(2) Letting God Speak for Himself: An Overview of Private Interpretation

Letting God Speak for Himself: An Overview on Bible Interpretation Part 1 1. “What in the world is...”_________________? ○ “When you want to _______ as badly as you want to _______, I’ll be your teacher.” ○ Why should you desire to read and accurately understand the Bible? 1. Because The Bible is Powerful and Purposeful in ways no other book is: ● 2 Tim. 3:16-17 The Bible is the breath of life, breathed-out by God through man for all things profitable, giving us the ability to be adequate and equipped for every good work. ● 2 Tim. 3:15, The Bible is powerful to give wisdom and Save you soul. ● 2 Pet. 1:3 The Bible is powerful to grant us everything we need regarding life and growth in godliness ● Ps. 1:1-3, 119:11, This Bible is powerful to keep up from sin and to plant us in a firm wisdom that brings success ● Hebrews 4:12-13, The Bible is alive, active, and able to distinguish between your soul, spirit, thoughts, and motivations ● Jn. 12:48, Jn. 8:47, The Bible is powerful to judge our soul’s destination after death and during our current life ● Rom. 15:4, The Bible is powerful to give us God’s instruction, perseverance in life, encouragement in hardship, and hope in harms way ● Eph. 5:25-26, John 17:17, The Bible is powerful to sanctify us and cleanse us ● Eph. 6:17, Matt. 4:1-11, 2 Cor. 10:3-5 The Bible is powerful to fight and defeat Satan and his strongholds ● And the List goes on and on! Now If God’s Word is this powerful and purposeful, we have one great command we must heed and take very seriously if we are to allow God’s purposes to plow our lives. ● And that is 2 Tim. 2:15 - The Divine Command of Scriptural Credibility. Bernard Ramm captures this solemnity and gives us further motivation to understand the Bible when he wrote, “To determine what God has said is a high and holy task. With fear and trembling each should be ever so careful of that which he has adopted as his method of biblical interpretation. Upon the correct interpretation of the Bible rests our doctrine of salvation, of sanctification, of eschatology, and of Christian living. It is our solemn responsibility to know what God has said with reference to each of these. This can be done only if we have carefully, thoroughly, and systematically formulated that system of biblical interpretation which will yield most readily the [original] meaning of the Bible. Further, we need to know the correct method of Biblical interpretation so that we do not confuse the voice of God with the voice of man. In every one of those places where our interpretation is at fault, we have made substitution of the voice of man for the voice of God. We need to know hermeneutics thoroughly if for no other reason than to preserve us from the folly and errors of faulty principles of understanding God’s Word.” Protestant Biblical Interpretation “So how do we let God speak for Himself in our Bible study, then?” I’m glad you asked: First we must Define 4 Words: 4 Words to Define: The first of our 4 words is... 1. _____________: ○ Richard Mayhue, in his book “How to study the Bible” wrote, ■ “We dont need to alter Scripture to bring it into harmony with truth; rather we must understand that Scripture needs to change us and the way we live so that we are brought into conformity with the Word of God.” ○ When Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, he was telling Timothy of His great responsibility to deliver God’s Word as it was exactly intended without deviation. He essentially says (as Dr. Mayhue continues), “Timothy, you’re handling God’s Word, not your own. Therefore [you] must be a messenger, not the originator of the message. [You are a] sower, not the source; a herald, not the authority. A steward, not the owner; a guide, not the author; a server of spiritual food, not the chef. As it was given to you straight out of the kitchen, put it on the table so people can eat it. You don’t need to add to it, you don’t need to rearrange it, and you don’t need to take away from it.” ○ So it also is with our second word to be defined, which is called... 2. ___________: ○ Brad Klassen in his article called “Mistaking the Voice of man for the Voice of God” wrote, "The meaning of the biblical text can be distorted even by those with a high view of Scripture. The problem here is not the failure to recognize Scripture as the ultimate authority. Rather, the problem is traced to a system of interpretation which is inconsistent with the nature of Scripture’s language. An example is the allegorical method. The concrete realities of the biblical text are disparaged in favor of “spiritual” [or allegorical] ideas that supposedly lie behind the text. The assumption is that language interpreted at face value is “too plain and worldly” and that “God is too transcendent to use language in such a manner.” The language of Scripture [in the allegorical approach] must therefore be approached as other-worldly" and therefore Eisegetically. ○ This leads us to our Third Word to define, which is the opposite of Eisegesis… That word is... 3. ____________: The terms “exegesis” comes from a compound Greek word which literally means “to lead” or “guide out of”. Because of this, “exegesis” came to refer to the proper act of interpretation because it carries the notion of “leading out of a text its meaning.” R.C. Sproul wrote in his book “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith”, “Properly understood, the only legitimate and valid method of interpreting the Bible is the method of literal interpretation”; or in other words, Exegesis. Literal Interpretation, or taking the Bible at face value, is the only objective and accurate way to understand God’s Word. ○ I’m glad you asked! In order to let God speak for Himself, we need clear, objective, and biblical TOOLS to dig out of the Bible what is already there. And that is the name of our TOOL BOX for our Dig Sight. The Name of our Tool Box is... 4. ____________: ○ In his book “Basic Bible Interpretation”, Roy B. Zuck writes of the Greek understanding of this word being rooted in picture of Greek mythology. He says “The English word “hermeneutics” comes from the Greek verb “Hermeneuo” and the noun “hermeneia”. These words point back to the wing-footed messenger-god [little “g”] Hermes in [Greek] Mythology. He was responsible for [explaining] what is beyond human understanding into a form that human intelligence can grasp. He is said to have discovered language and writing and was the god of literature and eloquence, among other things. He was the messenger or interpreter of the gods, and particularly of his father Zeus. Thus the verb “hermeneuo” came to refer to “bringing someone to an understanding of something in his language” (thus explanation) or in another language (thus translation)”. 5. Summary: Through our study tonight then, and the definition of these 4 words, we have seen 2 main principles: ■ What not to do in Bible Interpretation, (namely through __________), and ■ What to do in the process of Hermeneutics, (namely ____________). Conclusion: Listen Carefully....