Why he Differences Over What the Bible Say

Transcript

GRM 1055
09/18/2011
Why the Differences over What the Bible Says
Sel.Vs.
Gil Rugh


The inspired Word of God. God has given us truth, He has spoken. And that truth has been recorded under the direction of the Spirit and preserved for us. I want to follow-up on that today before we resume our study in the book of Romans, I anticipate next Sunday with chapter 16. But I want to talk about some of the issues involved.

We noted that God has inspired His Word verbally. That is crucial, verbal inspiration, the very words of Scripture were inspired as God gave them through Isaiah the prophet, for example, through the Apostle Paul and so on. We believe in verbal plenary inspiration. The Scripture is inspired in its fullness from the first verse in Genesis to the last book of Revelation. These seem to be foundational truths to us who have been believers for awhile. But within the evangelical church there is debate over these things that have ramifications that come out. For example the translations of our Bible. We talk about a literal translation, formal equivalence, that we translate the Bible as much as possible from one language to the other according to the words. One word that the Greek uses is anthropos for man and we use the English word man and try to maintain that kind of equivalence, a formal equivalence, a literal equivalence. Or do we do a dynamic equivalence as it is referred to, where we move to what the meaning is rather than than the specific words. But as soon as you move away from the words of Scripture you open the door to inserting man's interpretation. And we're going to talk about the interpretation of Scripture today. But in translation the goal is to limit as much as possible your interpretation. Obviously when you are going from one language to another there is going to be interpretation. You have to study the original word and then what would be an equivalent word. Sometimes it is hard to come up with one word that carries the meaning. But your goal is to take that word and reflect it in English, if you're translating into English. So we have a variety of Bible translations and it comes back to your view often on inspiration.

So we believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture and the full inspiration. So thus it is authoritative. We have the Word of God. The inspiration relates to the original manuscripts we call the autographs, as Isaiah originally wrote it, Jeremiah, David, Paul, Peter and so on. But also we haven't gone into details and we won't be discussing this, God has preserved His Word. There is no doubt that we have an accurate reflection of what was originally given. There are a multitude of manuscripts the could be compared, we have accounts that go back. When the discovered the Dead Sea scrolls, that reflected that there had been no changes for centuries of time. Until the Dead Sea scrolls were found rather recently, the oldest manuscripts we had of the Old Testament were 1,000 years after Christ. Then we find the Dead Sea scrolls that contain manuscripts that went back before Christ. And we found there were no changes of any significance that made any difference in any of the manuscripts. God superintended that His Word was carefully preserved, transmitted and even translated.

It comes down to us authoritatively. I want to talk about the issue of why there are differences. If God has spoken, He has spoken with the intention of being understood. We noted in our previous study, there is no allowance given in Scripture for misunderstanding the Word of God. We noted in II Peter 3, Peter said the Apostle Paul has written some things hard to understand, but anyone who twists the writings of Paul or any of the rest of Scripture does so to his own destruction. So even though things may be difficult to understand, we are accountable to understand them, which means it is possible for them to be understood. More than possible, it is required that we understand them and we understand them correctly.

But yet there is diversity of opinion on the Bible as far as understanding it, of interpreting it. Turn over to 1 Corinthians 2. Foundational to this the major division is going to be between believers and unbelievers. There are many unbelievers, unsaved individuals who never have come to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone, who devote themselves to the study of the Scripture. They can never understand it correctly. There are portions they might get right, but as far as understanding it, understanding the message that God has communicated, they are in the dark. Doesn't matter what their intellect is. They may have studied a multitude of languages, can dissect the Scripture, know about the background, the history and son. They cannot understand the Bible apart from a relationship with the God who gave the Bible.

In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul talks about this matter. Verse 6, he has explained to the Corinthians, he didn't come preaching to them a message of worldly wisdom, a message that the world thought demonstrated great intelligence, scholarship, wisdom. But he was preaching the wisdom of God, the message of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:6, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Remember heaven and earth will pass away, My Word will not pass away, Jesus said. The glories of man are like the flowers of the field—they wither, they die. But the Word of our God endures forever.

