Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
So, I wake, and spend my days loving the one who has raised me up. Here at your feet again, everything I am reaching out. I surrender. From death to life, from wrong to right, you're making all things beautiful cuz you delight in showing mercy. Welcome all of our students this morning, those here, those watching, those who will watch later. Uh this is leadership and um in our second semester. So, uh this morning we've entitled this study and sermon preparation. This is probably at least going to be two parts, um maybe three. But this is very important um to leadership. And and really, even if you say, "Well, Pastor Jan, I don't feel like I'm called to the five-fold ministry." Uh still, if you ever teach a Bible study or Sunday school class or anything like that, you still need to you still need to do this. You still need to understand some of these basic principles. And today, too, we're going to talk about the laws of hermeneutics, or which is the law of Bible interpretation. And these are going to be the basic laws that you really need to follow so that you don't end up getting into error or teaching error uh even by accident. All right. So, anyway, uh just a few little tools there that might help you. I I I would suggest everyone get a Strong's Concordance. Um and I mean the actual book because if you're uh you know, if ever we are separated from our electronics, which I believe will probably happen, uh you actually need to be old school. And uh you know, old school and low-tech is going to what be what's working. So, you're going to want to have uh good strong's concordance with a Greek and Hebrew dictionary in it. I think you can buy the big book for about 10 bucks now. And um you know, good Bible atlas. Um just you know, there's all kind of little tools, but a good Webster's dictionary. It'd be great, too, if you could have an old Webster's, the oldest Webster's dictionary you could find and a newer one, both, so you can check out what words really are supposed to mean, all right, in English. Um but let's keep going here. Um here's your first verse for today. We're going to start out with this one, Proverbs 15:28. Um remember, if we do verses like this, you need to know them. Uh but this says, "The heart of the righteous studieth to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pourth out evil things." This verse has always stood with me. The heart of the righteous studies. Why? So, we can give an answer. So, we can say and tell people, "Hey, here is what the
Bible says, here's what it teaches in uh context, and historical context as well, grammatical, whole nine yards. Now, let me just say this at the outset. Um we come from the school that we believe all scripture is inspired by God. All right, that's uh 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, for instruction." All right. So, we believe every every word of the Lord in the in the Bible, and when I say the Bible, I'm talking about Genesis to Malachi, and Matthew to Revelation, the 66 books of the canon. I believe are the inspired, infallible, and errant word of almighty God, but must be kept first and foremost primarily in context and we're going to talk about that. That is one of the one of the laws of biblical interpretation or hermeneutics but this right here shows the motivation. The reason we should be very studious as believers in Jesus Christ is because we should desire to have an answer for every man. And you know, we covered this in apologetics last semester. Uh 1 Peter 3:15 ought to be a verse you ought to know by now if you've been if you were a first semester student this year. Um you know, be ready always to give an answer to every man of the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. So, I remember what motivated me to study when I first came back to the Lord and fully repented and was just on fire and filled with the Holy Spirit. I knew I wanted people to have what I had. I wanted them to find the Lord Jesus like I had. I wanted them to find the forgiveness and peace and joy and the power of the Holy Spirit and uh the truth. I wanted people to to know the truth and to find the truth that I'd found in the Lord. So, I knew that it wasn't going to be good enough for me to try to just give them the answers from my head. I needed to know what the Bible said. I needed to know how to point them to the scriptures that they needed to know. So, the only way I could do that is I had to study so I could give an answer. So, really as a Christian you never quit being a student. If you do, you are lukewarm. You've become lukewarm. You've kind of settled for I'm I I've got enough. Remember Remember what Jesus said about the lukewarm church. He said they said I have need of nothing. The lukewarm church got satisfied where they were. Whenever you get satisfied is what you think you know or how much you know or what you've experienced in the Lord, you get satisfied you think I don't need to seek, search, study, dig, pray, fast, ask God to show me things
that I don't see. Well, if you ever get to that point, you are lukewarm. You're a lukewarm Christian. Um cuz there should be a hunger. Remember, blessed are they that do hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled, Jesus said in Matthew 5. So, do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? And it says, "The heart of the righteous studyeth to answer." So, very important verse there. We're going to keep going here. I love this passage. This is 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4, 13 through 16. And this was Paul's instruction, the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this, and he was also writing this from his wisdom that he'd received from the Lord and the direction God was giving him to give instructions to Timothy, to leader, you know, Timothy was uh served Paul uh as a son in the faith, but he also became one of the leaders of the church. He was sent out, he eventually left Paul and became a pastor and leader, and this was instruction that Paul gave him as a leader, as a pastor. And this is our leadership class, so this is very important stuff. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, um this is just these clear Holy Spirit practical instruction to leaders, ministers of the gospel. But Paul said this, he said, "Till I come, give attendance to reading." The word attendance means put your mind on it, pay attention, be diligent, do it. Um but he said, "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine. Now, the word exhortation means to call people near to Christ. To And that means either by rebuke or by instruction, either way. So, he's going to he was saying that. And you can look that word up if you want to. But he he he notice what he put first, though, reading. Listen, if you're going to be a leader, if you're going to be a teacher, a preacher, minister of the gospel, you're going to have to be one given to reading and study. So, pastor, you I don't like reading and study. Well, you better change that right there. Cuz uh if not, your sermons are going to be threadbare, as John Wesley used to say. They're going to be quite shallow. Um and listen, if uh the more you put in yourself, reading the Bible, reading good, you know, books from other ministers and preachers and teachers, that's solid stuff, the more stuff you put in you from uh reading, you're going to have a more to draw from. And that's going to be very important. Um but so he's saying, "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine." What is doctrine? Systematic teaching
of the Bible, systematic teaching of truth. Now, doctrine's a little different. Like a doctrine would be, let's say the doctrine of divine healing. All right, when you're going to teach a doctrine, what do you do? Do you just say, "Okay, we're going to turn to First Timothy and we're going to teach First Timothy, that's a doctrine." No. When you're going to teach doctrine, you're going to take the subject of healing and you're going to go from Genesis to Revelation and you're going to study out the subject of healing before you preach it or teach it. Okay? Doctrine. That's what that is. So, till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the presbytery. Uh I believe this was his gift to preach and teach, the anointing to be a minister that was passed on to him um by the Apostle Paul and the Holy Spirit, you know, trans you know imparting that from Paul. And then he says this, "Meditate upon these things." Give thyself wholly or completely or totally to them that thy profiting may appear to all. So, what he's saying here very clearly, very important, meditate. Now, the word meditate in the New Testament does not mean blank out your mind and chant repetitive prayers. All right? It's not yoga, it's not Hinduism, it's not Buddhism, it's to continue to think about the scriptures and to speak them and to uh you know, to sit there and ponder them. And actually, the word meditate, one of the definitions of meditate uh the Greek definitions, it's to study. So, this is not um this is not passive meditation, this is active you know, or like memorization and and and speaking it and thinking about it and breaking it down and looking at it. Um but he says, "Meditate upon these things and give thyself wholly or totally, completely to them that thy profiting may appear to all." And then he says this, "Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Continue in them." Continue in what? Sound doctrine. Not false doctrine. Sound Bible doctrine. Continue in them for in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee. And see, this is really important. Um I didn't put this verse this passage on the PowerPoint, but I'm going to turn to it here and just read it to you and you guys here and those watching, you can turn. But go to Second John. This is how important This is why he says, "You better pay attention and continue. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. For doing this, you will save yourself and them that hear thee." And the scripture Second John,
