How to Handle Scripture (Pt.2)

Please take your Bible this morning and turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4. 1 Timothy chapter 4 as we look this morning at verse 13. Paul is writing to Timothy and he says in verse 13, Now we are talking about how to handle the Bible. And Paul's words to Timothy in this passage gives us some insight of how to do this.

He says that he is to give attention. That has the idea of preparation beforehand. Give attention to the public reading of Scripture. We are to read the scripture, we are to teach the scripture, and we are to exhort with the scripture. This is really a definition for the preacher of expository preaching, where you read the text, you explain the text, and you apply the text. Talking about it in terms of what we looked at last week, we are reading the Bible, we are interpreting the Bible, and we are applying the Bible. Now in our last time together, we were reminded about our preparation and how important that is, and the same is true today. Preparation is key. This is something that you're doing constantly.

You're doing it every day as you walk with the Lord. and as you have a life of spirit-filled activity, as you're praying, and as you come to the Scripture, you come with a specific perspective. You believe that this is the Word of the living God. And you understand that because of that, His character is seen in the Scripture. And everything that's true about the Scripture is true about God.

And so as we come to this subject again this morning on how to handle the Bible, we need to know, and every Christian needs to know, how to study his Bible. It's terrible to go through the Christian life and not know how to study the Word of God, because you need the Word of God in your life every single day.

You need to live by it. You need to walk by it. You need to preach it. You need to have constant activity with the Scriptures. It's kind of like breathing. We talk about prayer is like breathing. Well, the study of Scripture should be the same way to where we take in the Word of God. Or it's like eating.

You know, we don't really sacrifice those major meals. We might sacrifice the snacks. And most of the time, people come to the Scripture and they're just snacking on it. And many times they have junk food in the process and they're not really digging into the scriptures. And just as you have to breathe the live, you need to take in the scripture in order to live your Christian life.

You must understand, you must study the Word of God so that you could have what Jesus calls in John 10.10, the abundant life. So as we talk about this again today, I want to remind you that where we left off last time, we were looking at the book of James and we were talking about different principles that we can apply as we study the scripture. And we've been talking about reading the Bible and talking about how that we need to do it without any distraction.

So you got to remove all of those things in your time with the Lord that will pull you away. It could be your computer, it could be your cell phone, it could be books, it could be TV, it could be people. All of these things can be distractions to you as you study scripture. And I'll tell you right now, the devil will throw a lot of them at you to get you away from this time. But you have to fight through it.

And just as we talked about having a pad to write down the different distractions that you're coming up with, you need the pad of paper also as you're beginning to record your impressions of Scripture. So as we were doing this last time, we were talking about the book of James. And we said if we were to study this letter, we would first read the entire book every single day. That's all five chapters. Take you about 20 minutes to go through it. And then we would begin to narrow in on the first chapter. And so then you would start reading that chapter as well. But then you would get even more detailed at that, and you want to find out where the subject begins and ends.

In this case, with what we were talking about, we said James is talking about trials in the first 12 verses. So then we would spend our time repetitiously reading through these 12 verses. Now, I know that for me as a preacher, I can't cover all 12 verses when I'm teaching, but I certainly want to study all 12 verses and continue to study that. But I would probably narrow in on the first verse, because the first verse gives us somewhat of an introduction.

We have the author, which is James, and then James tells us a little bit about himself, that he is a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. And obviously from there, some questions are to come, so you could write that down. You might even have, when you're reading other scripture verses that come to your mind, write those down as well. Then we find that he is writing to the 12 tribes, that's the Jews, Jewish believers. And so I would write that down, and then third we would see the greeting. This is commonly referred to as the salutation. In the first century, this is how the letters were written. You had the author, the readers, and the greeting.

And that's very different than how we write letters today. The only time we have our name at the beginning of a letter is if it's a business letter. But when we're writing a personal letter, we don't address it the same way. We write, dear so-and-so, we write our thoughts out, and then we end with our name.

Well, James is writing this letter, And as we're looking at it, and we're praying through it, and we're trying to be very careful with how we handle the scripture, we have our pad, we have our pencil or our pen, and we're jotting down things that are standing out to us. So in this case, we would have written down, James is mentioning that he is the author. that he is a servant of God, we would put maybe over to the side a little question that says, well, are there any other James mentioned in the New Testament? And we would want to go back and look into that. We would write that he's writing to Jews, the 12 tribes.