We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, verse 7, the hidden wisdom which God predestined for the ages to our glory. God's wisdom in a mystery doesn't mean it's a puzzle that is difficult to understand, it is something you cannot know apart from the revelation of God. God's wisdom could not be known by man apart from the revelation that God gives of that mystery, that wisdom. We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood. For if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. A demonstration of their ignorance. Rome had the might and the wisdom and the using of that might to dominate and rule the world, but they did not understand God's wisdom. They crucified the Lord of glory.

Just as it is written, verse 9, things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, which have not entered the heart of man all that God has prepared for those who love Him. You see it's not just through what you can see, through what you can hear, what you can devise in your heart and mind and sort out and think through, all that God has prepared and what He determined before the creation. Man doesn't know that by the natural processes. That's the point of verse 9, quoted from the Old Testament Scriptures. You don't come to the understanding of this by human wisdom, human processes ultimately. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit. That's how you come to know it, it takes revelation. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit. We noted in our previous study, how did we get the Scripture? Holy men spoke as they were moved by the Spirit of God. God said He put their words in their mouths. That's how we come to know how things came into existence, why they came into existence, that there is an almighty, eternal God who is holy and righteous and just, that we are created in His image to serve Him, obey Him and love Him. He has provided salvation through a Savior, His Son, who died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. He has prepared an eternal hell for those who do not come to trust in the salvation He has provided. He has provided an eternal heaven for those who do believe in Him. That's all by revelation. The most brilliant men on earth do not come to know that.

I watched a program this week, some of you may have seen it, on Einstein. I watched that and I watched the mathematical formulas they were doing—I don't have a clue. He'd have to take me back and let's start with addition and subtraction. He has all these formulas and he's figuring out how the planets are going around the earth and are they moving this and doing that and all this and that. And he didn't have a clue, he knew nothing of how it came into being. He knew nothing of why the creation was here, he knew nothing about a relationship with the eternal God and man's eternal destiny. Man cannot find it by eyes and ears and the reasoning of the heart.

But God revealed them to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. The Spirit of God who knows the mind of God because the Spirit is one in the triune God—Father, Son and Spirit. So He can reveal the mind of God, depths that cannot be known but by God Himself. But they are revealed in such a way that man can come to know something of the infinite God.

Verse 12, now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit, capital “S,” who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. Do you know what God has done? He has revealed Himself and made Himself known through the work of the Spirit. Remember it was the Spirit of God who moved so that the Scriptures might be recorded, the revelation of God might be written. That was true of the Old Testament. Jesus told His disciples in the gospel of John just before His crucifixion that the Spirit of God would bring to their minds what He had taught them, that He would unfold to them things yet to come. And now that Spirit who has revealed God has been given to the people of God. When you become a believer in Jesus Christ, you are cleansed from your sin, you are made new and the Spirit of God takes up residence in your life. Romans 8 says if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. Every believer has the Spirit of God. But a more remarkable plan—God the Spirit has given us the revelation from God to be recorded in verbal form, in sentences and so on so that we can understand and know about God.

And then the Spirit of God has come and taken up residence in each individual child of God. Why? We have received the Spirit, not of the world but the Spirit is from God so that we may know. God gave the revelation to be known. These are things freely given to us by God, things which we speak. Not in words taught in human wisdom. Note that, not in words taught in human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But note verse 14, a natural man, a soulish man, a man apart from the Spirit of God, a man who does not have the Spirit of God does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him, he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

I was reminded of this, I was listening on public broadcast radio, I don't often listen. But I was pounding it out on the treadmill one day and they were interviewing some scientists, one from the University of Nebraska, one from another university. They were talking about how certain things are just scientific fact. I mean, evolution, that's science. I mean, people with their religious convictions, too bad but there is science and we need to bow before the scientists. But you see what God has said. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. The revelation has been given, the natural man can know about it, the natural man can read it, the natural man can study it, the natural man can memorize it, the natural man can become an expert in the language of it and so on. But he cannot understand it. Period.