the second Epistle of John, and verse 7, and you don't have to switch over. But I'm just going to read it from verse 7. He says, "For many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth, that's a present tense Greek verb, ongoing, continuous, and taking place in the present. So, whoever transgresses and abides not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed. For he that biddeth him Godspeed is partaker of his evil deeds." So, this is how important doctrine is. If you ever hear someone start saying, "Oh, doctrine's not important." Systematic instruction, rightly dividing the word of God, giving sound Bible teaching. And if you hear somebody say, "Oh, doctrine's not important." Run from that person. Because they are either el stupido or they are deceived or they have an agenda. Okay? They want you to believe what they think. Be very careful. Sound doctrine, systematic study of the Bible, and keeping things properly in context, properly interpreted, historically, grammatically, contextually, all this is very, very important. All right? And he says to the point that if you don't if you don't remain in the doctrine of Christ, and that's just the sound doctrine of the new covenant in particular, if you don't stay in that, then you don't have the God at all. So, it is a salvation issue. Getting into false doctrine, and then that's why I'm so big about uh exposing it, rebuking it, correcting it, especially in in some of these serious matters of say, for instance, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? What has Jesus done? How are we saved? You know, there's a heaven, there's a hell, there's a judgment day. Um there's an eternity in either heaven or hell. Um standing for these truths, I'm watching I'm watching Christians like never before fall away from sound doctrine. So, the instruction to true Christian leaders is you better pay attention. Let's put this this verse back up here. Take heed to thyself. You better pay attention to yourself. And to the doctrine. The doctrine. That means the doctrine of the new covenant, the doctrine of Christ, the
doctrine of truth, the doctrine of the apostles. Remember, in Acts 2 it says the new converts continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. What Jesus taught, what the apostles taught in the new covenant, and the reason I keep saying new covenant is cuz that's the covenant we live in. And again, whenever we take scriptures from the old covenant, we must put them into context with the new covenant. Right? We'll talk more about that, too. But let's go on. And he said, "Continue in them, for in doing this you shall save thyself and them that hear thee." And you know, here Well, let me give you this. This is another verse that I didn't put on the PowerPoint, but just comes to mind of how important it is to continue in the true teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Go to John chapter 8. Let's just look at John 8 verse 31 and 32. Well, actually, we'll just look at verse 30. I'll just read it from here. But this is speaking of Jesus. As he spake these words, many believed on him. Now, this word believed is pistis or pisteuo, which means saving faith, to have true faith in Christ Jesus for salvation. He says, "As he spake these words, many believed on him." Meaning they believed he was the Messiah, the savior. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, "If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. If you continue in my word." What did Paul just tell Timothy? Well, let's put that one back up if we can. What did Paul just tell Timothy? Take heed to thyself and to the doctrine. Continue in them. For in doing this, thou shalt save thyself and them that hear thee. So, don't And you'll be able to do this. You'll be able to see things Jesus said, the apostles continued teaching, full agreement, continuance. What What is that implying? What do we see from from 2 John? The second epistle of John. If you don't continue, if you don't abide and remain and continue in the doctrine of Christ, you do not have God. A falling away from doctrinal truth is a falling away from the Lord. It's very saying the word apostasy actually means to depart from the truth. All right? This is very very very important. Here's another passage. This is the most famous one about studying.
Again, Paul to Timothy here. 2 Timothy 2:15. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Study to show thyself approved unto God. This is not a suggestion. This is a command. It's not hey, I think it'd be a good idea that you study. Timothy, as a minister, as a man of God, as a pastor, as a teacher, as an evangelist. No, this is a command. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now, I want to look We're going to look at these words here, but I want you to understand this. This This is something I think I even shared it last semester, but I'm going to say it again. The word of God is like a puzzle. It's like puzzle pieces. And some of those puzzle pieces are just just like you would have an incomplete puzzle laying on the table. Okay? Some of those puzzle pieces are together and a lot of them are just scattered about. But each one of those puzzle pieces represent truth. But those truths have to be put together. So, when he talks about rightly dividing, it's kind of like when you're sitting there putting a piece of puzzle together. Let's say you got a beautiful landscape and a sky, right? So, you're looking at the puzzle pieces and you go, "Well, okay, these blue ones right here are clearly the sky, so we'll put these up here. And then this down here is our landscape." And you start rightly dividing the puzzle. Okay? And then you can start piece putting the pieces together. And this is what he's talking about. It's not we don't divide the word of God. It's not what he's talking about. He's just talking about we put things in their proper place. Like I've said, one of the one of the greatest areas that we have to understand to begin with from day one as Christians, as born-again Christians, as now in the new covenant, is the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. That's is very important. And that's why we why do we have the Hebrew roots and the Torah observant errors that are going on? Because we have people who are incapable of rightly dividing the word of truth. They will not even divide the two covenants. And they're inconsistent and their hermeneutics is horrible. And they try to mix the two and you don't. It's very simple. Do we learn from the old covenant? Absolutely. Do we still use it for types and shadows and principles? Absolutely. Are we living under it? No. All right? But again, we
I've covered that pretty thoroughly over the last couple of years. Um But let's keep going here. All right, let's look at these words here. So, when he says here to study, it's interesting that the word here um in the Greek spoudazo Don't you love that? Spoudazo. That's a fun word to say. Um It It interests me the strong says to use speed to make effort, be prompt or earnest, do give diligence, be diligent, be forward, endeavor, labor, study. Now, the way the word's used, the translators picked the word study because they do that is what he was conveying, but the word study also shows these the rest of these definitions. To exert oneself, to give diligence, to be prompt, to be earnest. So, um it's work. And then it says labor here. It is work to study. I mean, I'm telling you it takes time, it takes energy, it takes effort. Sometimes it takes staying up late. Sometimes it takes getting up early. Um basically, the minister of the gospel can't be a lazy person. A leader can't be lazy. Accepted, which remember he said study to show thyself approved unto God. This is the word approved unto God here. The word approved means to uh dokimos uh or dokimos. It means to uh be current or to be right after you've been tried and tested. And that really um you think about the when he says study to show thyself approved unto God. What's the What's the flip side of that coin? And if you don't study, if you're lazy, does God approve of that? No. He is not happy with that. And it says one who is tried faith, integrity, approved, tried. So, what God's saying is as a leader, the proof that you are approved of God. One of the things, the way you prove yourself to yourself, to the Lord, even to others. Remember he said that your profiting may appear to all. Remember he said that to Timothy? Everyone should be able to tell if you do your study and your research. It will be evident. Right? That's one of the things people say. I even had a guy yesterday. Talking to a guy in New Jersey, talking to a guy another guy last night in um Where is he from? Ohio? And they were just saying, man, you do your research. You They say you're saying you do your study. And that's it's it it gets people's attention
when they know you're trying to be diligent. And and listen, this is another one of those things about leading by example. You can't lead where you won't go. And you can't teach what you don't know. That will be on your test. Can't lead where you won't go. And you can't teach what you don't know. And it becomes very evident. Okay? Here he says, you know, when he says study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman. I just had to bring this up right here. He's saying letting you know, guess what? It's work. It's labor. A toiler, a teacher, a laborer, a workman. It's work. Are you ready to do the work? Again, can't be lazy. And then here, I love this rightly dividing. This is your Greek word for rightly dividing. Um How do you say this? I can't remember. Orthotomeo, I think that's how you say it. Uh But anyway, it says here, of course, the basic definition is to make a straight cut. Figurative to dissect or to expound correctly. So, rightly dividing means to make a straight cut. You know, they people say we we have all these slang terms like you he or she they're a straight shooter, right? What does that mean? I give it to you straight. They don't beat around the bush, they don't water it down, they don't embellish it. No prevarication. There's a word for you to look up. You You're straight should you cut straight. You dissect and expound the word of God correctly. And that's what it says here, to dissect or expound correctly the divine message. I like up here when the outline of biblical usage to make straight or smooth, to handle all right, to teach the truth directly and correctly. Well, that's good right there, isn't it? To teach the truth directly and correctly. Meaning you can preach indirectly. That's mega church Christianity. And you can teach and preach incorrectly. And people do it every day. So, I don't know why anybody finds it odd that we might have to call out some people that do that. Cuz if we don't we just act like everybody's doing it correctly and not everybody is. That's just the fact. I'm not trying to be mean but not everyone who's a teacher is doing it directly and correctly. All right? Look at that.