We would write down that they have experienced some kind of scattering. And the scattering itself may have really a lot to do with the trials that he's talking about, because persecution, if that's what was taking place, would produce trouble in your life. It would produce trials and tribulations. And it may be that that is what he's talking about.

We might even want to ask a question, is there any context to this? Now, you're starting a letter, so you're at the very first verse in the first chapter, and the first few words that are opening up, and you say, well, how can I find a context? Well, what I would do as I'm researching James, it would probably take me into the book of Acts. It would take me in other places as well, but I would want to know where was some of the scattering occurring with the first church, with the early church. And I would write all of that information down, too, because I would really want to research that, because that may give me somewhat of context, as I said, with the word scattering is telling us here in James 1. So I would write these things down.

I would also write down that he tells them that they could have joy during their trials. Look at verse 2. Count it or consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. We also would write down what are trials because he tells us that in verse 3. Trials are the testing of your faith. And then he tells them that with this test comes endurance, and this is how you're going to have to push through these trials. You're going to have to endure, you're going to have to persevere, and you're going to have to let it work its way out in your life.

And the results would be, in verse 4, you'll be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Now, I believe verse 5 comes in his prayer. that when you're lacking wisdom, and I believe it's the wisdom that's referring to the behavior that you need to have as you're going through this trial, or it's talking about wisdom that you need in having joy in this trial. But either way, you're asking of God, and you're seeing there that his character is bleeding in in verse five when it says, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. So God wants you to come and ask him for the wisdom that you need as you're going through this trial. I would write all of that down. I would also write down the fact that he gives to all generously. So he wants us to come ask. He wants us to have this wisdom that we need. And he also will not scold you for your constant asking.

I don't know if you feel like that sometimes when you come to the Lord in prayer and you're praying about the same thing. There are things in my life I've been praying for for 20 years. Some things not quite as long. I have a disabled son, so I've been praying for specific things about him for 17 years.

But you find yourself doing that repetitiously, and here James is saying, listen, when you come to God and you're constantly asking, you're constantly banging on the door of heaven, God is very generous. He wants you to have this wisdom, and He's not going to scold you for constantly asking for it. But there is a condition in verse 6, and I would write down what that condition is. You must ask in faith, without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.

So we talked about some of that. Now, I know I just gave a little bit more information. That's the pastoral part of me. But you find as you're going through this, you're jotting all this stuff down. You're looking longer at the text. You're lingering there. You're not rushing. Now, that's much better than some of the devotionals that are out there that we read.

And again, we read this stuff and come to mid part of the day, we don't even remember what we read. So really, what's the benefit of that? you would have greater benefit by coming to the text, by reading it every day, by doing it repetitiously, by narrowing in on more details of the text, by just flooding the text with your questions. Now, you also got to be realistic in your questions because some of your questions might not be answered. You might have questions that God's not going to give you an answer for, so you just got to keep digging in this, you got to keep praying, but you're doing this carefully.

And so as we're talking about this, we're talking about these impressions that you're having. You're recording them as you write them down. You are being detailed in your process. And now we want to talk about how that we need to record major facts. Because once you've read the passage and you're recording your initial impressions, it's really time to go back and hunt for more.

Again, this is just a starting point. And I know for me, one of the first things that I like to do is is have some kind of outline. An outline gives me direction. It keeps me from going all over the place, but I don't want an outline that I'm making up. I want an outline that comes actually from the verses itself. And so again, the first things that I would do as part of this is recording down where James begins his thought, And where he ends that thought, because where he begins and ends is where the text stops. And then you move to the next section.

Now, one of the things I didn't point out last time, I'll point out now, that you may have in your Bible where you see your verse numbers are bold. Not all of them are bold, but they're only bold in a couple places. And if you look here at James chapter 1, the next bold text or bold number is verse 12. And then, if you're looking again, at least in my Bible, the next bold number is 19. And then, after that, you have verse 26 is bold.

Now, what is that telling me? Well, the translators are trying to help us to understand where the thought begins and where it ends. Where the subject is in those passages, and maybe it shifts, maybe it changes, but In this case, as we're seeing in verse 12 verses, you don't have another bold until you get to verse 12. And I believe verse 12 is all part of it. It's not something new, because when he goes to verse 13, he carries it down to verse 18. And I believe he's still talking about the same thing, but he's covering it from a different aspect.

