24,160 us to sin, which is again what Moses did. 473 00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:29,960 The people absolutely sinned by doubting God, doubting Moses, and spending the 40 years 474 00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:31,920 complaining. 475 00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:41,960 But Moses undoubtedly sinned in response to their shortcomings and sins. 476 00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,560 Now this leads us to step four, which is consulting the biblical map. 477 00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:49,400 We take the principles that we've just identified in step three, and we want to make sure that 478 00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:50,960 they match the rest of the Bible. 479 00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,520 There are two things we do here. 480 00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,440 First is we have to survey the Bible to find the theological principles. 481 00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:02,720 We want to make sure that any principle that we state is in line with the rest of the Bible. 482 00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,620 Now there's a couple ways that you could do this. 483 00:32:05,620 --> 00:32:09,840 You could read through the entire Bible and look for every situation where something similar 484 00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:14,080 happens and write that down, or write down the verse reference. 485 00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:18,540 That would be very time consuming if you had to read the entire Bible every single time 486 00:32:18,540 --> 00:32:22,480 that you had to look up a certain topic. 487 00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,800 A second option is to look at a systematic theology book. 488 00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,880 This takes the Bible and it breaks it down by topic, and it collects all the information 489 00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:33,760 on a specific topic in one place. 490 00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:36,240 They've already done the work for you. 491 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:37,600 This is what I would recommend. 492 00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:42,400 So when I'm writing lessons for the kids, if I pull a principle out of a passage, I 493 00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:46,720 go and I look at a systematic theology book to say, hey, does my interpretation of this 494 00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:52,340 principle match what the theology says in this systematic theology book? 495 00:32:52,340 --> 00:32:54,000 If it doesn't, I've got a big problem. 496 00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:58,640 I've misunderstood it or misrepresented the Bible, which I don't want to do. 497 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:04,400 A third option, which is easy but is not always accurate, is to Google it. 498 00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:08,680 I don't recommend this because what you find on the internet is very, very unreliable. 499 00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:12,440 However, there are some websites which are very good. 500 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:18,000 One of the great websites which we are allowed to use at school is called GotQuestions, and 501 00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:23,600 it is a conservative evangelical website which provides systematic theology, question, and 502 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:25,600 answers online. 503 00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:31,720 So for instance, if we were looking up, a kid comes to you and says, what happens when 504 00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:33,080 my pet dies? 505 00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:34,620 Does it go to heaven? 506 00:33:34,620 --> 00:33:38,840 We could go to GotQuestions, we could type in pets or animals, and that is the first 507 00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:40,640 question and answer that comes up. 508 00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:45,880 It gives you all the verse references that talk to it or talk about it, and it helps 509 00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:47,580 you understand that topic. 510 00:33:47,580 --> 00:33:50,440 It's a good third option, definitely not the first choice. 511 00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:54,760 And we also need to ask ourselves, does our phrasing of the principles line up with other 512 00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:56,880 biblical examples? 513 00:33:56,880 --> 00:34:01,000 When I'm pulling a principle out of a passage and presenting it to the kids as part of a 514 00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:05,040 lesson, I always ask myself, could I picture Jesus saying this? 515 00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:06,040 Could I picture Paul saying this? 516 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:07,960 Could I picture any of the apostles saying this? 517 00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:12,600 And if the answer is no, because they have demonstrated clearly that even when they're 518 00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:17,640 having to correct people for doing some really bad things, they do it with love. 519 00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:22,920 And so if I can't present a principle from the Bible with love, I'm doing it wrong. 520 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:25,960 Now let's look at a very popular passage as an example. 521 00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:31,560 We're going to look at Romans 3.23 in the NLT, and this reads, for everyone who sinned, 522 00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:35,120 we all fall short of God's glorious standard. 523 00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:41,280 Now honestly, this passage is pretty self-explanatory as far as the theological principle goes. 524 00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:46,440 It's also pretty easy to imagine how you could present this in a very harsh and unloving 525 00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:47,440 way. 526 00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:51,160 Imagine telling somebody that they're useless, that they're awful, that they're trash, that 527 00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:55,120 nothing they ever do is good enough, that God hates them and wants nothing to do with 528 00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:56,120 them. 529 00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:58,420 What's that going to do other than scare the person away from God? 530 00:34:58,420 --> 00:35:01,800 They're certainly not going to learn the theological principle because they're going to be so focused 531 00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,840 on the negative feelings that you've stirred up. 532 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:09,040 We want to make sure that when we are picking a principle out of a passage and presenting 533 00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:15,460 it to people, it is always done in truth and in love, just like Jesus commands. 534 00:35:15,460 --> 00:35:21,640 If we apply this two-point test to the principles that we came up with earlier, let's take a 535 00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:22,640 look. 536 00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:27,760 So for the first one, that we should not use God's spiritual gifts carelessly or in anger, 537 00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:32,200 there are about a dozen, probably two dozen, verses that I could pull that address this 538 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:33,860 directly. 