I love it. To dissect or expound correctly the divine message of and that divine message is the Bible, the scriptures. So there it is, to make straight and smooth, to handle a right, to teach the truth directly and correctly. Let that get down. Rightly dividing. This is important. I've paused on this and highlighted this in red because it is important. Save for your test. For you to know. All right? Let's keep going here. I like my new honeycomb transition. All right, here is your basic definition of expound. Remember it said to expound correctly the divine message, scripture, biblical doctrine, sound doctrine. And he says this here and this is um good definition. It says to present and explain a theory or idea systematically and in detail. Systematically and in detail. Now, don't get me wrong. I know there's different There's Listen, there's difference between preaching and teaching. All right? Preaching I'll I'll give you a quick example of that. Preaching would be um where uh Philip the evangelist mosied up to the caravan of the Ethiopian eunuch and he heard him reading at the prophet Isaiah and it says that he at he he walked up and he asked the Ethiopian unique, "Do you understand what you're reading?" And he said, "No, how can I accept some man help me?" And it says from that scripture Philip the evangelist preached Christ to him. Right? An evangelist will do that. An evangelist, a preacher preaching they'll take one scripture sometimes and just start you know, like a machine gun, preaching the basic gospel of Jesus through that verse. And that's fine. That's fine because that's preaching. And preaching is more about inspiration. Teaching is about information. You get that one down. Preaching is about inspiration. Teaching is about information. And trust me, Jesus did more teaching than he did preaching, but he did do both. You'll see where Jesus said he taught and then you'll see it says where Jesus preached. And then there's prophesying and that's completely different.
Prophesying is a complete divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit and it is about it is a supernatural unction from heaven at that moment in time. And that's a different story, but that's that's really our three different areas of communication as ministers, as leaders, as preachers of the gospel, preaching, teaching, and prophesying. A lot of your denominational churches and seminaries and Bible schools um they will say that prophesying is preaching or preaching is prophesying. No, not the same. Not the same. Now, there can be times while you're preaching or teaching that the Holy Spirit really comes on you, anoints you, and there's a supernatural utterance there. But, just remember, teaching is is what this word here expounding means. To present or explain a topic or subject, a theory or idea they have here, systematically and in detail. And that's what we must do if the body of Christ is going to mature and grow, and especially newborn babes in the Lord, we have got to teach and preach. We got to do both. They need inspiration. They need information. But, remember, Jesus did more teaching than he did preaching or prophesying. Now, he did all three, but he was a teacher. That's why, you know, Nicodemus came up to him, "Teacher, we know you're a teacher." How'd they know he was a teacher? He taught systematically. He was the greatest teacher. And we learn a lot by just paying attention to how he did things, right? Um, like I like this, you know, some of these uh says he was expounding, just so you understand expounding, he was expounding a powerful argument. We should always uh the abbess expounded the scriptures to her nuns. Don't you love how they always use Catholics? Anyway, uh the second meaning there, explain the meaning of a literary or doctrinal work. So, explaining systematically, in detail. That's why I love like Charles Finney. He was a great evangelist. He was a great preacher of the gospel, but he was also a great teacher. He would break down things. The book Revival Lectures is a systematic teaching on revival. And what it is and how to have it and all the necessary components and he was he was a systematic teacher. All right? Now, let's look at this. This is Acts chapter 17. Just looking at some
some examples and some other words about teaching and preaching. Uh this is Acts 17:1-5. Here it says, "Now, when they had passed through um Philippolis or whatever. Um Phil Philippolis, I guess, and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures." So, Paul three weeks, three different Sabbaths, he reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging "that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ." And some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas and of the devout Greeks or the Gentiles a great multitude and of the chief women not a few. But the Jews which believed not were moved with envy. They were jealous and envious and took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort and gathered a company and set all the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jacob uh Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. But he says here that Paul reasoned with them out of the scriptures. Now, this is going to show you this is more about teaching. Paul was trying to teach them. He was trying to show them all the scriptures that pointed to Jesus. And that Jesus he was trying to explain to them cuz most of Jews didn't believe the Messiah had to suffer because they just didn't catch it. So Paul was showing them I'm sure he was showing them Isaiah 53 Psalm 22 things we covered in uh apologetics class last semester. And so he's showing them how Christ must suffer and rise from the dead. So I'm sure he showed them Psalm 16. Right? So he's Paul's systematically trying to teach them over 3 weeks. And he converts a a group of people a nice group of people and then of course the Jews who decide they don't want to believe in Jesus get jealous and start stirring up trouble. No different today. These fake Jews out here are troublemakers. Um But let's look at this. Opening he said opening and alleging. Uh This is what the word opening means and I love this. Um outline of biblical usage here meaning kind of pulling from all the different uh Greek lexicons. This is what you come up with. Uh to open by dividing or drawing asunder to open thoroughly what has been closed. Now think about that. The Jews were not seeing that the Messiah had to come and suffer and rise from the dead. And what Paul was trying to do was open to them. Here's systematically by showing you what's in the scriptures by teaching systematically and in detail and making you look at the details.