So we read the Scripture on that but much of the problem coming in to the handling of Scripture today is coming from a love of scholarship and from those who claim to be evangelical, Bible-believing Christians wanting to reach out in the scholarly world and studying what the unbeliever says about the Scripture and then trying to mix it and fit it in so that we can be scholarly like you are and still believe the Bible. Time permitting I'll read you some examples. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them, they are spiritually appraised. There is no sense in arguing over it.

How does Paul deal with it? He goes to Mars Hill with the wise men of Greece and preaches to them the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I mean, what are we going to do? Spend the next week and month and year trying to show that Paul was more intelligent and scholarly than they are? They can't understand. He who has the Spirit appraises all things, he is appraised by no one. Who has known the mind of the Lord that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. This is the foundation starting point. If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, you don't understand the Word. There are people who have sat here for weeks and months and years and never really understood the message of the Scripture because you can't understand it without the work of the Spirit in your heart and life. We're glad they have come. We hope by the grace of God the Spirit of God will turn on the light in their heart and they will turn and believe.

Turn over to 2 Corinthians 4, a passage we have referred to a number of times. It can be a daunting ministry, a difficult ministry, a ministry of the Word of God. But Paul says at the end of verse 1, we do not lose heart. We have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness, now note this because it is going to become important as we talk about things later, or adulterating the Word of God. Every time, every time we try to take the scholarship of the world and mix it with the Bible, the Bible is corrupted. Its message is diluted and weakened. Paul says we do not adulterate the Word of God. Oh but this is scholarship, this is science, this is the wisdom of the world. All truth is God's truth. Where in the Bible is that verse? Jesus said, sanctify them in the truth, your Word is truth. I realize God created all things, but man because of sin and his ability to sort those through, the only reason we see and understand the world around us is because we see it through the glasses of the Word of God. I take off my glasses, the words have disappeared and you have gotten fuzzy. You put them on, what happens? Clarity. We're not going to adulterate the truth, we're not looking to the world to explain the Word. We're not thinking, this is what the world has found, now we'll bring it in.

There is a problem. Verse 3, if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. We don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, for God who said light shall shine out of darkness is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not for ourselves. The credit doesn't go to the intellectual, the scholarly and on, it goes to those who in their simple trust in Christ now are proclaiming that truth to others.

I'm not against serious study, I thank God for believers that God has gifted with great intellects. But we have to be very careful. One man who is a scholar in a Christian seminary says in a book that he was writing, “the tendency in every generation will be toward the creation of a scholarly elite of biblical interpreters.” God hasn't created the scholarly elite of biblical interpreters. How can we keep this from happening? Just to summarize what he goes on in that paragraph—every believer, what he refers to as the layman, ought to be well taught in the Scriptures. Simple, isn't it? That's what it is. We say the scholars probably know more than we do, and we give away this portion of the Word, we corrupt that portion of the Word. And we think we are making progress when really we are giving away the truth that changes a life.

Until the light shines into a heart and life the light of the gospel by the grace of God, they are in spiritual darkness. You understand what that means. The greatest scientist in the world, an Einstein, could sort out, figure out, get the Nobel Peace prize, come to an understanding of gravity that has not been understood before and know nothing of the God who did it all. How sad. He is in spiritual darkness. Do we understand that? Do we grasp that? You go and speak to the wisest at the university. If they don't know Jesus Christ, you have a wisdom from God they do not have. You have the mind of Christ, they do not; you have the Spirit of God who gives you understanding of the revelation of God, they do not. You can tell them the truth of God that they know not. That is foundational to everything. We begin to move away from the Scripture, and they move away and we think, even though they are not believers, they know this and we ought to incorporate it.

