Principles for Bible Interpretation

Transcript

GR 1996
03/12/2017
Principles of Bible Interpretation
Revelation; Selected Verses
Gil Rugh


We're going to do something a little different this morning. We're studying the book of Revelation together, for those of you who are regulars, and we have moved through the first three chapters. The first chapter presented us the resurrected, glorified Christ and He is giving a message to His servant John. Then we have the messages to the churches in chapters 2 and 3, chapters 4 and 5 we will move to the heavenly scene and then chapter 6 to future events on earth. I thought it would be a good time to stop and remind ourselves about the issue of interpreting biblical prophecy which is inseparably tied to how we interpret the Bible. I am going to be presupposing certain things here, just because of time.

We believe that God has chosen to reveal Himself, we believe the Bible is that revelation. There is a revelation in creation called general revelation, for which man is accountable, but specific revelation, the revelation recorded in our Bibles is God specifically setting forth the truths that we need to know. If God hasn't revealed Himself, we would have no reason to be trying to worship a God who has chosen to be hidden. But He has. We also believe in inspiration which is the record of that revelation in our Bibles. God has chosen to reveal Himself, He has preserved that revelation in our Bibles. We believe in what is called verbal plenary inspiration, which is simply the very words of Scripture are inspired, every word from Genesis to the end of Revelation is the inspired Word of God.

Now that brings us to how do we interpret it. It's amazing how many people talk about everybody has his own interpretation. We think the Bible is difficult to understand. If God has chosen to reveal Himself, and he has, and He has revealed Himself in a way that we can understand. If it is a revelation, by very definition it is something to be known and understood. To reveal something that is so cryptic and hidden would just leave no revelation. We are studying what is known as the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to His servant John. It is a revelation, it is intended to be understood.

So that's what I want to talk to you about, the matter of interpretation, how we understand the Bible. Why are there so many different views? And for us as Bible believing Christians we are going to talk about literal interpretation. And I'll put a chart up shortly that will set forth some principles that are included. But it's not difficult, it's how we talk. We talk with one another and communicate because certain things are assumed and are generally true of language that enables us to communicate with one another.

There is really not any difference among this among Bible-believing Christians, so I am going to talk about those who truly believe the Bible is the Word of God, truly believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ because all those that do, believe in literal interpretation, at least in that much of the Bible. Just pick out one example. If you don't believe the literal truth that Christ died on the cross and was raised from the dead, then you are not a biblical Christian. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 if you deny the truth of the bodily resurrection of Christ, then everything else we say is worthless. So there are certain things you must believe and believe literally to be saved.

There is a movement, neo-orthodoxy, that believed that there was supra history and something beyond like the resurrection. So what was important was not whether Christ was bodily raised or not, but whether you had a resurrection experience with Christ, and existential experience with Christ. Those kinds of things are outside the framework of what we are talking about and the people that I am talking about. We are talking about those who believe the literal facts of the Gospel. But there is diversity even among Bible-believing Christians over future things prophetic matters. This is expressed by a number.

And here is an example from Protestant Biblical Interpretation by Bernard Ramm. The real issue in prophetic interpretation among evangelicals is this, can prophetic literature be interpreted by the general method of grammatical exegesis, which is literal exegesis, or is some special principle necessary? He would not hold our view on eschatology but he understands what the issue is.

Here is another man who has written a book that attacks the position we have on interpreting prophecy literally. But here is what he says. Two basic principles of interpretation are available, the grammatic, historical (literal), and the allegorical. The literal method is that method which gives the word the meaning it would normally have according to its natural construction and usage. The allegorical method is that method which takes the same word and seeks to find a deeper meaning than the natural one. Sounds pretty simple.

A number of years ago I was visiting with a man who had attended Indian Hills at one time and he had changed his views and we spent some time talking together, several hours. Had a good time, but I said to him, we could keep going from passage to passage to passage and we're not making any progress because you use different principles of interpreting the Bible regarding prophetic things than I do. And so we can't come to agreement on these things.