Right? That his hands and feet would be pierced in Psalm 22. That's a detail, isn't it? By preaching those details he's opening to them what's what's been closed to their eyes. All right? That's the job of the teacher and preacher get you to look at the details that you have not seen in the scriptures so that you fully understand. All right? And it's interesting because the the picture of this word and remember the Greek and Hebrew language there's always usually a picture that goes along with the word. And the picture of this is a male opening the womb and notice down here in the strongs it says to open thoroughly literally as the firstborn. So literally I mean think about um that's you know a firstborn means the first time a woman has a child brings a child into this world from the darkness of the womb into the light. That's what we do with the word of God. We bring it out of obscurity into the light show people the details. How many times have you heard me say the details? Look at pay attention. Every word is important. Jesus said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. That's why it's important when you're studying and you're preparing for a sermon or a uh to teach or preach or minister to someone or even counsel someone and you're trying to to find the answers for them you need to pay attention to the details. Like what are we doing today? I'm going through some scriptures and breaking down the main keywords in a in an entire you know in one scripture. Why? So we can pay attention to the details. Um just just very important. Uh let's keep going here. We got more details. All right? This is um Oh. Where he talks about presenting. I love this when he's talking about putting it forth, preaching, teaching, opening, and alleging. This is the alleging word here. And the alleging he says is and I love this in the Strong's to place alongside to present food truth. Basically, the word allege just means to put it out in front. To set before someone in teaching. It's basically just like if you had guests come in your house and you went and prepared a meal for them and then you present it to them. You put it in front of them. And what did that do? You had to prepare. You had to prepare the meal and you know, sometimes there's
cutting things up and seasoning things and baking things. There's a process what I'm getting at. That's what he's saying, there's a process to present to to put this out there. So, Paul was presenting it. Um and like I said, there's so much to this, but uh it it's interesting because we're supposed to what? Jesus, what did Jesus say to Peter? Feed my sheep. So, putting forth good solid doctrinal teaching and and preaching is what feeds the lambs and feeds the sheep. He even said that, feed the lambs, which means the babes, the little ones, the new ones. Feed my sheep, the older ones. All right. You got to feed everybody. Present food truths. Um let's keep going here. All right. On down a little bit in Acts 17, we see this. Paul moves on and says they troubled the people and the rulers of the city and when they heard these things and when they had taken security of Jason and the other and of the other they let them go and the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night into Berea who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so. Therefore or for that reason many of them believed also of the honorable women which were Greeks and of men not a few. So Paul said there you know what Luke writes here man, the people in Thess- in Berea they were better even than the people in Thessalonica because they were just there was a hunger they received the word with readiness of mind but they didn't just take it as what Paul or Silas was saying they themselves got the scriptures out and searched the scriptures daily. You should be like this. We all should be like this. Search the scriptures daily so that you can know what's going on. Look at this. He says readiness of mind here means a zeal, spirit, eagerness, inclination, readiness of mind. Uh predisposition. And he's saying that you know what? You should You should have this zeal, this fire to search the scriptures. To be ready to hear it, to be ready to learn, but also to be ready to study. Be ready to search, research. All right. Going to keep on we got to rock on through this. And that's what he says here when it says that they searched the scriptures. This is interesting. Examine or judge, investigate examine, inquire into, scrutinize, sift, question specifically in a forensic sense of a judge to hold an investigation. I mean what is forensics
about? It if there's a crime scene and they call in the forensics crew, what are they looking for? All the tiny little clues and details. All the evidence. This is what you're supposed to be like. Look for all the clues. Look for all the evidence. You should just be a constant investigator. God God See, God doesn't mind us being like that. Test his word. Test him in the sense. Now, yeah, he wants us to believe, but God never demands just blind belief. There's plenty of evidence. There's plenty of clues. There's plenty of things he will show us, right? So, that's what the Bereans were, and he said they were noble for doing that. Very important. Are you a student of the word? Now, we covered this passage a lot last semester in our apologetics class, but I thought it important to put it back up here again because Peter makes it clear. He says, "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. So, again, that honoring of the scriptures, believing it's inspired, but now we got to understand the laws of biblical interpretation, which is called hermeneutics. And just so you know, you say, "Well, Pastor Dean, you didn't go to their seminaries. So, how can you talk about this?" Well, cuz I studied it and then I talked to a brother friend of mine, Dr. John Strassner, PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary. I sent this to him. I said, "Is this a correct view of what we would call true conservative hermeneutics?" And when I say conservative, I mean people who believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God, not liberals, not those into textual criticism, but those who believe the supernatural stories in the Bible, that they are real, like Jonah and the whale or the great fish, like the Red Sea parting. So, he said, "Absolutely yes."
So, uh he was the he was a professor in a couple of Bible schools and also the president of one. So, he told me, he said, "This is an accurate um definition of hermeneutics, the laws of biblical interpretation, for those of us who are true conservatives in the sense that we believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible and that it is inherent and truly God's word that he spoke and moved through men to write, okay? Um so, let's look at this. Hermeneutics. And this is basically so you understand the principles you need to follow when you're studying something and preparing to teach or preach something. Uh some people avoid studying biblical hermeneutics because they mistakenly believe it will limit their ability to learn new truths from God's word or stifle the Holy Spirit's illumination of scripture. But their fears are unfounded. Biblical hermeneutics is all about finding the correct interpretation of the inspired text. You hear that? Biblical hermeneutics is all about finding the correct interpretation of the inspired text. The purpose of biblical hermeneutics is to protect us from misapplying scriptures or allowing bias to color our understanding of truth. Okay, this is important. I can show you where there are preachers and Bible schools and all who who will claim they're following hermeneutics, but I can it's easy to show you when they're letting their denominational bias lead them instead of hermeneutics. See, if you follow these laws, you will not get into error because you'll stay true to the way you're supposed to look at at the scriptures. He says, "God's word is truth." John 17:17. We want to see the truth, know the truth, live the truth as best we can. That's why biblical hermeneutics is vital. All right. We'll keep going here. All right, biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles and methods of interpreting the text of the Bible. 2 Timothy 2:15, we covered already, commands believers to be involved in hermeneutics. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. The purpose of biblical hermeneutics is to help us to know how to properly interpret, understand, and apply the Bible. So, this is hermeneutics 101 here, right? Now, law one of biblical hermeneutics, for those who really believe the Bible, those who believe it is the inspired