539 00:35:33,860 --> 00:35:39,320 The one that I chose to use an example here is 1 Corinthians 13, 1 to 3. 540 00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:40,320 And Paul says, 541 00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:43,480 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I 542 00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,040 would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 543 00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:50,560 If I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all 544 00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:54,140 knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, 545 00:35:54,140 --> 00:35:55,140 I would be nothing. 546 00:35:55,140 --> 00:35:59,560 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about 547 00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:00,560 it. 548 00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,540 But if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. 549 00:36:03,540 --> 00:36:07,680 We could find similar writings in all of Paul's letters, letters by the other apostles. 550 00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:11,920 We can see Jesus saying similar things, and we can find this sort of idea all over the 551 00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:13,180 Old Testament. 552 00:36:13,180 --> 00:36:15,560 So we're in good shape on this one. 553 00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:20,760 How about the second point of, as leaders, we cannot allow other people's shortcomings 554 00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,480 to cause us to sin. 555 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:24,560 Left picked another one of Paul's letters. 556 00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:26,880 This is Philippians 2, 2 to 4. 557 00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:31,360 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working 558 00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:33,680 together with one mind and purpose. 559 00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:35,840 Don't be selfish, don't try to oppress others. 560 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:38,680 Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 561 00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:44,480 Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too. 562 00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:45,480 This matches up. 563 00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,320 Paul's other letters contain similar words. 564 00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,080 So do the other apostles' letters. 565 00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:51,080 So does Jesus. 566 00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:52,920 So do many places in the Old Testament. 567 00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:59,760 We could probably find two or three dozen, maybe even more, references of a similar nature. 568 00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,680 We're in good shape on this principle. 569 00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:07,080 Now that we have our principles, we made sure that they are in concordance with the rest 570 00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:08,960 of the Bible, it's time for the final step. 571 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,040 Step five, which is called grasping the text in our town. 572 00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:15,720 And the goal here is to develop a modern application. 573 00:37:15,720 --> 00:37:20,720 And so to do this, we have two things we want to do. 574 00:37:20,720 --> 00:37:24,200 We want to provide the application of the principle for individual Christians living 575 00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:28,000 today, and we want to provide very concrete examples. 576 00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,600 We don't want to do hypotheticals or unnamed people. 577 00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:36,480 If we're doing examples from our life, we want to tell it like it actually happened. 578 00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:40,800 So last summer, I stole somebody's car, so I did this. 579 00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:44,280 So if you were the person who I stole their car, you might say, well, last summer, John 580 00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:48,920 stole my car, so this is what I did, and this is what happened. 581 00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:53,000 Let's see how we could do that for our two principles. 582 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:57,840 So for the principle that we should not use God's spiritual gifts carelessly or in anger, 583 00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:00,720 there are two that I came up with, but I think that you could probably come up with about 584 00:38:00,720 --> 00:38:03,460 50 for both of these. 585 00:38:03,460 --> 00:38:06,900 First one is we should never tell the person we have a message from God for them because 586 00:38:06,900 --> 00:38:09,240 we want them to do something. 587 00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:13,720 You know, one of the things that we hear from a lot of teenage girls is that a teenage boy 588 00:38:13,720 --> 00:38:18,880 will tell them, God told me I'm going to marry you, so it's okay for us to have sex now because 589 00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:20,520 we're pretty much married already. 590 00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:23,480 I mean, what's the big deal? 591 00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:30,400 There is zero chance that God has told the teenage boy that and that he is misrepresenting 592 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:34,080 that because that is something that he wants. 593 00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:38,120 Second example, we should never pray for harm, even the most evil person. 594 00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:42,920 You know, instead, we should pray for God's justice and the person's repentance. 595 00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,320 One example could be we see a terrorist attack on the news. 596 00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,840 We pray, God, please kill everyone in ISIS. 597 00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,600 Could you picture Jesus making that prayer? 598 00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:51,600 Absolutely not. 599 00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:55,920 You know, Jesus is the one, the last thing he does on the cross is he asks the father 600 00:38:55,920 --> 00:39:00,680 to forgive the Roman centurions who nailed him to the cross and killed him. 601 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:04,200 I mean, this is the last thing that Jesus would do. 602 00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:09,120 So if we are praying that God will provide justice for us against people who have done 603 00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,760 us wrong and we want to pray for somebody's repentance and pray that they will turn to 604 00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:14,440 Christ, that's great. 605 00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:16,560 But we should never pray for harm. 606 00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:18,520 How about our second principle? 