So, I want to talk about the principles of interpretation and then where they will lead us. There is not difficulty here, either. There are people who try to muddy the waters, but people understand. Even those who disagree with us on interpreting future prophecy literally know what literal interpretation of prophecy is. If you are going to interpret the Bible literally, this is the man critiquing our position and disagreeing with it, this leads to exact futuristic fulfillment of every detail of early prophetic writings. If the pattern of rigid literalness, he first defined it as literal but now you have to make it look a little more negative so you say it is rigid literalness. It is just what he described as literal interpretation earlier. But if the pattern of rigid literalness is to be followed to its natural conclusion, then those who insist the unconditional promises to Israel must be literally fulfilled as to the land, seed of government, restoration of temple during the millenial reign of Christ. Must also believe that the New Jerusalem described in the closing chapter of Revelation will actually be the eternal abode of the saints continuing on earth. Well, we do believe that. When the principle of literalism is applied to the promises of God to Abraham in instituting the nation of Israel, two conclusions follow. God binds Himself to fulfill every promise to Israel (exactly), and since every detail of these covenants has not yet been fulfilled, Christ's future reign on earth will be for the purpose of fulfilling them. We would say, amen; he would say, I don't agree.

One other example, then we will look at some of the principles. This is a man who wrote a book on hermeneutics, it was first recommended to me by the man that I mentioned that I visited with a few years ago, several years ago, that caused him to change his view, to not interpret prophecy literally anymore. In fact, this man goes so far as to say this is one of the methods in evangelical hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, just the Greek word for interpretation. So in evangelical hermeneutics. But he says, I believe they are not consistent with the Gospel. So, he says if you interpret the Bible prophecy literally, I don't think it's consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ to interpret it literally. He says, it may make sense to say we must interpret the Bible literally, but if we believe that literalism is the way to go, what do we mean by it? Now you see he is trying to go a little further and say it is confusing because we don't really know what literal is. He knows what literal is, he wrote a book and expects you to take it literally. He knows what the literal interpretation of biblical prophecy is. He says; thus the literalists claim to take the promises concerning the restoration of Israel, Jerusalem and the temple at their literal face value. What could be wrong with that? Well for a start, determining what the literal meaning is could be problematic. You just said it. You take Israel, Jerusalem and the temple, that's what we are talking about. He knows what that means, it's not a hidden meaning. He says the New Testament clearly does not support a simplistic hermeneutic as literal fulfillment of prophecy, although he does acknowledge that in the prophecies that have been fulfilled, they were fulfilled literally. I love the way he puts it. Jesus did indeed fulfill some prophecies in a rather literal way, like He was born in Bethlehem. Now what is rather literal about that? Micah said He will be born in Bethlehem. That didn't mean somewhere in the Middle East, it didn't mean in Jerusalem, five miles from Bethlehem. He was born in Bethlehem. That is not rather literal, that is completely literal.

So, you get into this kind of idea. He says the literalist must become a futurist since a literal fulfillment of all Old Testament prophecy has not yet taken place. So, it's not a problem over what does literal mean or not mean, it's a problem of you accept that. Or do you follow the allegorical, there is something hidden, a deeper meaning that now we follow.

One more thing to read to you. Is the church the new Israel? If so, in what sense? In one view the church virtually takes over all the roles of Israel as the saved people of God. This is the predominant view of reformed theology, that's the view he holds, that the church has taken over all the promises given to Israel, that the kingdom promised will not be a literal kingdom but a spiritual kingdom, and so on. So you see they go back and reinterpret. He thinks with the coming of Christ everything in the Bible in the Old Testament prophecies can now be reinterpreted and we can find what the deeper, unrevealed meaning is because it has now been revealed. We'll see that as we move along.
So I just want you to understand. Some people say the Bible must be hard to understand, look at the different interpretations. Well, when you take out unbelievers because they have no ability to understand the Word of God, 1 Corinthians 3 says only true believers who have the Spirit of God can clearly understand the Word of God. And then you take those who are clear, I don't take the Bible prophecies literally, but every prophecy that has been fulfilled has been fulfilled literally.