And this is where languages are helpful. If I was looking at the language of the term trials, I would see it was the Greek word parasmos, and that's a noun. When I get to verse 13, I see the word tempted, and the word tempted is paradso. Paradso is the verb. And it's still talking about trials, though you'll find in many of your translations it's translated as temptation. And the way I see this is that a trial remains a trial as long as you pass the test. but it turns into a temptation when you fail it.

And so that's why it's very important that we understand these things. And I believe you get this understanding as you're studying, as you're digging deeply in the text. So you want to observe the whole, that's discovering the facts in the passage, and they can be answered by key questions. And really, when you think about observation, it's just knowing what to look for. It's bombarding, as I said a moment ago, the text with questions. So here's some of your questions that you might want to ask.

You have who? Who is speaking? Who are the listeners? Who are the characters involved? What can we learn about them? Then you have what? Like, what is happening? Is the passage about events? Is it about ideas? What's the main subject? What are the key words? What is the tone of the passage? Does it reflect joy? Does it reflect sorrow? Does it reflect victory or defeat? What took place before or after the events that are described in this passage, which might help you to understand it even further?

So, again, what is happening? And then, where is another question? Where is the location? If this passage is a narrative, does it tell us where it's at? When you're in the Gospels, and we've been studying the Gospel of Mark, and many times it tells us where they are, and where they're moving to. You have other questions that you could ask with this. Where is the author while he is writing? Where are the recipients?

Are there any key geographical locations that need to be identified on a map for you to understand the setting of the text? So sometimes you'll pull out a map and you'll want to look and you'll want to see the traveling routes, just like if you were studying the first and second missionary journeys of Paul.

And then another question you would ask would be, when? When were these events taking place? When is the timing of this? At what point in the history of Israel or what point in the history of the church is this event occurring? Is the timing important in the life of the author or is the timing important in the life of the readers? So these are things that are very essential.

Now you wanna ask, you got who, what, where, and when. Now you notice that I didn't say anything about why. Because why is an interpretation question. And right now we're just dealing with reading, we're dealing with observation, we're reading the Bible, we're answering the question, what does the Bible say? And again, this is where it all begins. You don't jump immediately into interpretation, you don't jump immediately into application, though, that we're guilty of that. but you want to read the Bible. And so, as we've been talking about this, we're taking Hans Fenzel's thoughts by telling us that the process of observation can be divided into three steps of study, following in some kind of logical sequence where we say first we look at the whole, then we divide that up into parts, and finally we scrutinize the details.

And so when we talk about applying this to the book of James, that's what we're doing. We're seeing the whole, that's chapters 1 through 5. We're seeing the parts where we're breaking it down by each chapter. And then we're seeing the details as we climb into verses 1 through 12. So that's what we're wanting to do here. And that's where it all begins.

You've got your pad of paper, you've got your pencil, and you're writing down your first impressions, and then you're recording anything else that you see, any major facts that are pulling out from the text itself. Now let's talk about the second question. The second question is interpretation. Just as the first question of reading the Bible answers, what does the Bible say? Interpreting the Bible answers the question, what does the Bible mean by what it says?

Just like I said, you may be reading the entire text, James 1-5, repetitiously, that is meaning you're reading it every day, you're getting the bigger picture, but now you're narrowing in on chapter 1, verses 1-12, and now you're beginning to go through the verses, and you've been writing things down, you're searching and trying to find answers to some of the questions that you've written down, but now you're into interpretation.

All these facts that you've been discovering in the observation process, they have to be pulled together into some sensible explanation of meaning. And now, let me say something very important about the meaning of Scripture. John MacArthur was good about saying that the meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. When you get to the author's intended, original meaning, you have the Scripture. And so as you do that, you need to understand a very important principle, and the principle is this, that there is only one interpretation of scripture, and there are many applications of that one interpretation. If you keep that in mind, that will help you immensely. And when we talk about only being one interpretation, we're talking about it from the standpoint of the author's intended meaning. What did he mean when he wrote it at that time in history? He had a meaning. He had something in mind.

The problem with us is that we westernize the Bible. We come to the Bible with all of our Western thoughts, and we try to interpret the Bible with Western thought, but there is nothing here in our Western thought that will help us to do this. We're talking about Middle Eastern location. We're talking about Jew and Gentile history and culture and backgrounds, and these things have to be pulled in. And we're also talking about language. The Bible was written in Hebrew, some parts were written in Aramaic, but the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. So these are things that you have to have in mind. Fenzel goes on to tell us, he says, in interpretation, you study the purpose of the passage as well as the meaning of the details.

