ABC Sampler: Fundamentals of Theology

So anyways, I'm making excuses about being out of practice because I've got stuff that might be enough for two hours or for 30 minutes. We'll see how it goes. But what I'm doing for this first, say, 50-minute session is an excerpt from the Fundamentals of Theology class. So that's a class that's morphed over the years. When I was an Ambassador College student, it was a two-semester, full-year class taught by Dr. Ward. So we had to be on our toes. It was something else. When ABC started, the doc would come up and do a two-week module where he'd call it and give the essentials. And then when it was getting difficult for him to come up, I took over it and condensed it down to just one week, which was much to his dismay because he thought, Oh, you're leaving all this stuff out. But I told him, Dr. Ward, you don't realize how much we cover that in other classes. Like when I went to Ambassador, the doctrines class was very different than it is today. So, Daris McNeely covers the fundamental doctrines and includes a lot of what's in Fundamentals of Theology. But I say that speaking, you might wonder where'd that come from. I always introduce it by saying, as a discipline or field of study, it actually began with the Protestant Revolution. When the Protestants separated from the Catholic Church, they had this idea of saying, Well, what is the basics of what we believe? If we're separating from them because we don't agree with some of their doctrines, what is it we believe? What's the essence? So that's where it came from. And it's based on those words theology comes from Theosyn-logia.

And it's usually taken to mean study of God. I've read some textbooks that say it could be translated as speaking about God, which I kind of like, or thinking of God. And then Fundamentals are those basic building blocks. What's the essence? Dr. Ward always shaped his class around what he called the great questions of life. And it's funny, I memorized those questions thinking, Oh, it's got to be these questions.

Later I talked to him, he said, Oh, sometimes I had six questions. Sometimes I had 10 questions. But they're all great questions, which I'll read them as I have it. First of all, is there a God? Now, I studied a textbook on Fundamentals that described this as the problem of God. That made me laugh. God is a problem? But it's basically dealing with the question of is there a God? And then the questions after that would be, well, who and what is God? Who and what is He? And you move on to, well, what about man? Who and what is man? We don't usually ask the question, is there a man? Because that kind of settles out. And then what's the purpose? What is God working out here? And why are we here? The reason I'm dealing with those is, well, you have to answer at least the first couple questions. And one thing I should say is mixed in with that, although I don't always separate it out as a question, is if there is a God, what is His communication with us? Is there a communication of God to us? And I think we think we know the answers. We believe there is a God and that this is His Word. So I'm not going to spend time proving that there is a God. I hope you have done that in your minds. I'm guessing you have or else you probably wouldn't be here. And similarly, is the Bible God's Word? But it's worth thinking about because you can't, well, you could, but it's not the best logic. We say, well, I know there's a God because the Bible says there's a God. Then you say, well, what if there's not? What if people made it up? The reason I say this is I believe what we need to do is establish, independently of the Bible, in our minds, to be convinced that there is a higher power, that there is a God, and prove it besides just having the Bible tell us there is a God. And I think that's not hard to do. And you've probably done studies that could convince you that it takes a lot more faith and trust to believe there's not a God than that there is. It's just the logic doesn't hold up to say there's no God. So again, I'm not going to walk through the proofs. And I believe the Bible is God's Word. And I'm going to get into hermeneutics and exegesis, but I'm trying to back into it so we've got a good background.

Trying to answer that question about God and about His Word, we tend to look at two main avenues. One is called natural revelation. Natural revelation refers to what can be learned and discerned from what's around us. Oh, sorry if I walk around. I forgot. If you're watching on a webcast, welcome. Glad to have you here. We've got a number of people in the room, but glad to have all of you also.