Let's walk through a little bit of these principles, I've made a little chart. This is not intended to be complete and necessarily exhaustive, but it gives you the sense of what we are talking about. It's the way we communicate. So historical, grammatical interpretation is the same thing as literal interpretation. And the one man I read you is critical, that's the way he put it. Historical, grammatical, and in parenthesis he had literal versus allegorical. Sometimes you'll see hermeneutic in the singular, but that's not a good thing. That's talking about a more subjective approach to hermeneutics, like more comes out of your experience than your understanding of God’s word.

There are principles we follow when interpreting the Bible. The allegorists have their own principles and they add to this because different parts of the Bible are to be interpreted literally. Now literal does not mean there are not figures of speech and symbols in the Bible. We do it all the time. We could say, if the fire alarm goes off, hit the floor. Well that doesn't mean just lean down and give it a punch. We are familiar with that figure of speech. If something happens and you hit the floor, that means you get down quickly. So those things are just part of speech—we read them, we accept them. And these figures of speech have to be connected to reality so you can't have a symbol of a symbol of a symbol because now you are in Alice in Wonderland. A symbol has to have some kind of concrete reality to it. So symbols, figures of speech, we use them all the time.

So let's just walk through these principles and then we're going to spend some time on progressive revelation because that's where we part ways with the allegorists who are truly believers, as far as we can tell. First the historical principle, we look at the Bible in its historical setting. Moses was writing 1500 years when he wrote his books. The exodus from Egypt occurred about that time. Well, that was at that point in time in the history. You read the prophets and they'll talk about the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and those were historical nations of the time, if we are going to understand the Bible and what is going on there. Who are the Assyrians and how did they conquer the northern ten tribes? That was something that happened in time, in history. So we go back and try to familiarize ourselves with the history, and things that were said and what they would have meant in that context. So that's pretty simple. We talk about the history of our country, and we talk about then what went on in the 1700s and the historical setting there. That's a clear thing. Some things are easier, Washington crossed the Delaware, it's easier for us to identify with that because the Delaware River is still there. But some things change and so we have to search a little more to see those things. So historical setting is just finding out it is in a historical context. In the New Testament, we read about the Pharisees, we use the Pharisees today as a figure of speech to speak of a certain kind of people or person. We say they are like the Pharisees, or they are Pharisaical. But it had a literal meaning at a point in time in history. The Pharisees were a certain sect of the Jews who had certain convictions and that's why we carry on that in an applicational way to certain people who, even though they are not Jewish, even though they are not a sect of the Jews, even though they don't follow specifically what those Pharisees in Judaism did, there are certain characteristics. So, things developing. But we want to understand it and what does the Bible say a Pharisee is, history.

Grammar, the rules of grammar. I am amazed it is becoming somewhat popular in our day among biblical writers to talk about we ought to move away from dictionary definitions when you come to the Bible. We just don't want to go and look at a dictionary. Well, how are you going to know what a word means? My mother had an expression when we boys were trying to get sympathy. She said, if you are looking for sympathy, it is under “s” in Webster. We understand what she was saying. But we go to dictionaries to find meaning. I mean, when you are starting a new language, one of the things you have to learn is a vocabulary list so you know what this word means and so I can use it. That's just part of it. If we are reading someone who has an advanced vocabulary or at a different time, sometimes we find ourselves going to the dictionary to find out what that word means, I'm not quite sure what it means. So, the rules of grammar, there is sense and structure. In other languages, they are seen a little differently, Hebrew goes from right to left instead of left to right like we do. Greek rearranges words in a sentence because the ending of the word or the form of the word tells you what it is. In ours we have a certain structure to follow. There is a subject, there is a verb, there is an object to make a sentence. So, when kids go to school, they are just learning to put a sentence together, and they are simple—a subject, a verb, an object. And as they go we find out it gets elaborated. We read Paul's sentences, but when we study the Bible we want to know the grammar. Even though it is a long sentence, what is the key subject here, what is the key verb, what is the object, what are the other things then modifying. You are elaborating. Like if the subject is John, it might be John, the apostle of Jesus Christ who came from a family of fishermen and is associated with his brothers. Well now it is elaborating, but it doesn't change the fact that John is the subject. We are just learning more about the subject. So, we have to follow rules of grammar. Some of you learned diagramming which is just putting the rules of grammar in order so we know what the subject is. But part of this stuff, we just do it so it is the way we function. We put our sentences together that way. We don't just say, door to the car behind book floor. We say those are just a collection of words. Right, they have to be put in a grammatical structure, order. That's grammar, we follow the rules of grammar in the Bible.