So as we would be applying this to James chapter one, we would ask the question, what is the point of this passage? I did have a professor in seminary that used to get us to do this. And when we would go through the various books of the Bible, one of the things that we had to write down was, what is its purpose? He would ask a question like this, would it even matter if we didn't have this in our Bible?

Now that helps very much. So when you're interpreting, you're looking for the purpose. And you're looking for the meaning. What did the author intend to say? What was he meaning when he wrote this? Fenzel goes on to say, interpretation is the point at which you put yourself in the author's place and you try to recapture his thoughts, emotions, and attitudes. Your ultimate task is to discover why the author wrote what he wrote. Again, this should stand out to you. So write down on your pad right now just the word why. Why did James write this?

Why did he say what he said? Why did he say, count it all joy when you encounter various trials? Why did he say that this is the testing of your faith, and how can I see in the text that this is a test? Why did he say that you have to let endurance have its perfect work so that you can be perfect and complete, lacking nothing? Why did he say if you're lacking wisdom, and what is this wisdom that he's talking about? Why did he say you have to ask of God? Why did he say that you have to ask in faith without any doubting? Why did he say that you have the poor man and the rich man, but they're humble by their situation? Why did he say that there is a blessing to someone who perseveres under the trial?

Again, why questions? Why did the author write what he wrote? And here's a good definition that we can jot down for interpretation. What is interpretation? Well, it's the science of discovering the author's original meaning intended. His original meaning. What did he intend when he wrote this? And I just can't stress this enough.

Now, to help you to arrive at this, there are a couple things that you can do, a couple things that you need to have in mind. First, you need to understand that there are problems. The Bible's been around for many years, parts of it as much as 4,000 years, and now you're going to understand what's being said by the various circumstances and the culture.

I mean, how are you going to arrive at this? How are you going to figure this out? Well, you need to understand, as I said, that the language is a big issue, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Do you speak any of that? Do you read any of that? But these are very important. And so as you look at this, you can say that there's some things that you need to address. So let me just give you an example. In Matthew chapter 28, go ahead and take your Bible and turn to Matthew 28. We have in Matthew 28 the recording of the resurrection of Jesus.

We find the ladies coming to the tomb. They find the tomb's empty. They have an encounter with the angels. as they express to them that Jesus is not here, he's been risen, just as he said. The angels tell them to go into Galilee, to tell his disciples that he's risen from the dead, and that Jesus would meet the disciples there.

Now, when you get down to verse 18, and you begin to read as he is meeting with the 11, Judas is gone, it says here, after they saw Him and worshipped Him, even though there were some that were doubtful, Jesus says to them, All authority hath been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

So Jesus gives them what we refer to as the Great Commission. And unfortunately, in our lives, this has become convicting because we have committed the great omission, where we're not doing this. But we need to understand what this means, and language is so helpful in showing us what it means, especially in verse 19. When he says, go therefore, that makes it sound like that you have planned a specific time, a specific day to go.

Maybe this is visitation in the church where Tuesday nights at seven o'clock you all come together and you meet for the purpose of going out and visiting people. That's not what this is talking about, even though that's what it sounds like. What it's doing in the text is telling us literally, as you are going. As you are going. That's talking about the daily functions of your life.

As you're going through the daily routines of your life, he says, make disciples. In other words, be a witness wherever you are. When you're at work, when you're in the grocery store, when with your family, with your friends, be a witness to them. Make disciples. Talk to them about Jesus. Talk to them about the gospel. Talk to them about their sin and their need of forgiveness. So as you're going, you're doing this.

Many times people think that the main command of this verse is to teach or to go. And really the idea, the main command, is to make disciples. That's the main verb, mate tuo. We are to make learners. You do this by the participles that are mentioned in verse 19. You have baptizing. You have, verse 20, teaching. This is how you do this, and of course by going. So the participles are going, baptizing, and teaching. That's how you make a disciple. As you're doing this every day in your life, You are going through all the routines of your life. That's the going. And then you're teaching.

You're constantly talking to them about Jesus. As they come to know the Lord, they're baptized. So language is very helpful for this because of the verbs and the participles and things like that. This helps us to understand what's taking place in the text. There's another text that I want to point you to. It's in 1 Corinthians 4. In verse 1, Paul says, let a man so consider us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Now the word servants, we've already seen that word in James, and the word servant in James is not the same Greek word that's used in 1 Corinthians 4.1.

Remember I said when you're writing things down, you're also going to define terms, and If you were doing that in James 1.1, the word bondservant or servant, however it's translated in your Bible, that's the Greek word doulos.