Let me talk about interpreting the Word of God, hermeneutics. Hermeneutics means the rules of interpretation. We're going to interpret the Bible, how do we do it. This is why Christians . . . If we believe the Word of God that we have the Spirit of God, why do Christians still disagree over the Bible? Some believe there is going to be a future earthly kingdom over which Christ will rule, some do not believe. Some believe the kingdom is a spiritual kingdom in the heart, some believe there is a future for the nation Israel, some believe that the church has inherited the promises to Israel and now we are spiritual Israel. People who claim to believe the Bible is the Word of God, claim to believe to have trusted Christ and we have the Spirit. Why do we have different understanding of the Scripture? I thought God gave His Word to be understood. He did. Why are there differences? I think it comes down to basically our hermeneutics.

Now let me say something here. I think one of the problems comes, and we'll see this in our study of Acts tonight, unbelievers infiltrate among believers, are accepted as believers and come up with viewpoints that believers begin to accept and that corrupts. So sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are dealing with a believer or an unbeliever. How confused can you be over the Word of God and still be a believer? Only God can search a heart but we have to deal with what they are doing with the Scripture. And if they are twisting the Scripture, they are doing so to their own destruction. Now that doesn't mean that everyone who has a different view on interpreting a portion of the Bible is an unbeliever. But we want to realize that can be a major part of the problem. It has happened in our seminaries where you get an unbeliever on the faculty and pretty soon his viewpoints as a scholar with biblical knowledge and not understanding begins to take hold. The devil is wise, the god of this world.

But then among believers if we are not consistent in interpreting the Bible as God gave it to be interpreted, we'll come up with different viewpoints. Now let me say some things about interpreting the Bible and I think this is for all believers. Hermeneutics has become such a complicated subject, you try to read about it and it is so confusing, even the scholarly writers say it is confusing. But God gave His Word to average people to understand.

I'd start out by saying, you're going to start out, just get familiar with the Bible. Read it. Then some points. Observation is the first point. You know part of it is, if we are believers in Jesus Christ, we believe that God has spoken, we ought to become familiar with His Word. Read it, listen to it, like I encourage you to do. Listen to it on your MP3. But listen to it. You know what that does? It keeps you going. Every day take a half hour or 45 minutes and listen. Somebody reading, you can do that while you are doing something else—driving the car, walking the treadmill, taking a walk for exercise. And just fill your mind, get familiar with it. You don't have to stop then if somebody is reading it to you. You read it for yourself, keep going, otherwise you don't make progress. You say, I'm not sure I understand that particular verse. Well generally first of all, just get a general familiarity with the Scriptures, know what is there.

Then the rules of interpretation are simple. We believe in historical grammatical interpretation, we call it literal interpretation. You know there are different languages in the world, the Bible gets translated into different languages. But there are certain basic characteristics of all languages. #1, they start out with words. Right? I mean, that's the core, a word. We have a dictionary of English words or other languages. You have a dictionary of Greek words, some of you study the Greek of the New Testament and you get a lexicon which is simply a dictionary of the Greek words and their meaning. Words are the core unit of language. And you put those words together then in a structure that makes a sentence. That gives you a statement. You put that sentence in a paragraph that gives you that unit of thought. So we start out, let's study the Bible literally.

Historically and grammatically. The Bible was written at another time, another day thousands of years ago in a different culture. So it helps to read something about that day, understand something of the historical setting. For example, if you're going to read the prophets, read Isaiah, he gives prophecy about a coming invasion of the Assyrians. Who are the Assyrians? Where did they come from? Why would they be coming into Israel? Well some background helps. Then you read Jeremiah and he's talking about the Babylonians. Well, why was Isaiah talking about the Assyrians and Jeremiah about the Babylonians? You see they are writing a couple hundred years apart. And how do the Babylonians come on the scene? And then we're going to read the book of Daniel, we're going to get to the Persians. And then Daniel is going to prophesy about the Greeks and the Romans and we get to the New Testament and the Romans are ruling the world. So we understand something of the historical setting. Pontius Pilate being involved in the crucifixion of Christ. He's the Roman governor, how did he get here? Or the Herods? So we've studied the historical context and the setting to understand what it means when it was given in its historical and cultural context.