Natural revelation is describing how humans normally get knowledge. That can include a fancy word like empiricism. Think of empire, but with schism at the end. And that refers to knowledge gained through your senses. Case, touch, hearing, seeing. So there's nothing special. We all use those things. And also, you could say experiential learning is sometimes added to that. Like, how do I know a red circle on the top of my stove is hot? Because when I was a kid, I touched it. And, okay, experience tells me that equals that. So we could also add reasoning. You can take bits of knowledge that you put together and reason and get other knowledge. It's still coming from the senses, but it's not from some different source. That's often referred to as logic. At ABC, I spend most of a day's class talking about syllogisms and deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. So we can put these things together, and that's all part of natural revelation. The other area to go is if you have revealed knowledge. Or, on the counterpart to natural revelation, is sometimes called special revelation. That refers to what is made known because a higher power makes it known. It's something beyond what we can learn physically, which is why sometimes you use the term metaphysical. Metaphysical makes you think of the X-Files and other weird TV shows. It comes in that way, but it's something that you couldn't get on your own. So what's revealed knowledge? Well, we think of... what do we think of? I'm looking for the obvious answer here. Revelation, but Mr. Boucher is holding up his Bible. So we think of the Bible as God's revealed knowledge, but for just generalized thinking, we don't have to limit it to just that. Muslims would think of the Qur'an. Other people might think of anybody that's a messenger from God. In my notes, I wrote David Koresh, which I'm thinking some people in this room would recognize that name, but probably a lot wouldn't. But there are others. The Reverend Sung-Yung Moon, remember when he was around. So, a man sent from God. I want to just be clear that we can use the term, even though some people would claim to have special revelation that don't.

But the Bible is God's revelation. Why am I spending time on this? Because if we go through the reasoning to believe there is a God, and that this is his communication to us, we can answer all the other great questions of life from what's in here. Am I right? Say, who and what is God? It's in here. As a matter of fact, we would say we're only going to believe what is in here and not take something that's not. What is man's purpose? Why did God put us on earth? It reminds me, somewhere on a shelf I've got a little blue booklet that says, Why were you born on it? And we look to this for answers to that. So, once we take those first steps, we're convinced we believe there is a God. And, like I said, I'm not spending time on that, but it is worth remembering. One of the greatest, most important proofs of that is faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So, we can't see God, but our faith is evidence. So, we don't want to discount that as an important part of how we know there is a God. And similarly, how we know the Bible is God's word.

Now, this is to set up the fact that, once we accept the Bible as special revelation, how do we use it? It's not like a mathematics textbook, where you start with chapter 1, and you learn the principles, then you go to chapter 2, and you build on those principles. It could be a little bit tricky, am I right? But we can use it, and we have training to help us do it. Now, I want to separate... We see the Bible differently than a lot of people who call themselves Christians. I keep thinking, I want to make this more interactive. Could I ask a question? Can you think of a way that we consider the Bible differently than the typical Protestant or Catholic or whatever other flavor Christian? Our understanding comes from divine revelation. Without that, we wouldn't know anything. I'm going to come back to that as a super important point. Not the one I was getting at, but probably more important than the one I was getting at. Yes, ma'am? I found that a lot of people who call themselves Christians don't use all the Bible. That is the point I was getting at. We see the Bible as equally authoritative. But we should be aware, as we're studying theology and the fundamentals, that if you're discussing something with someone that's not in God's church, they might see a different view of it. They consider it to be sort of a spectrum of authoritativeness. So, at this end, as the most authoritative, would be basically the Gospels.

The apostolic writings, they call it. And the reason that's considered the most authoritative is we don't have anything written by Jesus Christ Himself. We've got words. We've got somebody else wrote down what He said, and I think that's what Jesus intended. But whereas we've got letters written by Paul, where He says, I, Paul, the Apostle, I'm writing to you folks at Corinth. We've got letters from James, the brother of the Lord, who says, but we don't have anything where Jesus says, hey, I'm Jesus, and here's what I'm writing to you. So, the most authoritative is by the Apostles. So, you've got the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John. Then what's considered next most authoritative in their minds are the epistles of Paul. Why do they like the Paul's epistles so much? Well, because they misinterpret them to say the law's done away.