infallible word of God. The most important law of biblical hermeneutics, law one here, is that the Bible should be interpreted literally. Okay? And we're going to explain that. We are to understand the Bible in its normal or plain meaning unless the passage is obviously intended to be symbolic or if figures of speech are employed. The Bible says what it means and means what it says. For example, when Jesus speaks of having fed the 5,000 in Mark 8:19, the law of hermeneutics says we should understand 5,000 literally. There was a crowd of hungry people that numbered 5,000 who were fed with real bread and fish by a miracle-working savior. We don't spiritualize it and say it was Jesus feeding them through his teaching. It's not what it says. Says he took bread and fish, he broke it, and he fed them. So, he's saying is our first law, we should always look at the scripture and take it literally. And I'm going to add this. The Bible tells us many times when like like Paul did in Galatians 4 when he said, "This is an allegory of the two covenants." He's telling you, "I'm speaking in allegorical terms here." He says Jesus said it said he speak a parable unto them. Okay? But even in that, even in figurative language, even in symbolic language like you know, yesterday in eschatology class, we covered the seven-head, ten-horn beast. Well, even that symbolic picture, even that vision, that uh that symbol represents a literal biblical truth, a literal thing that's happening in the world. So, even figurative speech and even symbolic speech in the Bible is sometimes just trying to paint a picture of something that is literal. Okay? Um but not all. There are some things When Jesus said, "I am the door." He's not a door with a doorknob. Now, we can figure that out, right? But when he's talking about "He made the firmament and he separated the waters from the waters." How can that be figurative? It's actually literal. Huh? Yeah, that's got a door. You see what I'm saying? He talks about things and and it's again, it's not hard to figure these out if you're honest person. If you don't have a bias. If you'll follow these laws of biblical interpretation, your first thing, you read something in the Bible, your first look at it unless you can be
absolutely proven not to be true is you take it literally. That's That's That's where most of Christianity and theologians and things That's where they're getting off. Okay? So, law one of biblical hermeneutics is taking the Bible literally and he goes on to say this. This is law one continued. Any attempt to spiritualize the number or to deny a literal miracle is to do injustice to the text and ignore the purpose of the language, which is to communicate. Some interpreters make the mistake of trying to read between the lines of scripture to come up with esoteric meanings that are not truly in the text. This is what the Kabbalah does. The Kabbalah is huge on this. The Zohar and all of that stuff of the Jewish Kabbalah, occultism, mysticism is all about trying to find what's what's hidden between the lines. They call it the the black fire and the white fire. The black fire is the ink and the white fire is the white part between that you don't see, but there's so much truth in that invisible area. Nonsense. This is not what we do with the scriptures. This is what we don't do Jew voodoo. All right, no Jew voodoo. Some interpreters make the mistake of trying to read between the lines of scripture to come up with the esoteric The word esoteric means hidden or occult. Esoteric and occult mean the same thing, hidden. So, you say with the occult meanings, you could say that. That's is what the Marty Leeds does. Uh that are not truly in the text, as if every passage has a hidden spiritual truth that we should seek to decrypt. Now, if you could if you do that then you end up you can make up the Bible say whatever you want it to say. You can just create things, like the serpent seed doctrine of Zen Garcia. Just make up crap that doesn't exist in the Bible. Like saying Eve had sex with the the serpent. Bible doesn't say that. You have to make it up. You don't get to do that. Um Biblical hermeneutics keeps us faithful to the intended meaning of scripture and away from allegorizing Bible verses that should be understood literally. Let me say that again. We read that part again, this last sentence right here. Biblical hermeneutics keeps us faithful to the intended meaning of scripture and away from allegorizing Bible verses that should be understood literally. Okay? Jesus literally died on the cross for our sins. His literal blood was shed for our sins. It's his literal blood that washes our sins away. All right? He literally rose from the dead on the third day. He literally went down into hell, into
paradise for 3 days and then rose from the dead. You see what I'm saying? These are literal. He will literally physically return to the earth. Because the Bible says, "As we saw him go into heaven," the angels told the disciples, "as you saw him go, so he will come in like manner." Jesus physically ascended into heaven. And he will return. It's literal. There's so many things. There was a literal flood of the whole world in the days of Noah. There was a literal man and woman named Adam and Eve. All right? There were literal giants. Some of them had six fingers and toes. Why How can How could you spiritualize and allegorize this? See what I'm saying? It's not These are not myths or fairy tales. These are literal historical events, real events that happened. Jonah was really swallowed by a great fish for 3 days. All right? And if you don't believe these things, then I say you're not a Christian, period. I don't care what you confess you are. If you don't believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God and you don't believe what God says literally about these things, then I don't believe you're a Christian at all. You're a poser. All right? Let's keep going. Law two of biblical hermeneutics. Can anybody say we're having fun this morning? Yeah. Having fun? All right. The second crucial law of biblical hermeneutics is that passages must be interpreted historically. So, we have number one, literally. Second thing is historically. What do we mean by that? Interpreting a passage historically means that we must seek to understand the culture, background, and situation that promoted the text. For example, in order to fully understand Jonah's flight or why he ran away from doing what the Lord told him to do in Jonah 1:1-3, we should research the history of the Assyrians as related to Israel. The Assyrians had been cruel and brutal when they invaded Israel. And Jonah being an Israelite, it would be no different than say the Chinese or the Russians invaded America and and like perpetrated the brutality like that the Japanese did against China and and and against us in World War II. It produces, you know, when you see such brutality and evil um you know, it produces this dislike. And that's why there's a big dislike, right, between the Japanese and the Chinese because the the Japanese was so brutal and massacred just massacred brutally. And I mean, did things that I won't even speak of to people. Well, that can create some animosity and dislike. And Jonah didn't
like the Assyrians. And that's why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. Because he didn't want God to He didn't want even the chance of them repenting and God sparing them. That's why he ran away cuz he wanted God to judge All right? Like, uh-uh, I'm not going to tell them anything cuz I want you to destroy them cuz they're wicked, evil, cruel, brutal people." So, when you know the history, right, of what happened with what the Assyrians and which the capital of Assyria was Nineveh, when you understand the history, then you understand why Jonah ran away. He wasn't just trying to be a rebellion to the Lord or even though it was, but it's still he, you know, he was human and he was motivated by what had gone on, all right? So, that's what he's talking about here. So, another example of the importance of historical context in correctly interpreting scripture is the case of Judas Iscariot and what motivated him to betray the Lord. It is assumed that Judas was greedy for money, yet when he saw that Jesus was condemned, Judas went and gave the money or gave back the 30 pieces of silver. But when we understand the historical context of Israel being under Roman occupation, and how much the the people of Israel wanted to be free from Roman oppression, you can see where Judas thought that he could force Jesus into a situation where he would have to use his power against Rome. You see, everybody assumes because it says, "Well, Judas was a thief." And he had the bag, he was the treasurer of the ministry for Jesus. I'm not saying that Judas didn't have an issue with money and lust for money. But when Judas goes and betrays Jesus and he and he gets the 30 pieces of silver, again you can say, "Okay, you you can look at that whole thing and go, 'Okay, money was his motivation.'" But was it really? You've got to remember that Judas was with Jesus for three over three years. He saw every miracle. The blind eyes opened, the dead raised, the demons cast out. Judas was not an unbeliever. He believed fully And he was one of the ones that was given the anointing and power and authority. He went out and cast out demons and healed the sick. He knew who Jesus was. But remember it says in one part, I can't remember where the scripture is, somebody could look it up, where they came to take Jesus by force to make him king. And Jesus disappeared. They wanted the Jews wanted him to be king and to use his power as God in the flesh, as Messiah, to destroy the Roman occupation and to raise Israel back to its prominence like it was in the days of David and Solomon. And that's what the Israelites wanted and that's what they expected the Messiah to do. And so when Judas thought, you know, he won't do it. He keeps disappearing.