When I look at 1 Corinthians 4.1, the word servants, that's a different word. That's the word huperetes. Huperetes is referring to a third-level galley slave on a ship. Paul is saying, I'm at the very bottom of that ship and I am pouring my oars. and helping to make that ship move. And he's saying that when you want to consider us, think about us as third-level Gali slaves. Don't think about us as these great ministers or these great people, these people that you can't even relate to. We call them celebrities, right? There are celebrity Christians. There are celebrity pastors out there.

I am totally turned off by that. Because that's not what we are. We are servants. We are slaves of Jesus Christ. Every one of us. And we all have different roles in the body of Christ. And so we see here that this word is a different word. So when Paul is saying, if you want to think about us, think about us in this way. We're third level galley slaves on a slave ship. That's what we are.

And again, to help you with stuff like this, you need to look at languages. And let me just recommend some books as we work our way through this study process. And I'll be doing this a number of times. It is helpful that you start early in building a good library. I learned that a long time ago from John MacArthur. I started listening to him back in 1985. And I became a Christian in 84 and discovered him on the radio. And as I started listening to him, I was drawn to his type of teaching, which is expository.

And he would recommend different books at different times, so I would jot them down because I was really struggling with this whole process that I'm sharing with you. I did not know how to study my Bible. In fact, I even at one time went to my pastor, and I went to the education pastor at the same time. We all met together, and I was sharing some of my frustration that the classes that they were offering in Sunday school and the topics that we were covering had nothing to do with any of this. And it just would be helpful if they just offered maybe a class on how to study the Bible. Well, unfortunately, I was universally rejected by that. And that was very discouraging. I went out in tears. And so I have set out on a mission how to do this.

Now, you have to understand, during that time, we didn't have the internet. We didn't have anything like that. would give us access to a variety of helps. In fact, you can use the internet today and many helps are free. If you go to our website, which is changedbygracechurch.org and click on the tab that says links, I have put a lot of different study resources there that are free. In fact, you could learn the Greek language for free.

The question is just, are you willing to commit to it? But here's a book that you could use to help you with something like this, and I highly recommend it. It's Vine's Expository Dictionary. I've had this book for all these years. Now it's available on the internet. It's available in Bible programs, and that's another thing. Bible programs are very helpful.

I used, for a long time, Quick Verse. And one of the things I liked about Quick Verse is that I could just touch a word, and it would give me the Greek word. It would give me the definition. If it was a verb, it would parse it. If it was a noun, it would give me the case information about it. But this was helpful, and it was very quick, quick verse. But then I had a friend of mine share with me about Logos Bible software. And with Logos Bible software, it does the same thing, but it does a thousand things more.

And I just began to invest into that over the years, and I have now some 9,000 books in my library. And what I like about that is that I have access to it anywhere I go. I can access it through a tablet, obviously through a computer, or even through my phone. Years ago, when my first three kids were very young, and I used to take them ice skating, and I still had to study. I taught three times a week, so I would take my bag with me, and I'd have a number of books in there with me. And that was one of the hardest things to do, to discern which books I needed to carry with me. But with Logos and with the internet and the cloud and all those things, I have access to that all the time, at any time.

And I can search my library for specific books. And one of the things that's unique about Logos is you can type in your passage, and then it will open up all the books that you have on that passage. So if you have a very extensive library with commentaries and lexicons and things like that, And then it will open these things up. And if you touch a word, it will bring up your lexicons, it will bring up your dictionaries. All of those things, the more tools you have are helpful, but especially if you know how to use them.

So, Biden's Expository Dictionary is one of these tools that I would certainly commend to you. So that's one of the problems that you've got to deal with. That's a gap that you have to bridge, and that is the language. Another one is the history. Most of the Bible reflects a Jewish history, and when you know the history behind a passage, that helps you with your comprehension of the passage itself.

Let me refer you back to James 1. Now, in James chapter 1, I mentioned to you the readers. He says to the 12 tribes scattered abroad. Now, when you understand, as you're going through this, remember I had you write down the question, which James is he talking about? There are five James that are mentioned in the New Testament. That's the results I had for my study.

One of the James seems the best of the candidates, and that's James, the Lord's half-brother. Now, while Jesus was here before he went to the cross, his brothers didn't believe in him. They grew up with him. They saw a perfect son, but they didn't believe that he was the Messiah until after his resurrection. Well, you find them very sold out and committed to their brother at this point, who is their Lord.