Because Paul wrote so much, so we see that, then we move into what we call the general epistles. Especially, they love 1 John and 1 Peter. James, not so much. And actually, as you're going through this, you'll find some books of even the New Testament are considered less authoritative. Some, like, Martin Luther famously said, the book of James is all full of straw. He didn't like that because it talked about obeying the law. And things like Hebrews and some of the others, even Revelation. A bunch of allegory. Adam Clark famously said, I can't understand it, and I don't think anybody does. But I think he was wrong. Why does it matter? And I should say, next after that would come the Old Testament. Because a lot of people think the Bible contradicts itself. If there's some scriptures that are more authoritative than others, then where you see a contradiction, you say, well, if what I see in Leviticus disagrees with what I think Paul is saying, I go with Paul and I throw out Leviticus. Am I right on that? But what do we believe?

Okay. I left out historical writings. Some churches give a lot of weight to papal bowls and church creeds and declarations, even though they'd rank them lower than the Bible. Well, what we believe is what it says in 2 Timothy 3.16. I am going to turn to some scriptures for this. I hope this is the one I wanted.

2 Timothy 3.

We quote it so much at the beginning of the school year, it comes out by memory then. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. All scripture. We don't believe the Bible contradicts itself.

And if it all is authoritative, as an aside, I'll mention, we could say the Bible has one main point. Now, there's a lot of variety in the Bible, but if you had to try to say one main thing the Bible is about, what would it be to you? John? Become like God. Okay, become like God. I want to refine that even more, because I'm borrowing the way Dr. Ward taught it, and when I'm in doubt, I like to go with Dr. Ward, even though he is a man and not faultless like any of us. But what I'm getting is Hebrews 2, verse 10, where it refers to bringing many sons to glory. Now, we need to become like God, and now I say, if we're brought to glory, that's becoming born into the family of God. And I think the Bible is about that. I've heard some people say, if you wanted a single word, it could be salvation. Saving us from our sins, from ourselves. The Bible is all about how to become more like God and be born into His family. So it's a unified message, wonderful message, that we love. Okay, so it's authoritative, all of it. It's God's Word, and if we're convinced of that, then we want to use it as a tool. While we're in Timothy, it's worth... Second Timothy 2, 15... No, that's not... Oh, there it is. Sorry, wrong book. Be diligent. I like the old King James said, study. Since I'm a teacher, I like study to present yourself, approve to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. So we want to work with God's Word. And the church, for a while, we were using the phrase labor in the Word quite a bit. Brightly dividing the Scripture, or putting it together, using it properly to get the right interpretation. And that's leading into these two theological-sounding words that I've got, hermeneutics and exegesis. Most of you have heard those words before, am I right? Some of you could probably teach a lecture on them, and some would say, what in the world? I was not embarrassed, but I was surprised when I learned hermeneutics comes from the word hermeneuse, which is based on the word hermes, the Greek God. The Roman equivalent was Mercury, the messenger of the gods. But we're not going to talk about Greek theology or any of that, but it is the idea of interpreting the message. Hermeneuses means interpretation. And so, hermeneutics refers to using a set of rules to properly understand what the Bible is teaching. And there's three main rules I want to talk about today. And then, within the framework of those rules, exegesis, it's based on the same word that the word exit is based on, going out. Exegesis means to lead out, or to bring out the meaning that's there. There's another word of something we don't want to do when we're dealing with Scripture, and that's isogesis. That would be spelled E-I-S-E-G-E. Isegesis refers to bringing in, or we in English like to use the word reading in the meaning that I want it to have. So, I've got a thing I'm convinced of, I want to find it in the Bible. The most blatant example I can think of is the old joke I heard of an old minister back in the 1920s. I'm bad at jokes. But supposedly there was this fashion with the girls, women in his congregation were wearing this type of hairstyle where they tied their hair up and a knot on top was called the top knot. And he wanted to find a scripture in the Bible to show that they shouldn't be wearing those top knots. Some of you old timers remember what he found.