Context, we often say context determines meaning. You see a spelling bee or something and they will ask, will you put that word in a sentence? You have it in a context. I have a head cold; I leave several times to blow my nose. So if you talk about running, you may be thinking of your exercise program. I have something different in mind. So you say, put it in a sentence. Just to say running, does it mean the water at the kitchen sink is running? Or that you have been out getting your exercise in the morning running? So we put it in a sentence. But the meaning of the word is basically the same. It's the context that gives it its connection. So, we want to interpret the Bible in its context, this is where they will say a text without a context is a pretext because just to pull a verse out of Scripture. Remember when the Bible was written, it wasn't written in verses and chapters. So now as we have it, we memorize verses which is great and I appreciate those who did that, we have to understand even that verse has a context. It wasn't written by Paul as an individual verse and mailed out, it was written in the context of a letter he was writing. So, the things around it put it in its context. And again, we knew that all the time. A person will say, someone told me you said . . . We would say, they took that out of context. True, you just take that sentence, that sounds terrible. But it was in this context. I gave an example, I told Marilyn I was dying and she said, hurry up. That's all it is and here is a wife going on trial for murdering her husband and someone says, there was a time when she said she wanted him to hurry up and die. Well now the context puts it totally different. So, we just want to say, these simple things, we come to the Bible and it has a context and everything said is in a context. That's why we started at the beginning of Revelation and are working our way through. So, we keep things in the context. And you have to be careful, sometimes we do a topical study and string together a list of passages, but you have to be very careful about the context of the passage that you are adding here, because if it is in a different context, you could be using it differently. Context.

Authorial intent, that's just what did the original author mean who wrote it. We say what does it mean to you? No, that's not how you interpret the Bible. Doesn't matter what it means to you, it matters what it meant when Isaiah wrote it, for example. What did Isaiah mean? Now it has become popular to talk about two authors of Scripture, there is the human author and the divine author, God. And so some now are saying Isaiah may have written this but Isaiah was just a man and he could make mistakes. What we want to do is find out what is the message of God, perhaps, contained in this. Well now you see what we have done again, we have turned away from the objective use, objectivity of Scripture to ourselves. What does it mean to me? Well, what it means is what Isaiah said, and there is no separation between what God says and what Isaiah said. God was speaking, like Jeremiah opens up, God says to Jeremiah, I put My words in your mouth. Peter wrote in his letters; holy men of hold spoke or wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So it is a supernatural process, God selected the individual, used his personality and related things like his abilities and so on to say exactly what He wanted said, using the words He wanted. So He selected Amos and said I want a prophet, a herdsman in Tekoa, so God selected him and used him. But what Amos wrote is exactly what God wanted written. So that's the authorial intent.