And when you begin to study the different reasons why you would choose him as being the author of this epistle, you would find out that he was the half-brother of the Lord, he was one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church, and you would even be drawn to Acts chapter 8.

You remember I mentioned the book of Acts a moment ago? Well, when you go into chapter 8, you find that the church is under persecution. It says in verse 1, Saul was consenting to his death, and that was talking about what was occurring in chapter 7. This is where context is important, because Stephen was put to death. And at that time, it says, a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem. So this is the church that James was a part of. This was the first church. This was the early church. This was the church that had the apostles. And so the church is under great persecution.

And it says that they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. So the entire church is scattered everywhere. Again, except for the apostles. They remained in Jerusalem. And after the burying of Stephen and the lamentation that was made over him, it says that Saul made havoc of the church. He was entering every house, dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. And therefore, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. Do you find a repetition of words that you see here?

It mentions in James 1, the 12 tribes who are scattered or dispersed. And here we're reading in Acts chapter 8 about the first church being scattered or dispersed. That fits our context. That fits what we're talking about here. And where were they scattered to? Well, they were scattered outside of Palestine. Did you know in the history of the Jews there were three major scatterings?

You had in 722 Israel, which was the northern 10 tribes, they were taken captive by Assyria according to 2 Kings 17 6. In 586 BC, Judah was taken captive by Babylon. You read about that in 2 Kings 24. In 63, Pompey conquered the Jews and took them to Rome as slaves.

In 1980, they were scattered throughout the world. In 32 AD, which would be in the first century, it began with the persecution of Peter and John in Acts 4, then the apostles, Acts 5, 17, then Stephen, Acts 6, 1 to 7, 60, and finally the church, Acts 8, verse 1, which is the result of its scattering. I believe that this is the background to what's taking place here in James 1. When James is talking about trials, he's talking about this scattering that he mentioned in verse 1. They were persecuted. They were persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, what would help you with... understanding that kind of information. Well, one of the tools would be a Bible dictionary. Now, there are all kinds of different dictionaries out there, but you need a Bible dictionary that would give you historical, sometimes give you cultural information. I've used Unger's Bible dictionary. Again, having access to Logos is gonna pull up all the dictionaries that I have, and so I would compare them with one another, and they all may essentially say the same thing, but you might have one or two that will provide a little bit more information So that's another thing that you need to have. A third problem that you have to deal with is culture. You know, we're in Western society. Our culture is so much different than the Middle East. We don't wear head coverings. We don't wear robes. Just our whole landscape is so different. But cultures can be very different, and we must understand the background that's given to them, and many times that helps us when we're trying to understand a passage.

For example, like in John 1, where it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And a question that I would ask is, why is Jesus called the Word? Well, that's a cultural question. because you have two audiences there.

You have the Jews and the Greeks. And to the Greeks, the term word meant something different than what it did to the Jews. And so to the Greeks, the word was used to refer to some type of cause or some type of energy that was floating around in the universe, some type of intelligence. We might use a different term today by calling it intelligent design.

But they believed that that was God. And to the Jew, it was much different. The term word was always the manifestation of God, because the word of God was always God emanating His personality. And so you read like in John 1, 14, and the word became flesh. And dwelt among us, we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

So you need tools that will help you with culture. And one good tool is called the manners and customs of the Bible. Again, I hope that you're writing these down because these are good books to put in your library. When you're building your library, you don't want a bunch of testimony books. You want reference books. You want books that you're going to use over and over and over. And I have books in my library that I have been using for over 40 years, the same books. You need books like that.

Another problem that you've got to deal with is geography. We're talking about the Middle East. And there are maps that help to get us to an understanding of this. But here's where you see geography. When you read in the Bible that they went down to Jericho, what does that mean to go down to Jericho? When you go into Jericho, well, that's what you're doing. The location of it, the landscape of it, is going down. When you say that they went up to Jerusalem, and it was definitely up because Jerusalem was on a higher plateau.

And so, tools that you need for something like this would be like a Bible atlas. So, when you're studying your Bible, you've got to realize that there are problems that you have to address. And these problems that you address are going to help you with getting to the interpretation of the Bible.

Now let me talk about some principles that you need to be familiar with. And the first principle is this, you need to remember that context rules. Now, I'm not going to be able to say enough about this, because this is really king in interpretation. You must know the context. If there is a context to a passage, and especially if you're pulling passages just randomly out of the Bible, there is a context to them, and you need to understand what that context is.