We understand it according to the rules of grammar. God, when He created Adam, communicated to him. He walked with him in the cool of the evening in the Garden and spoke to him. And Adam understood what He said. And under inspiration it is recorded for us what He said. He told Adam what to do and what not to do. He told him the purpose in giving him his wife, a woman to be a counterpart to him. All to be understood, language we can understand. God had it recorded because even in a different language you can take something and translate it to another language. We do it all the time. And if you're careful and accurate in your translation, you end up basically with a correct translation. You use rules of grammar. A verb is a verb, it gives us the action. You have the subject who is doing something, and the object. But you know what? Even if you don't understand a lot about grammar, it's amazing.

Some of us have gone to school a long time ago and we've studied English grammar. And we read the paper. But if your kid is in school and he comes up and says, Dad, point out to me the adjectives and participles and modifiers in this after you do the verb and the noun. I think you just ought to be quiet and go do your homework. Because I may not remember all that, I may not be able to diagram it out. But I read it and understand it. People who have never learned to read still talk. Places in the world where language was never reduced to writing still talk to one an other. And that language could be reduced to writing by the work that goes on by taking their words and writing them down and understanding what that word means. So the rules of grammar just apply. And generally as you read it you can understand it, even if you don't know all about grammar. You operate with it by common sense. Go outside and be quiet. Wonder what they meant by outside, wonder what they meant by quiet. Your kid would get by with that for how long? He better be on the move outside, quietly, while he is thinking that because there is no excuse. So language means language.

He may say, Dad, I don't know what a verb means so I couldn't do it because I didn't know where the verb was in that sentence. Even little three-year-olds know about verbs. They don't know about verbs to explain them grammatically, but they know the meaning of a sentence that has a verb in it. So language is understandable. So we interpret it literally which means historically grammatically. That's how we come to the Word of God.

This is where we part ways. If you are going to interpret the Bible consistently literally, and that means you have figures of speech. You know we use them all the time. That doesn't mean you're not being literal anymore. You watched the baseball game yesterday and you say, well, he hit it out of the park. It was a homerun. You understand what that means. Someone else gives a speech and you say, they really hit it out of the park, that was a homerun. You say, what was he doing playing baseball while he was giving a speech? We understand that, that's just part of language. That doesn't mean we are no longer speaking literally in our literal speech. There are figures of speech used of various kinds. So we oughtn't to make more out of that in our coming to the Bible than we need to. Obviously there will be certain things we have to understand, they were written in a different culture, maybe that reflects something that is not true of ours today.
We have to go back and understand the tabernacle in the Old Testament, the literal tabernacle does not exist today. But we can go back and study and we can reconstruct it. They have models of it, pictures of it because the language is clear on it.

So we speak literally. When you stop interpreting the Bible literally, historically grammatically, you will come up with different views. That's the foundational reason we come to different interpretations. Well, it's a different genre, it's a different kind of literature. That's apocalyptic literature. Now here is where we get into trouble. We go to the world and look at what unbelievers wrote about future things. We say they use a style of writing, the book of Revelation has some similarities to that. This must be apocalyptic so it must need to be not interpreted literally because those non-Biblical writings. We get into further problems, we go to the book of Genesis. That's creation genre literature. Well, the creation literature of the world, the Babylonians and the account of the flood, account of creation, it's mythological, it's fanciful. Well, that would mean that the Genesis account, since I can see there might be some similarities. . . Of course there might be some similarities. The biblical flood was foundational, it covered the world. A lot of cultures have an account of a worldwide flood that has been passed on. But the only true, accurate account is the biblical account. Once you start to incorporate this, you're in a world of hurt. That's called literary interpretation. So now you have historical grammatical literary interpretation.