Now we go back and we find out first thing we are going to talk about, we're going to find out Isaiah wrote. What did Isaiah mean when he wrote this? Doesn't mean he had full understanding of it, but what did it mean when Isaiah wrote it. When you lose that, all of a sudden now you have an elasticity that we can read into, not only what they said but what I think should have been said, or how I would understand it. Doesn't matter what it means. So that fixes the meaning, if you will. Now for Goldsworthy, whose hermeneutical book I quoted from for you, he thinks with the coming of Christ we can go back and reinterpret all the Old Testament, like this. Let me give you an example. God promised Israel the land, and they would eventually build the temple in the land. Israel was God's people; He was going to meet with them in the Promised Land. Now Christ has come. Where does God meet with His people now? In Christ. Therefore, Christ is the fulfillment of the land promised to Israel and we are the new Israel meeting with God's spiritually. You say wait a minute, somewhere along the line you lost me. God promised land, He gives the boundaries and all of that to Israel. Somehow that becomes an existential experience, experience of my existence that I read into that. And I lose any ability to have a handle on Scripture because people who don't take the prophecy literally don't agree with him on that. That's why it is hard to get these people who don't take prophecy literally and read their commentary on Revelation, because everybody has a different view.

All right the last one is where we are going to concentrate the rest of our time, it is progressive revelation. We understand with everything we have said that there is progress in revelation, that everything Isaiah wrote, and I am going to use Isaiah, it's just easier to refer to him, I'll give some examples from him. But the prophets, generally this is true, everything they wrote will be interpreted and fulfilled literally. Now there is progress in revelation. By that I mean God didn't reveal everything to Isaiah. We're going to talk about that and one of these men uses that in the book of hermeneutics. There has to be a recognition of this in the prophets or you will be confused. This is what Bernard Ramm says, the interpreter must be mindful of the non-systematic character of prophetic writings. The prophets are not systematic in their presentation of sequences. The future may appear present, nearby or indefinitely remote. Widely separated events on the actual calendar of history may appear together in the prophetic sequence. He goes on to say this was the problem the Jews had, they did not know about two comings to earth of Christ. Isaiah did not write about two comings to earth of Christ. Now be careful how you take that, in the context of what I am going to be saying. He wrote about the coming of Christ, this is what happens when Christ comes—He will redeem Israel, He will destroy Israel's enemies, He will set up an eternal kingdom. He had no concept of two separate comings of Christ, of some things happening at one time, some things happening another, and then being separated by two thousand years. And sometimes he'll talk about them out of order. It's not that he made a mistake because he never gave the intended order, he just is speaking about what happens there.

So there is no sequence in the prophets. We understand progressive revelation reveals more, and that helps to clarify previous revelation. It does not change previous revelation. Now it might change the understanding some people had of previous revelation, but the previous revelation will stand and be literally interpreted. But it is a significant difference.

Let's look at some of these things relating to the First Coming and the Second Coming. Come to Isaiah first, we'll just use him to save time, stay in one prophetic book. And we're not going to look at a lot of examples because they become obvious. Isaiah 2, the chapter opens up and this is the revelation given to him regarding Judah and Jerusalem. “Now it will come about in the last days.” When we go through prophetic literature first right here we have a time marker, the last days are the days of Messiah. “The mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains. All the nations will stream to it.” The mountain being a symbol of the kingdom, there is a symbol and we have it in Daniel, so in prophetic writings a mountain is referenced to a kingdom. We'll see that in our study of Revelation. “Many peoples will come and say, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob that He may teach us concerning His ways. The Law will go forth from Zion, the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem, He will judge between the nations. They will hammer their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not life up sword against nation, never again will they learn war.” Let me tell you, Christ came and that is not true, it didn't happen. Now the answer is not let's go allegorical and look for a deeper, hidden meaning that is spiritually going on in our lives. No, this will happen but the last days is a term in the compressed prophetic writings that refers to the days of the coming of the Messiah. He goes on to talk about judgment that will come, we won't look at that.

Come over to Isaiah 9, I'm just going to use these three, Isaiah 9. The first two verses, a promise, “He treated the land of Zebulon, the land of Naphtali with contempt. Later on He shall make it glorious by the way of the sea on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light, those who live in a dark land, light will shine on them.” Stop. After John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus withdrew from Jerusalem into Galilee and He quotes this as fulfilling that because He had brought light and those living in darkness, a great light shines on them. That's in Matthew 4:12-17, we won't turn there just yet. So the first coming of Christ ends at the end of verse 2.