John 6:15 is the scripture where they tried to come and take Jesus by force to make him king. And he disappeared again. Cuz it wasn't time. See, they didn't understand. The Jews didn't understand that his first coming was not to overthrow the world system and the governments of the world. His first coming was to deal with sin and to deal with the power of Satan and to deal with the power of death. But that his second coming, and see, his second coming he will defeat the Babylonian Roman empires of this world. He will bring down all those. And that's what they were looking at because there are scriptures that point to that. To the Messiah setting up his kingdom. They knew that, but they didn't understand the two comings. They didn't understand the suffering. I firmly believe if And now, if Judas had not taken the money and thrown it back in to the Pharisees and then went and committed suicide, I would say he was just in it for the money. But I believe Judas thought, you know what? I can put Jesus in a situation. I'm going to help him out. Cuz he's just too humble. He's just too meek. He's just too I'm going to help him out. I'm going to put him in a situation where he has to use his power against Rome. And when he saw and it says the scriptures say when he saw that Jesus was condemned and Jesus was not fighting them. He says that he went and he threw the money down and he went and killed himself. So, I believe and this is me. You can believe it or not believe it, but I believe that see once we know the historical situation we know what was going on in the Jewish culture at that time we understand better why Judas did what he did. So, you see how that helps? You keep it in proper now I'm saying, hey, I I believe Judas saw an opportunity to do both. Try to force Jesus to become king and make a little money on the side while doing it. Right? But deep down, I don't think the money was the main motivation. All right. So, that's giving you I mean and then there's many examples we could use of historical context. All right, and understanding history and culture to better understand what the Bible's saying. So, that's law two of hermeneutics. Let's go to law three of biblical hermeneutics. We've already kind of discussed a little bit of this this morning. But law three of biblical hermeneutics is interpreting a passage grammatically requires one to follow the rules of grammar and recognize the nuances of Hebrew and Greek. So, this is all about
grammatical. This is looking at the definition of words, how the same word is used, how it's how um verb tenses, how we've talked about Greek verb tenses. Very, very, very important. And you don't have to be a Hebrew and Greek scholar to be able to study the nuances of Hebrew and Greek cuz there's so many study tools now. Um I mean, there's so many. I mean, back when I started doing this, there was just a few. But now, oh, there's so many tools out there. The Blue Letter Bible, you know, there's just so many apps and things that that compile this stuff. But anyway, interpreting a passage grammatically requires one to follow the rules of grammar and recognize the nuances of Hebrew and Greek. For example, when Paul writes of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ in Titus 2:13, the rules of grammar state that God and Savior are parallel terms, and they are both in apposition to Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul clearly calls Jesus our great God. So, the grammar, the nuances of Greek language that Paul wrote this in, clearly shows that he was referring to Jesus as God, which he does many times in his epistles. All right? Thus establishing and confirming the doctrine of Jesus being the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which of course Paul said in Colossians 2:8-9. So again, understanding how the Greek language works there gives us clarity and confirms sound doctrine. Everybody see that? Additionally, studying how the same Hebrew or Greek words were used in other Bible passages also gives understanding of what the passage is saying. A good example of that is the word elect in Matthew 24. Those who teach the false pre-tribulation rapture doctrine claim that this word elect is reference to the Jews and not to Christians or the church in general because Matthew 24 destroys their pre-tribulation rapture doctrine. So, when you have a clear passage that destroys a bias that you have, you've got to result or resort, I should say, to bad hermeneutics. And so, you just out of the blue, you pull elect means Jews out of your, you know, behind or somewhere out of la-la land. But, what do we do? What do we How do we Okay, so So, how do we figure out what What does elect mean? Is it just you get to put your meaning on it? It means the Jews? Where do you get that from? You have to, if you're going to make an
assertion like that, you have to be able to back it up and to prove it scripturally, biblically. How do we do that? Okay, grammatically, we look at Okay, this word elect. We look it up in the in the Greek dictionary, make sure we're looking it up, and then we see, all right, now I'm going to look up Where is this word this Greek word elect Where is this same word used in the New Testament and how is it used? Right? So, when you look it up, I think there's 16 times it's used. So, we're going to minus the times that it's used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about the second coming. So, we'll just set those aside cuz that's what we're trying to say is that the second coming story, uh you know, the Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 and Mark uh 13, are those talking to the Jews, or is it talking to are the elect, the Christians in general? So, we set those aside. So, you set those aside, and you have 10 references. You have 16, six of them are in the Gospels concerning the second coming. So, you have 10 references, the word elect used in the New Testament in the King James Version, the same Greek word, and you've got 10 times, right? So, when you look up all the passages in the New Testament that use the word elect, it is referring to the entire church, aka the body of Christ, eight out of 10 times. It is used in the New Testament, and the remaining two uses, one refers to Jesus as the elect cornerstone, and the other one refers to elect angels. Not one time does the word elect in the New Testament refer to the Jews. It's always a reference to the church. So, why would you interpret Matthew 24, the elect to be to the Jews? I mean, you have a doctrinal bias. You have a man-made bias in your heart. You have You're trying to make the text mean something it's not saying. Because the Bible, for instance, Matthew 24, we're just using the rapture issue as an example, but Matthew 24 is clear. Jesus gives a chronological breakdown of end-time events, and then he tells you when the rapture happens. Immediately, verse 29, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun goes dark, the moon doesn't give off its light. Then, with the great sound of a trumpet, his angels go forth, the great sound of a trumpet, they gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now, that's either the church, or just the Jews. You have two differing interpretations, but the law of biblical hermeneutics proves which one's right. You see how this works? This is how you stay true to the text. You will always need to do this. All right, this is how I can shame Dr. Danny Faulkner about the firmament issue and raqia and raqa because I've gone
through the scriptures to prove how the word is used and how its root word is used through the Bible and it means to beat out a metal or a solid, not a vapor. All right. So, this is what I'm getting at. We want to stay true to what the words mean and their context and their scriptures grammatically and so on and so forth. So, uh so, I said saying the word elect in Matthew 24 is a reference to the Jews is just totally incorrect hermeneutics, Mr. Shadestone. Let's keep going here. Law four of biblical hermeneutics. You all okay this morning? There's only five I'm dealing with today. So, we're on law four. Law four of biblical hermeneutics. The fourth law of biblical hermeneutics is that scriptures must be interpreted in context. Already said this, but context, context, context is everything. Somebody say that with me. Context is everything. Where the Bible says Judas went and hanged himself, right? We just talked about Judas. Well, that's in one part of the Bible. There's another part of the Bible talking about the good Samaritan when the good when the Lord Jesus tells them, you know, talks about how the good Samaritan helped the guy on the road and he says, "Go thou and do likewise." Well, let me see. I could take this part of the Bible, Judas went and hanged himself, and go take this part of the Bible, go thou and do likewise. If I don't keep the Bible in context, I can make it say whatever I want it to say. And this is done so much that it's scary. Let's read this. So, the fourth law of biblical hermeneutics, or the law of Bible correct Bible interpretation, is that scripture must be interpreted in context. Interpreting a passage contextually involves considering the context of a verse or passage when trying to determine the meaning. The context includes the verses immediately proceeding and following uh the chapter, the book, and most broadly the entire Bible. For example, many puzzling statements in Ecclesiastes become clearer when kept in context. The book of Ecclesiastes is written from the earthly perspective, under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:3. In fact, the phrase under the sun is repeated about 30 times in the book, establishing the context for all that is vanity in the world. Okay? So, they're just giving you that that one example there. But, um for instance, I mean I mean, there's so many things you could look at that where you have to uh keep it in context. Just like, okay, when I I bring up Job 38, verse 14, you
know, it talks about the shape of the earth. When it talks about the shape of the earth being like, you know, taking shape as uh a piece of clay pressed down by a signet ring. Okay? Now, that's one verse in Job 38. What is the context of Job 38? We go back to the beginning of the chapter. And the Lord begins to speak to Job and rebuke and correct Job. And the Lord is speaking to him directly, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? When I stretched a line upon it. Right? Where were you? And so the context as you continue to read from verse 1 to verse 14 is about creation. God was saying, you weren't there when I did A B C D. So we have a good context to say we know how God created or or the shape or the way he formed the shape of the earth. It's in the context of a chapter talking about him talking about creation. That's keeping it in context. Right? One of the worst contextual errors I've seen lately is Mr. Rob Skiba. And this is this is his go-to take a verse a passage out of context. He takes 2 John I mean 1 John chapter 2. And we'll just use verse 4 where it talks about if you don't obey the commandments, you don't have the truth then you're a liar and the truth's not in you. Now, that's a New Testament passage, right? But he takes that and he tries to say that's the proof you should keep the Old Testament commandments of Sabbath and feast and dietary laws and zits zits and tassels and all this other stuff. Doesn't say that. And the context is the commandments Now, what commandments are we under? There's commandments in the Old Covenant to sacrifice animals for your sin. How do we know not to do that? Because we have new commandments now under the New Testament. The New Covenant. Those are the commandments we follow. We don't stone people. There's commandments in the Old Testament to stone adulterers and rebellious children. The Hebrew roots people aren't doing that. Why? Well, we don't do that anymore. Why? Uh uh uh uh uh Yeah, we're under a new covenant and those commandments we're not to keep anymore. And I There's a list There's 613 of them. Right? Now, did God carry some of the things some of the commandments from the old covenant into the new covenant? Yeah. Adultery? Idolatry? Blasphemy? Yeah, covetousness is still a sin.