Let me read you an account, I know you are interested in this. This comes from a book published in 2011, it's new. And it's written by some good men. So this is not the view they hold but they are reflecting what views are held in the evangelical world today. “Possible Points of Similarity between the Ancient Near East and Biblical Creation and Flood Accounts.” For decades scholars of various theological persuasions have debated the meaning and significance of Genesis 1-11. Should these chapter be understood as history or myth? A key issue that gives rise to this discussion involves a comparison of the biblical account of creation, Genesis 1-2, and the flood, Genesis 6-9, with various ancient Near Eastern creation and flood accounts. Now we talk about ancient Near East and we're talking extrabiblical accounts, from the Babylonians or others, Egyptians, whoever who wrote their own accounts of how creation occurred. You see what happens now. We're not focused on studying the Bible and what it says, but we study their accounts and now we think, maybe we ought to reinterpret the Bible and view it differently than we did. You see the problem where we are supposedly going to bring the scholarship outside the Bible or scholars who have gone outside the Bible. It goes on. You say, well unbelievers have always done that, and these writers note this. In light of points of similarity between Genesis and writings outside of the Scripture, non-evangelical, unbelieving scholars have exclusively categorized the opening chapters of Genesis. There is unanimity among unbelieving scholars who study the Bible that the opening chapters of Genesis are not literal account.

But they also note it is difficult to define a myth and it can mean different things. Now unbelievers are in a world of confusion. Evangelicals also wrestle with this question and several evangelicals agree that the first section of Genesis, Genesis 1-11, belong to the genre of myth rather than history. Well, wait a minute, are you really an evangelical if you are placing Genesis 1-11 into myth? But these are people who claim to believe that the Bible is fully inspired by God, that salvation is by faith in Christ. They do not discount that these chapters present “facts.” In other words, God is one and not many, human beings are made in God's image, etc. They are concerned about the form in which Genesis presents these facts. In various ways they seek to answer the question, did the creation of Adam literally take place the way it is narrated? Or is the creation of Adam shaped to teach us things about the nature of humanity? In other words, God didn't really create Adam from the dust, didn't really create Eve from the side part of Adam, didn't really create Adam directly like that in His image. This is a myth to communicate the general truth that man is in the image of God.

But you understand, as soon as we open this up, who decides where the myth starts and stops? And then some of these claiming to be evangelical have to go far enough to say that even in the New Testament, since Paul dealt with Adam as a literal figure, Paul probably was operating with the understanding of that day. And he may himself not have known that that wasn't a genuine account. But that doesn't matter because what really matters is he is communicating the fact that humanity in the image of God opposed God and paid the consequences. Now you see we are just talking about there were general truths and facts that come out of it. How do we ever get to this? And of course the flood, you go to science and does science believe in a biblical flood and a biblical creation? No. And so we have those who don't say it's myth but they are trying to work it in with the facts of science and say ______________________ a progressive creation over time. You know, what does the Bible say? What does the Bible say about itself?

So as soon as you bring in genre, well this is creation literature, all of a sudden you feel like I don't know that, he is a scholar and I guess he knows more about Genesis than I do. He's probably right, he's a scientist, he probably knows more about Genesis . . . Nobody knows more about Genesis than a true believer in Jesus Christ who studies his Bible seriously, interpreting it carefully according to the rules of interpretation, the language, has any confusion there. To read in to the Bible, it goes the other way with the book of Revelation. You know the devil is smart. Wipe out the first part, wipe out the last part, then you can mix up the middle however you want. Of course you don't interpret the book of Revelation literally, that's apocalyptic. How do you get that? You study material outside the Bible and then you bring that thinking to your understanding of the Bible and of course if you a scholar you know about it.