Then verse 3, “You shall multiply the nation, you shall increase their gladness, they will be glad in your presence.” On he goes. Then He brings deliverance to the nation. Then we go back to verse 6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us and the government will rest upon his shoulders.” Verse 7, “There will be no end to the increase of his government of peace, the throne of David over his kingdom to establish it.” Wait a minute, you see Isaiah just writing about an event, the coming of Messiah to this earth. He will bring light, He will bring revelation, He will be a child born, a son given, He will rule and reign forever. Well what about the First Coming and the Second Coming? Isaiah knows nothing of it, it is not revealed in the Old Testament. Now all that in context, it is not revealed in the sense Isaiah didn't know about it. We say now Isaiah in verses 1-2 was writing about the First Coming of Christ and then down in verses 6-7 primarily is writing about the Second Coming. No, that is not what Isaiah was writing, he was writing about the coming of Messiah. Later revelation will make known to us what Isaiah didn't know, that there are two comings of the Messiah. So we want to be careful we don't read into these kinds of passages what is not there. Now we can understand it in light of future revelation, but if we start arguing over this is what Isaiah was prophesying, the First Coming of Christ, Isaiah knew nothing of that. And you see how it is mixed together. Verses 1-2 talk about the First Coming, then you talk about events that will take place in connection with what won't happen until the Second Coming. Then verse 6 starts out, a child will be born, a son will be given to us. That's the First Coming. And the government will rest on his shoulders, that's the Second Coming. He is all . . . but it is all true, factual, it will all be literally fulfilled in connection with the coming of Christ. But later revelation will reveal there are two comings. Oh, that's what the prophets couldn't understand, Peter said in his letter. They didn't understand how these things all. Peter still doesn't understand it.

Look over in Isaiah 11, we don't have time to read these because I have a lot of other things I want to say. But Isaiah 11 begins, “A shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, a branch from his roots will bear fruit, the Spirit of the Lord . . .” We talked about this, this happened at His First Coming. But stop, we go right to the Second Coming as we know it because Isaiah is just writing about the coming of the Messiah. “In judgment he will exercise,” verse 3, “He is judging the poor with fairness and he will decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.” This is about what will happen when He comes the second time. And then “the wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the young goat.” These truths of the kingdom. In verse 9, “They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain.” You see they are mixed together—First Coming, Second Coming, order. The just go on like that.

Come to the New Testament, the book of Luke. I want you to understand, even in the gospels it is not clear that we are talking about two different comings to earth. Look how the book of Luke, Luke 1. I've done with Luke just like I did with Isaiah, just to take this for time. Luke 1, the angel Gabriel appears to Zacharias, who will be the father of John the Baptist. So in Luke 1:13, “The angel said to him,” he has come, you know the context, if not you can read it, “do not be afraid, Zacharias.” And he has been praying, his wife was barren, “you are going to have a son.” Now note, “You will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. He will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah.” Now we are going to quote from Malachi's prophecy, Malachi 4, “To turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make a people ready for the Lord.” But that's not going to happen, Israel doesn't respond, they aren't prepared, they are placed under judgment.

This is the ministry John the Baptist has as Elijah, in that spirit and power. Wait a minute, he didn't tell the whole story here. Don't tell Gabriel he is not right. When Zacharias asked, how can that be, I love Gabriel's response. I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of the Lord. You will be speechless, if you are going to ask those kinds of questions, you don't deserve to talk. That's my paraphrase. But you see there is no indication. Look when Gabriel appears to Mary six months later. Verse 31, still in Luke 1, “Behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” He is announcing Isaiah 9:6, a child is born, a son is given. This is he. If you have any doubt, look at Luke 1:32, “He will be great, will be called the Son of the Most High, the Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; His kingdom will have no end.” May is saying, Hallelujah, I'm going to give birth to the Messiah, the kingdom is on the verge of coming. Mary, you are not going to stand at the foot of His throne, you're going to stand at the foot of His cross. We are at least 2000 years removed, your body will have been in the grave and turned to dust before . . . Why would Gabriel tell her that? Because it's factually true, about the coming of Messiah. Even at this point we're not going to make it. Do you say that Gabriel didn't know? Of course Gabriel knows, he gets his information directly from God at the throne. And you see progressive revelation. We are still getting Old Testament prophecy and John will be the last of the Old Testament prophets. God has determined He will not yet reveal further revelation.