And all we're asking is, what goes with the text? What did he say before he said this? You heard me say a few weeks ago about the term therefore. Anytime you come to the term therefore, you need to understand what it is therefore. Because there is something that he's been talking about that now he's come to its conclusion and he's basing his information on what he has just said.

That's context. Literally, that which goes with the text. When you interpret anything, whether it's a word, or whether it's a verse, or a teaching, it must always be considered in the light of the surrounding verses and chapters, the book in which it was found, or even the entire Word of God. That is context.

And you also need to keep in mind that isolation breeds misinterpretation. Again, if you're isolating verses, then you are tempted to misunderstand what the verse means. There are a lot of examples of this, but you have to understand it in its immediate context. One of the examples that I want to give you is found in 2 Peter 2. So let me have you turn in your Bible to 2 Peter 2. Now in 2 Peter 2, you have toward the end of the chapter, In verses 20-22, you have these words. Listen to what it says.

For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from the holy commandment handed to them. It has happened to them, according to the true proverb, a dog returned to its own vomit, and a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."

Okay, well, what are some of the interpretive questions that I would ask? A very simple one. What is he talking about? What does this have to do? Is this talking about a Christian losing his salvation? Because you know what? Some people have interpreted it that way. It says, verse 20, if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state becomes worse for them than the first. It would have been better for them not to know the way of righteousness than having to turn away.

That sounds exactly like they lost their salvation, doesn't it? But let me ask you this question. Does the Bible teach that you can lose your salvation? Is there any passage of scripture that specifically says that? No, actually, I find the opposite occurring. So it can't refer to that.

And so sometimes when you're interpreting like that, you're doing processes of elimination. Again, you're writing this stuff down and you're saying, this is what it sounds like. Is this what it means? And I would find, as I was looking through this and looking at the context, I would look at these pronouns.

It says in verse 20, if after they have escaped, they are again entangled in them. The last state becomes worse for them. It would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness. Again, you're looking at these pronouns, and you're saying, well, who's the they? Who's the them?

You know what? When I back all the way up, it takes me to verse 1. What's verse 1 say? Look at it. But false prophets. Hmm. False prophets. And I would begin to read the chapter, and I would find out that, guess what? The they and the them are the false prophets. He's not talking to Christians. He's talking to lost people. He's talking to those who think they're saved when they're not. He's talking to these false teachers. And that, again, is an example of context.

You and I have to be like Bereans, where we're searching the Scriptures. We're receiving it with all readiness, and we're trying to determine that what we're hearing and what we're reading is true. This is what you should be doing when you're listening to the sermon on Sunday morning, and you're following along, and you're saying, is this what the Scripture says? And I hope that I give you enough information to help you answer that question. So another thing that you need to do as you go through this, you're always seeking the full counsel of God.

Again, this takes us back to our initial reading, because when you initially read Scripture, again, you're reading it as a whole. If you're reading through the Old Testament throughout the year, you're reading through the New Testament, you're doing it through repetition as you're studying different books of the Bible, this is just going to add to your understanding of the Scripture as a whole. And so, like I said when I asked that question, does the Bible teach that you can lose your salvation? Well, I can get my answer easily because I've been reading the entire Bible for over 40 years, and I know that the Bible doesn't teach that.

So you've got to seek the full counsel of God. You've got to be like a Berean. You've got to have the same kind of diligence that they had. And you need to check out what you're studying. You need to check out what you're hearing. And as I said, the daily reading and the daily study of Scripture will help you with this. You're actually saturating your mind with the Word of God, and that's going to be the best safeguard against any type of wrong doctrine. It's like in Psalm 1-2, you're meditating on it day and night. Or Psalm 119 verse 97, it's your meditation all the day.

It's important that you understand this. It's important that you get this in your mind. As we said, we are communing with the living God. We're studying His word. We're having this fellowship time with Him, and we don't want to misunderstand what He's saying. And we don't want to run around saying, well, God said to me, maybe you're better off saying it differently. God didn't say this to you, but maybe He's helping you see it. Maybe He's showing you things.

Thomas Mountain said that the end of study is information and the end of meditation is practice or work upon the affections. Study is like a winter sun that shines but warms not, but meditation is like a blowing upon the fire where we do not mind the blaze but the heat. The end of study is to hoard up truth, but of meditation is to lay it forth in conference or holy conversation.