607 00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:23,520 This one is as leaders, we cannot allow other people's shortcomings to cause us to sin. 608 00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:29,920 Well, the two applications that I came up with this are we can't repay sin with sin. 609 00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,960 And if we do it in a moment, we need to apologize as soon as we can. 610 00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:38,040 I'll give you an example of a huge mistake that I made where I reacted, you know, to 611 00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:41,080 somebody else's sin with my own sin. 612 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:45,280 So in class a couple of weeks ago, one of the kids was holding a basketball, looked 613 00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:50,520 up at the ceiling, saw the fire sprinkler and launched the basketball right at the sprinkler. 614 00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:55,080 And so I took the kid aside and I was incredibly harsh in how I spoke to him. 615 00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:56,240 It made him really upset. 616 00:39:56,240 --> 00:39:59,040 It made his parents upset and rightfully so. 617 00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:05,280 You know, my sin and that mistake was not just losing my temper, but also expecting 618 00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,560 the kids to understand how sprinklers work and why hitting sprinklers with a basketball 619 00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:10,900 is a big deal. 620 00:40:10,900 --> 00:40:15,440 And so I had to make that right by not just apologizing to him, but by apologizing to 621 00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:20,560 all of the kids and saying, hey, I tell you all these times to not throw the ball at the 622 00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:24,600 sprinklers, but I've never once explained to you how sprinklers work. 623 00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:29,160 And so I sat down and I did that and we haven't had a single issue with the kids throwing 624 00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:33,060 balls at the sprinklers since. 625 00:40:33,060 --> 00:40:37,080 Second application would be that we can't leverage our position for personal benefit 626 00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:38,080 or grievances. 627 00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:43,360 You know, one of the most glaring examples of this would be Kenneth Copeland. 628 00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:49,200 He has run donation drives at his church to get private jets or to buy more houses for 629 00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:50,200 himself. 630 00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:56,600 You know, he promises that God will bless those who give to him or give to his church. 631 00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:00,640 This is a clear abuse of his position and the generosity of others. 632 00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:05,840 When we give money to a church, we're giving money to God and the church is expected to 633 00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:10,360 use it for God in the way that God would use it. 634 00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:15,120 And buying mansions and private jets is not the way that God would use it. 635 00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:20,840 So you can see that now that we have completed this interpretive journey, we can take the 636 00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:24,880 passage and we can really understand what it meant to the original audience, and we 637 00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,720 understand how we should use it today. 638 00:41:28,720 --> 00:41:32,080 It's very important that we follow these steps. 639 00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:36,060 Now as you get more familiar with the Bible, you'll find that you're already familiar 640 00:41:36,060 --> 00:41:40,200 with the cultural understandings, the historical understandings, the literary context. 641 00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:42,760 So you may know these things implicitly. 642 00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:47,760 You know, I don't need to go and look up when I'm reading Genesis or Exodus to understand 643 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:51,600 that it's a historical narrative because I've already analyzed passages in those 644 00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:54,640 books dozens of times now, maybe a hundred times now. 645 00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:59,640 And so I'm able to skip part of that step because I've already done it so many times. 646 00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,720 And a lot of what we talked about today probably seems familiar. 647 00:42:02,720 --> 00:42:08,140 You're probably saying to yourself, well, I've seen Chris or Rudy or Jess do this while 648 00:42:08,140 --> 00:42:09,320 they give sermons. 649 00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,080 And that's correct. 650 00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,660 They may not stand up on stage and say, all right, here's step one, step two, step three, 651 00:42:14,660 --> 00:42:18,600 step four, step five, but they are taking the passages. 652 00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:20,720 They are doing all this work in the background. 653 00:42:20,720 --> 00:42:24,080 And then when they present you the passage and they talk about the historical situation 654 00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,560 that the people were in, and then they talk about the principles that come from it, and 655 00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:32,240 then we end with our action steps, they are doing those five steps for you and walking 656 00:42:32,240 --> 00:42:34,800 you through this process every single week. 657 00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,440 And so we can see how valuable this is for our individual study. 658 00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:40,760 Now that's going to wrap us up for this session. 659 00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:46,280 I'm very excited for the next session, which is nine ways that the Bible's cultures are 660 00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,560 different from our culture today. 661 00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:53,880 If we understand these, they can help us, you know, do that step one and step two a 662 00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:54,880 whole lot easier. 663 00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,800 And then finally, I just want to put the resource back up on the screen. 664 00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,000 I highly recommend getting this book and reading it. 665 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:03,480 It is one of the most useful books I've had at seminary. 666 00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,800 Additionally, I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. 667 00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,280 You can email me anytime at john at hcv.church. 668 00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:14,800 And finally, if you ever want a copy of the slides or the narration, you can find it at 669 00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:16,320 hcv.church. 670 00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:20,640 Thank you very much for coming to this session. 671 00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:36,680 God bless you guys and have a wonderful evening.