Does it say anywhere in the new covenant if you don't keep the Sabbath, you're going to hell? Or if you eat pork, you're going to hell? No. But does Rob Skiba? Yes. His problem is context. May be sincere. That's one of his problems. But this that But what he's saying is that's what he hangs his hat on. I I He repeats that that thinking that idea with 1 John chapter 2 all the time, over and over and over and over. And it's just a simple matter of bad hermeneutics, taking a passage a New Testament passage and trying to to apply it to old covenant Old Testament commandments. You're out of context, son. That's why it's error. That's why it doesn't work. But there's a bunch of people trying to make it work. All right? Here we go. Law number five. Context, context, context. But law number five, I love this one. This is one of my favorites. They're all necessary. These are And you know, that if you looked up somebody else teaching on hermeneutics, they would probably have these in different order. They might have some group together, you know, they might have three laws, you know, they might have seven. I got five. But, it's pretty much the same stuff. And again, for conservative fundamental true, what I believe is true interpretation. Law number five of biblical hermeneutics, uh the fifth law of biblical hermeneutics is that the scripture is always the best interpreter of scripture. Or in other words, let the Bible interpret the Bible. This is almost as fundamental as context or taking it literally. I mean, this is This is so important. And I'll show you the illustration here I'm using. Um but anyway, the fifth law of biblical of hermeneutics or interpretation is that scripture is always the best interpreter of scripture or let the Bible interpret the Bible. For this reason, we always compare scripture with scripture when trying to determine the meaning of a passage. For example, in the question about the timing of the rapture in the last seven years, many assume that we are caught up before the tribulation begins and God pours out his vials of wrath. This assumption is built upon one passage that says, "For God has not appointed us to wrath." 1 Thessalonians 5:9. However, when we look at the only other account in scripture other than the book of Revelation, where God poured out a series of plagues and judgment, it would be the 10 plagues that God used to judge Egypt. And in that account in Exodus, we see that God did not take his
people out of Egypt before his plagues of wrath, the children of Israel did not leave Egypt until after the last plague. So, why would we ever presume a pre-tribulation rapture based on an assumption built from one passage. You you get what my drift? Compare. Has God ever poured out a series of plagues? I'm talking about boom boom boom boom boom. You know in the book of Revelation, you got seven vials of wrath. So it's a series of wrath or plagues that he pours out. The book of Exodus is the other time he's got a series, 10 of them. And it's interesting that some of them are similar. Turning water to blood was these they're two they're same. Why would we not take that passage and go hmm did God take Israel out of Egypt before any of that judgment fell? Or did he protect them while they stayed there? Right? I'm just showing you. I'm just you again this this sermon is really not about the rapture, but it's just such an illustration you you can take a a teaching that's believed by many and you just apply the laws of hermeneutics to it, you find out whether it's bad or good. It's real simple. Right? That's just one example. I mean I use the example of like okay in in Revelation 6, we have the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Remember we had the white horse and the red horse and the black horse and the uh and the green horse or King James says pale, but it's green horse. All right, is there another place in scripture where there's a vision, a prophet or has a vision of horses of different colors? Yes, guess what? Zechariah chapter 6. Now in Zechariah 6, when we compare that passage of scripture, he we get another clue. Remember the forensic study. What's the clue we get? He asked the the Lord. He asked the angel there with him and was basically asking the Lord, "What are the What am I seeing? These horses, these red horses, these white horses, these you know, what am I seeing here?" These different color horses and chariot. And the angel tells Zechariah in Zechariah 6, "These are spirits of the heavens." And this one's going into the north country, and this one's going into the south country. Spirits of the heavens. So, then we go back to Revelation and we look, "What is the white horse?" It is a spirit. It is a heavenly spirit. Now, when I say heavenly, I just mean
in our atmosphere here. And we can see that those spirits are evil. And what do spirits have? Ideologies. And what God is doing with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, he's revealing four spirits that are going to have great influence and power on the earth. And the even their colors and the things that they hold and their riders are all clues so that we could identify them when we needed to identify them. All right, we're going to cover that later, but what I'm saying is, do you see how we let the Bible interpret the Bible? All right, for instance, all the parables, let's tell me all the parables. Let's take the parable of the 10 virgins, for instance. All right, Jesus said, "I'm going to speak a parable." So, he's given us He's telling us, "I'm giving you symbols. I'm giving you figurative language here." So, how do we interpret it? Do we just decide what it means by ourselves, our own private interpretation, or do we let the Bible interpret the Bible? 10 virgins, right? So, he first says, "There's 10 virgins." Well, what's he referring to? Well, we look over right? 2 Corinthians chapter 11, what does Paul say to the church? He said, "My job is to present you, the church, the body of Christ, as a chaste virgin to Christ." So, we can say without a shadow of a doubt that the 10 virgins represent the church, the body of Christ. Then he says what? He says the five wise They all had They all had lamps. Well, what's lamps? Psalm 119:105, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path." So, all of them had all these They all had Bibles. All right? Then he said, "They had oil." Huh, what's the oil symbol of? Holy Spirit. The anointing. What's the fire? The Holy Spirit alive, burning, giving light in your life, right? So, he says what? The foolish virgins let their lamps go out. They ran out of oil. Didn't mean they didn't have it before. They just ran out. And so, when the Lord came, he took the five wise, and the five foolish were left saying, "Lord, let us in." And he said, "I know you not." Ooh, but there's a lot of truth in that. But you get what I'm saying? I don't have to put my own interpretation on that parable. I let the Bible interpret that for me. And that's how you can know you have the correct interpretation. All right? And we can do that. I can go down almost every parable, and I can take something Jesus said,
and then you can find it elsewhere in scripture what he's referring to. And sometimes though the Lord even did it for them. Remember when he gave the parable of the sower? He said the sower soweth the seed, some fell by the wayside, the birds came, took it away. Some fell among thorns, some fell on rocky ground, some fell on good ground. And so the disciples come and say, "Lord, explain that to us." He said, "Well, the seed is the word of God. And the the seed that fell by the wayside and the birds that came, that's when Satan the the word is preached and Satan comes and takes away the word sown in people's hearts and they don't believe." So he explained it to them. The seed is the word of God. Do we have that both in the Old Testament and the New that the the the word of God, the preaching and teaching the word of God is like sowing seed? Yeah, absolutely. We don't have to put any of our own private interpretation, biases, theories, ideas. We should always do our best to let the Bible interpret the Bible. And just like okay, for instance, there's going to come times there's going to be things like All right, we we read in the book of Revelation for instance about the uh the 144,000. People want to ask me about the 144,000 all What do you think the 144,000? I said, "Well, here's what we know. It says that there are 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes. So only God can know that because 10 went missing. Um so only God knows who they are. I know there's people out there think they've traced all the generations and genealogies but then Paul told Timothy, "Don't get involved in that." So they disobeyed in there. Um so only God's going to know who's from what tribe. And it says that they are virgins and they're dedicated to the lamb. That's all we know. So, people are like, do you think they're this, they're that? And I say, you know what? I don't know. You know why I say I don't know? Cuz there's no other information about it. In the Bible. I have nothing to try to interpret that with. You know what I'm saying? So, anything that I come up with is pure speculation. I have nothing to back it up. Any any idea. And that's what I tell people. People start, well, what do you Well, couldn't it be this and couldn't it be that and couldn't it be this? And I'm like, I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. So, stop it. Right? Just stop it. Who are the two witnesses? I don't know. We'll see. Don't know. All I know is they come, they preach, they die. People are happy they die and start giving gifts to each other like it's Christmas.