That's really where you're after. Yeah, you're going to get all this kind of information, and you're going to feel pretty good about it, too. In fact, you've got to be careful, especially if you're a new Christian, because all that knowledge is going to puff up, and it's going to turn into pride instead of humbling you. And really, that's what you need to do. You need to allow what you're learning to humble you.

So are you willing to come at scripture in this way? Are you willing to read it carefully? Are you willing to scrutinize it? Are you willing to spend the time necessary so that you can understand it and study it yourself and not having to depend on everyone else or depend on study Bibles?

My first study Bible was the Ryrie Study Bible. I love the footnotes that it had in there. But one of the things that I came to realize that I'm having all this information given to me, I'm not really digging myself, and this whole inductive Bible study process is where you are getting the information, where you are digging, and you're gleaning from everything, and you're using the tools, you're using the helps to help you to understand this.

So I got rid of my study Bible, and I went to another kind of Bible that didn't have that kind of information. It was a Bible that didn't have footnotes. It had some cross-references, and maybe even some chapter headings, but it didn't have study notes. It didn't have someone's name on it and telling me what all these passages and verses meant. I wanted to discover that myself. And so I had to get a Bible that didn't have that in there.

Now, there's nothing wrong with checking your information. In fact, I would encourage you to do that. If you're coming to some type of understanding of a text and you think this is what it means, then check it out with commentaries. Check it out with other translations. See if this is really kind of the direction that you're going and it's following a good direction. It's very helpful to do these things.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to come to an interpretation and Everybody's right and you're wrong. What if it's the other way around? They're wrong and you're right. But the only way to discern that is to do the homework. But again, just remind you what Thomas Manton said. You need to meditate on this. Are you reading? Are you doing it carefully? Are you doing it repetitiously? Are you meditating on this?

Because this is where you need to be. Again, the whole point of this is so you can know God. And beloved, that's my desire, too, as I share this with you. I want you to know God. I want you to know Him deeply. I want you to know Him intimately. And I want you to have a relationship with Him, especially a saving relationship. If you're watching this and you've never been saved, I would pray call upon the Lord Jesus right now to save you.

Tell Him that you are a sinner and that you're not holding on to your life. You're willing to give up your life. You're willing to make that exchange so that you can have all of Jesus. You exchange your dirty, rotten, vile life for His righteous life that you believe with all of your heart.

You're not putting your trust in yourself to get you to heaven. You're not trusting in other people. You're not trusting in church membership or baptism or anything, but you're trusting in Jesus and the work that He did for you on the cross and His resurrection.

That's where you need to be. And would you examine yourself this morning as we think about that? Would you pray and ask God to do that kind of work in your heart? Now, I realize that not everybody watching is lost, that we have believers that are watching, and you need to just evaluate your life.

Maybe you've been a Christian for a good while, but you're not studying Scripture. You're reading it, and maybe you're not reading it faithfully. Maybe you're not reading it in detail. You know, if you were even just reading commentaries, that'd be a lot more than what other people were doing.

I met a gentleman years ago that was also listening to John MacArthur, and that's when John MacArthur began writing his commentary series. And what he would do, say, the Book of Colossians, he would take that commentary and he would read that every day. and he would read in that commentary. It has the text of Scripture in it, whatever text he's dealing with, and then would have his comments on it. It would have a lot of these principles that we're talking about, or we're talking about bridging those gaps with the languages, dealing with those problems with history and culture and geography.

It would have things like that in there that would help you. It's very important as you're building your library that you get good books. And John MacArthur, he's with the Lord Jesus now. faithful man while he was here, I would encourage you to add his books to your library. There are others, R.C. Sproul, Paul Washer's putting out books now, any of the Protestant reformers that you can get a hold of their works and put them in your library. But things that you're going to come back to, things that you're going to take with you and that you're going to constantly use. Well, beloved, this is where we have to bring everything to a conclusion.

I pray that you will do your diligence, and yet you will take the time that's necessary to commune with the living God. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for this time that we've had together this morning. We pray, Lord God, that you would help us with these different tools that we've talked about today, these different approaches to Scripture, with the whole goal to get to the understanding It's where we're reading the Bible, and we're answering those questions about what does the Bible say, and now we're interpreting the Bible, trying to understand what does the Bible mean by what it says. We pray that You would help us with this, Father. A lot of this information may be new for most of us. But Lord, we pray, help us to make this kind of commitment to Your Word. And Lord, do that work in the heart of that person that's watching right now that doesn't know you. Bring them to yourself, I pray, in salvation. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.