I get a number of theological journals, not because I'm smart enough to understand the articles but I like to read the book reviews. And it's constantly going on about this stuff, and I read it and I don't even know that I can follow what they are saying. Yet I as a believer am supposed to understand the Bible. Now I have to go and read all the ancient Near Eastern texts. I have Pritchard's two volumes on Ancient Near Eastern Texts, and they look good on my shelves. But now I have to try to master that before I can know the Bible? Wait a minute, God, I won't be able to understand your Word and put into practice what you said. I have a lot of extrabiblical study to do before I'll have any idea what you are saying. Do you think that would have held water with Adam? God, I thought you were telling me a myth. I didn't think you really meant don't eat of that tree. You will have to make Yourself more clear. God was very clear, Adam had no comeback. You know we give away the Bible, thinking we give it to the scholars. As this professor said, the tendency of every generation will be toward the creation of a scholarly elite of Bible interpretation. And so we are like the Roman Catholics, they turn the interpretation of the Bible over to the magisterial of the church and they are the only ones, the official representatives of the church, the pope and his representatives, that can tell you what the Bible means. We would say, we would never do that but we have our scholarly elite and they are the ones that tell us what it means and then we change our thinking according to what they keep telling us. And what we do is we continue to cut up the Word of God, parcel it out. The roles of men and women established by God at creation, well, you have to understand that is a male interpretation of the Bible. I spent some time this week reading about feminist interpretation of the Bible.

There are only two kinds of interpretation of the Bible—right and wrong. And believers are to interpret it rightly. We have the Spirit. It's not well we need women to interpret the Bible so we get the woman's perspective on the Bible. And then we'll have men interpret the Bible and we get men's interpretation of the Bible. Then we'll have I guess a children's Bible for how the children interpret the Bible. Then we'll have . . . And where does it stop. There is the Bible.

You know what this means, what they are doing. They are changing the understanding of the Bible from the objective statements of the text to the understanding of the reader and interpreter of the text. It's called the two horizons, the horizon of the text itself and the horizon of the interpreter. And I mean evangelicalism is going “goo-goo” over this. Now we understand the two horizons and you have to understand. And then you go through all these understandings of the receptor and how he is going to understand the text. And that gets into translation because it's translated to him how he will understand it. We just want to translate it the way God gave it. I mean, where does the confusion come from? It comes from failure to be consistent with the Word. I interpret the first verse of Genesis literally in a historical grammatical way, each of the verses through the opening chapters of Genesis. I interpret the book of Revelation the same way. I realize there are figures of speech, a lot of those are interpreted for us. We studied the book of Revelation, we find it is perhaps the most unoriginal book in the Bible. Why? 500-plus or minus references to the Old Testament. A lot of these things were interpreted back then. Daniel says, I'm not sure I understand what these beasts refer to in chapter 7. Let me tell you, the first beast is this empire, the second beast is this empire, the fourth beast is this empire and it had ten horns. And those ten horns represent ten kings or kingdoms. Then there is one that comes out of that. Pretty literal. It wasn't just some indefinite number, the four beasts weren't just some . . . It's clear. People don't believe in a thousand-year millennium. Why? Well, it only appears in Revelation 20. Now six times in Revelation 20 God says it is a thousand years, but that's not enough because really a thousand just is an indefinite number. But don't we say, it could have been thousands of times. That's just indefinite. Therefore a thousand is not a thousand and seven is not seven. On it goes.

Well if we're not going to interpret the Bible literally you come out in a different confusion. This is where the reformers got into trouble and the followers of them got into trouble. They came out of Roman Catholicism, they did not take the understanding of these prophetic chapters literally. They come to a different view. They have the pope as Christ's regent on earth. They have a different view of Scripture in many ways. They weren't consistent in their interpretation. I'm glad they went back and wrestled through salvation by grace through faith, but they didn't get it done. Our authority is not the reformers, our authority is not other men. Our authority is the Word of God. If we interpret it in a consistent manner according to the rules of grammar, according to its context we have consistency.