And then 3 days later, God raises them up and catches them up to heaven. Well, couldn't that be the church and couldn't that be this? And I'm like, doesn't say that. Don't know. Sounds like two people to me. Well, what is it? Moses and Elijah? I don't know. Doesn't tell me. I have no information on that. Could they be here now? Yeah. Two guys could be here right now that are the two witnesses. We shall see. Right? You never know. Right. And you I I don't know that they would know. I mean, goodness, I think Did Did John the Baptist really know? Fully? I mean, you see him later going even asking Jesus, are you the one or should we look for another? What? You're John the Baptist. You came in the spirit of Elijah. But see, you here's what happens to us. We're human. And and that's something Listen, as we're talking about this and I have to be careful Everybody has to be careful with this. All right? Don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to know everything. There are some things you're just not going to know, and it's okay to say I don't know. I'm going to I'm I'm going to keep seeking God about that. I'm going to keep studying that. I'm going to keep researching that. It's quite It's quite fine. In fact, to some people you'll find I will I remember people when I said that in a sermon not, you know, probably a year or two ago I said about the 144,000, I don't know who they are. I don't know. And somebody said, "That's just refreshing for a preacher to say I don't know." You know, cuz we always try to go We try to be an answer, you know, an answer to everybody about everything, but I mean, we're supposed to do the best we can, but let's be honest. There's things we don't know, we won't understand. All right? And it's okay to say, "You know what? I don't know about that." But let's focus on what we do know. All right? Let's read this and we'll be we'll be out of here this morning. Says here 1 Corinthians 2:9-14, I love this. But as it is written, I have not seen or ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. Now, if he had just left it at that, that'd be sad, wouldn't it? But he didn't say that. He said, "But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit. For the spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God." So, God is about revealing these things to us. And uh the spirit of God will speak to us and teach us and guide us. And he says, "For what man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Now listen this. This is for you teachers, preachers, leaders. He says this, which things also we speak
not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. I just thought about this verse when I was thinking about let the Bible interpret the Bible. There on that fifth law. We compare spiritual things. Well, what's a spiritual thing? Well, the Bible, the word of God is a spiritual thing. Jesus said the words I speak into you, they are spirit, they are life. So the word of God is a spiritual thing. So we compare scripture with scripture. We get a vision or a dream or a revelation, we think it's from the Holy Spirit. What do we do? If that's a spiritual thing, what do we compare it with? We compare it to see with the scriptures to see if it's true. See if there's agreement. See that? That's how we stay, again, a lot of people out there, like I had somebody the other day say, I and I brought this up Sunday, the prophet Henry Gruver was taken up in a vision and saw the earth as a globe. And I said, well, then then how do we do we have how do we judge that prophecy? We compare spiritual things with spiritual. So we compare the spiritual vision or dream or whatever this thing this experience that this prophet said he had to what the Bible teaches. Does the Bible teach it's a ball? No. So then we go, well, Henry Gruver might be a brother in the Lord, but it doesn't mean he's right about everything. We compare spiritual things with spiritual. We always compare whatever spiritual thing is going on to the spiritual anointed powerful word of God, the written word. Okay? And that's another way we keep ourselves. And And really you could say this is hermeneutics law six. Is always compare any spiritual experience, dream, vision, revelation, something you think I've got people all time that that send me stuff. Oh, I've had this revelation, you know. Just you know, they think they've got this big revelation about something. And I just thought, you know, immediately what starts popping in my head are the scriptures that contradict it. I mean, if it's off. I mean, this boom boom boom scriptures will start coming. Because we compare spiritual things with spiritual. And then he goes on, but the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them cuz they are spiritually discerned. So, spiritual discernment. Hermeneutics, the laws of biblical interpretation, will help you keep your discernment sharp and correct as well. Okay? All right. This is part one of study and sermon preparation. There will be part two next week. Cuz there's no way to cover it all. It's already after 11:00. All right, let's pray and we'll
dismiss class. Father in heaven, we thank you. Lord, I ask you to bless these students and just give them your spirit of wisdom and revelation and understanding as they study, as they prepare, and do their assignments, as they prepare for their test and quizzes, as we move on in this semester. Lord, truly let it sink down, Lord, the things that they're taught, the things that they're hearing. Lord, we pray that it will sink down into their hearts and into their memories, and Lord, you'll just brand them in there so that they will again stay true to sound doctrine, rightly divide the word and what they're teaching and preaching. And Lord, I thank you for this. And Lord, make them great leaders in your church in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So, I guess I ought to figure out a design assignment for this class. Something hermeneutical. All right. Um Okay, here's one. I want you guys to show me why the doctrine of cessationism is hermeneutically incorrect. And if you don't know what it is, look it up. I want you See, you cuz this is like an investigation. I want you guys to write me, explain, I don't care if it how many paragraphs it takes, but I want you to fully explain to me why the doctrine of cessationism taught by many seminaries and um even churches and pastors teach this, why the doctrine of cessationism is hermeneutically incorrect. I want you to to at least explain to me two hermeneutical laws that it breaks, at least. All right. We've prayed. We've given assignment. Class dismissed. is our God and all will see how great