You come over to Luke 1. After John the Baptist is born, his father Zacharias, verse 67, filled with the Holy Spirit. So these are not just words of Zacharias, these are the words of God through Zacharias. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David, as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old. Salvation from their enemies, from the hand of those who hate us, to show mercy.” Verse 73, “The oath which He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us we would be rescued from the hands of our enemies.” On it goes. Wait a minute, wait a minute, he didn't tell Zacharias, Zacharias you are going to have a son who is going to be a great prophet but his ministry will be a failure. You will introduce the Messiah but the people will not respond. He will have a rather short ministry, have his head presented on a platter. Progressive revelation. God in His plan is not revealing the limitations of what will be accomplished in the First Coming and what will remain for the Second Coming.

Come over to Luke 7. John the Baptist will go to his grave not understanding this. John is in prison, that happened earlier. Now down in verse 18, John's disciples are telling him what Jesus is doing and John summons, verse 19, “two of his disciples.” And what does he have them ask Christ? “Are you the expected One,” the coming One, “or do we look for someone else?” What is wrong? Well remember the prophecies even given in connection with his birth? John is in prison. I don't understand, I introduced you as the Messiah who would establish a glorious kingdom, deliver us from our enemies and I'm sitting in this prison and things aren't turning around. Did I miss something? Now John is a great man, he doesn't say he has, it's a question that Christ accepts. Then He just tells them, you tell him what you have seen. What did they see? Examples of His miracle working power that will characterize the Messiah in His kingdom. So, you are seeing the evidence that He is the Messiah. But in effect what is happening, the Jews are rejecting Him and the kingdom at this time. So John will be executed and just trust, I don't understand.

Jesus doesn't correct it, down in verses 26-27 He quotes from Malachi that we saw quoted earlier. John is the one, I send My messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way before you. That just seems to confuse things again because he is not preparing the way in the sense that the Old Testament would have been thought. Well, when the Messiah comes, His forerunner will come and establish, prepare the way. The Messiah will appear, the enemies will be destroyed, redemption, spiritual and physical will be brought about for Israel and we have a kingdom. Well, not so.

Come over to Luke 22:28, here is the Last Supper Jesus is having with His disciples. What does He tell them? Verse 28, “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials and just as My Father has granted me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom. And you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” And by the way, tomorrow morning I am going to be crucified, betrayed and then crucified. Well wait, didn't He just last night at dinner promise we were going to sit on thrones in His kingdom? Well, that's at least 2000 years away. Here we are, still here, still has not happened.

Come to Luke 24, this is Christ's appearance to His disciples after His resurrection from the dead. You know at this point they still cannot understand how the Messiah could be crucified. And where is the kingdom? So, verse 45, and He tells them, He had given them truth concerning this, He had talked about it. Not saying He hadn't talked about the other coming events, they couldn't put it together yet. So “He opened their minds”, verse 45, “to understand the Scriptures. Thus, it is written that Christ would suffer, rise again from the dead the third day, repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.” So you are witnesses of these things. Now we understand, before we could have the kingdom He had to be crucified to provide redemption. They don't understand, Luke continues his account.