Why have we decided you have to reinterpret Genesis? The rest of Scripture takes Genesis as a fact. Go to the Psalms and we are reminded that God created the world and He has created this and this and this. Well, yes, but not as Genesis. Well, the psalmist thought . . . Yes, but he was of his day, too, remember. He didn't have the understanding we do. Now we have science. I'm not against science, I'm against the interpretation of true scientific facts that are given by the scientist.

It was amazing as I watched that account of Einstein. I thought, what an awesome God we have, who has now given to man to be able to understand a little further what God has done. And here we give the Nobel Peace prize. The God who created all of this and man thinks he has done something because . . . You know I happened to think as we were traveling this summer, we were riding through some of the majestic parts of the West. And you see the massive mountains. And Marilyn and I would talk and say, man builds a building and puts his name on it and it's nothing. You put that building here in the context of these mountains and it would disappear into nothingness. And man thinks, look what I did. I put my name on it and it will endure. God does it all, spread it out, mile after mile after mile. A scientist comes up and says, I figured out how gravity works. I'm glad God wasn't spending all that time trying to figure it out. Who knows where we would be floating. I mean, now man understands it and is given the Nobel Peace prize and wow. We better take what he knows. I appreciate, now we understand about gravity. People functioned in light of gravity before he came up with this formula. But it's nice to know and it does open up opportunities for further understanding. It doesn't change anything about the God who created it and it is there because God brought it into existence. And this is how it functions. We don't want to give up the Word of God.

There is one other thing that goes on. I call it correlation. I put observation, interpretation, correlation. That's called the analogy of faith among reformers. We compare Scripture with Scripture. This is where the differences come. You have to compare Scripture with Scripture. Israel is Israel, the church is the church. When it talks about the Israel of God in Galatians 6, it is talking about true Israelites, true believers, Jewish believers. When it talks about being a Jew in Romans 2, not everyone is a Jew who is called a Jew. That's true because you are not in the line of the promises if you're only a physical Jew. You must have the faith of Abraham. To say the church now is called Israel and Gentiles are called Jews, that's not historical grammatical interpretation. That adds theological to historical grammatical literary. Now you have theological because your preconceived theological position is saying . . . It doesn't happen. Never is the church called Israel, the church is not a nation. Peter in 1 Peter 2 talks about you are a holy nation. But if you read the first verse of Peter in his letter, he's writing to the elect sojourners of the diaspora. He's writing to believing Jews scattered throughout the world and they are an elect nation because they are in the line of the promises given to Abraham.

So if we're consistent, our differences dissolve. As long as we are not consistent in our interpretation, it's not something for a few elect. Teachers have to be correct because they are teaching others. Greater responsibility given to them, greater responsibility given to me as a teacher. But for all of us as believers the light has come on, the Spirit has come in. We are responsible to God to read it, to study it, to be taught it, believe it, obey it and live it out.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for your grace in the work of creation, in the work of redemption. Thank you, Lord, for the revelation you have given of yourself and the purposes of your work in your Word. How amazing it is that you, the infinite almighty all-knowing all-wise God has chosen to make yourself known. That revelation is done clearly with the intention of your creation understanding it, responding in faith to it, believing and living in accord with it. Lord, we gather in your presence of those greatly blessed. You have brought the light of the gospel to our hearts and minds. What a transformation and change came about, and by your grace we believed in Jesus Christ, the One who loved us and died for us. What a marvelous privilege it is to have your Spirit who gave this revelation now dwelling in us to be our teacher, to give us understanding. Lord, we desire individually and as your church gathered in this place to be faithful, to be diligent, to be zealous in our pursuit of the Word and in our study of the Word that we might handle it accurately, correctly. And thus be approved by you. Thank you for our time together in the Word today. We praise you in Christ's name, amen.