Come to Acts 1. Here they are, forty days have gone by since His resurrection. He is ready to ascend to heaven; He has been giving them instructions about the importance of His death. And they understand that, Peter's sermon in Acts 2 will be filled with references to show the Old Testament prophesied the death and resurrection of Christ. But what do they ask him in Acts 1:6, the end of the verse? “Lord, is at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” Now we can have the kingdom, now we understand. You first had to suffer and die on the cross, be raised from the dead. That would provide redemption. Now we are ready to get on with the kingdom. Jesus doesn't tell them any details; He just says you won't need to know. Do you know why? We are sixty years away from God choosing to finally reveal the details.

Peter is going to preach in Acts 3 his second sermon and you note what he says in Acts 3:18, he said that it is true the prophets, and you see how bold Peter has become now with what he understands, that the Messiah would suffer, die and be raised. Then he tells them, “Therefore repent and return so your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come, from the presence of the Lord He may send Jesus the Christ appointed for you whom heaven must receive until the restoration of all things.” Now I understand, we're going to have a little gap here. Israel, believe, and if you believe . . . What happens when all Israel believes? The Messiah comes back; we have the kingdom. What about Daniel's 70th week? Well, it is in Daniel but they didn't have the clarity of understanding. He didn't tell the Jews, if you believe, but by the way you can't believe, we haven't had the tribulation yet. This is not all laid out yet, they didn't understand Daniel's 70th week. It is there, but we look back and say there is the 70th week, a seven-year period. It's the book of Revelation, the reason we are doing this is it's the book of Revelation that finally puts everything in sequence. You know Peter died and never did have the complete picture, Paul died and never did have the complete picture. He had more revelation, but the details given in the book of Revelation and how the sequence unfolds and what is involved with the additional revelation given that gives clarity as it puts things in order will not be done until 95 A.D. Peter and Paul die in the late 60s, they will have been dead for going on thirty years. Finally, now it is time for God to unfold and lay out clearly what is true, how it will unfold.

So we have to be careful then we don't take this and read it back, we read back and we can understand there are two comings, so what Isaiah said here and here, one would be for the First Coming and one would be the Second. But Isaiah wasn't writing it about that. This is where those who don't take the Bible literally get confused. They say, Isaiah said that Christ when He came would redeem Israel spiritually and physically, destroy their enemies, set up an eternal kingdom. That's what Isaiah said, so it must have happened. So, those prophecies probably weren't to be taken literally, there was a deeper spiritual truth under them. The kingdom is not physical, it's spiritual. Israel doesn't have any promises; the people of God have the promises. Israel was just an example . . . Now we begin to rewrite the Old Testament. That's why we take it for what it says.

We're going to the book of Revelation, wonderful book. If you don't understand Revelation, you can't put the rest of Bible prophecy together because you will have the same problem the prophets did. There is no order here because they didn’t have what Mary the mother of Jesus would have had, that John the Baptist would have had. By God's grace Revelation is not done until God is done. He waited until the last book of the Bible, He says now we take all of that and we will arrange it. I mean, there are not additional things included, but primarily what it does that has not been done before is it is going to put it in order. And now we can know, and it is a revelation. You say, I don't study Revelation, it is too confusing, it is hard to understand, all those symbols. Then it is not a revelation? It is a revelation; it is of such importance because this is the last thing God has to say to us. Now it is all put together for you, you don't need anything more. Now the picture is complete and you live in light of it.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of your Word, your grace that has brought us truth. Lord, there is no excuse for us to be confused. You have provided your Spirit to live within each and every believer, to give us understanding, to enable us to know the things that otherwise cannot be known. Lord, you have spoken clearly with the intention that what you have said be understood. May we be careful not to be those who would cause confusion, misunderstanding, but Lord you have set a pattern clearly. Everything that you prophesy that has come to fruition has been fulfilled and completed exactly as you said. Lord, we look to the ultimate fulfillment of what you have promised and we are reminded you are the God who keeps your Word. How blessed we are to have a completed revelation and Lord, how responsible we are to live with an understanding that even those great saints from long ago did not have. Thank you for the blessing of looking into the Word today, bless the rest of the day. We pray in Christ's name, amen.