It's where Jesus was giving the, I think, all of that prophecy, and he said, you know, the time comes, those of you on the house top come not down to get your stuff. And so he just read that part of it where he said, top knot come down and based his whole sermon on that. That's Isegesis. Okay, I want to get rid of this hairstyle. I'm going to find something in the Bible where those words are together. And people have been doing stuff like that as long as we can remember. We don't want to do that. We want to bring out the meaning that's in the Bible. So let's talk about three rules for hermeneutics. First rule is, sorry, I forgot your name. Dave. He mentioned God gives us understanding. I'm going to just abbreviate, but let's talk about the Holy Spirit. Now, in this case, we in God's church see it a little bit differently than most who call themselves Christians. We say this is the first and most important thing. And that is, proper understanding of God's Word requires God's Holy Spirit to lead to understanding. And we don't just make that up. If you turn to 1 Corinthians 2, we see the main basis for that. 1 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse 9, Ah, so one of the things I like to do for classroom is I can have my coffee mug and I can stop and swig. First time I tried doing that during a sermon, my wife told me, that doesn't work. Don't do that. But I can do it in class. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, As it is written, I has not seen nor ear heard. Natural revelation doesn't work, nor is entered into the heart of man. Inductive and deductive reasoning doesn't give the truth. I has not seen nor ear heard nor entered the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us.

Revealed knowledge through His Holy Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, just the deep things of God. What man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him? That's the basis of our teaching, that being human involves having a spirit. That Mr. Armstrong called the spirit in man. It's not a real catchy name, but it's what's here in this scripture. The spirit in man makes us different from animals. Even as man knows the things of a man by the spirit in him, even so, no one knows the things of God except the spirit of God. That could have been translated to say, except by the spirit of God. We have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God that we might know the things that we've been freely given. Let's drop down to verse 14.

This is the number one rule. To understand the Bible, the Holy Spirit is required. Something fell off the speaker up here. I'll let Josh work on that. Let me give you a couple of other scriptures that are worth knowing. One is Jeremiah 31. In verse 33, God says, I'll put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. That's in a millennial prophecy that God was giving to Jeremiah. I always like to joke, which I think it would get tiring, but luckily I get a new set of students every year to tell my old jokes to.

He's not like a cardiac, thoracic surgeon where he cracks open your chest. Then he doesn't take a Sharpie and start writing his law literally on your heart. What Jeremiah meant is God, through the Holy Spirit, gives us understanding of his word. He puts his law, his way of doing things, into us. By heart, it could mean our mind.

I'm going to add 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12, where Paul said, We see through a glass darkly. I think that's the Old King James. We know in part, but we will know as we are known. Even with the Holy Spirit, we still don't get everything. There are things we just don't know and can't know. In the next session, I'm going to talk about Ezekiel's vision. He saw these caribbeans, and he describes it in such a way that I still look at it and say, I still don't get what this looks like. That's one of the most basic, easy things. Even with God's Holy Spirit, we need to acknowledge our limitations. We have potential for error. It's good for us to admit that there are things we don't know, not that we don't want to know. We can learn, but it's also good to be humble and say, maybe I don't know as much as I should. Hopefully God will help me know more. Anyways, the second rule of hermeneutics. The Bible interprets the Bible. I'll write this out more, even though you probably couldn't read it if you were right up here. The Bible is the key to understanding the Bible. What we need to do is use a scripture that is more clear and more easy to understand to interpret one that might be less clear, not the other way around. I thought of an example as I was going through this. If you have your Bible open to 1 Corinthians still, if you look in 1 Corinthians 11, or chapter 11, verse 5, I thought of this because it's a passage of scripture that does seem to confuse people. As a matter of fact, let's start in verse 4. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 4 says, Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. So take your hat off when you pray. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, dishonors her head. That's one and the same as if she were shaved. So just on the surface, he said, what is this talking about? Well, we've got to have head coverings. Men aren't supposed to have head coverings. Women should have head coverings. And there are Christian churches that they practice that. Okay, is that what it means, though? Well, I want the Bible to interpret the Bible. And I don't think we're hung up on this very much because if you just drop down to verse 15, it says, If a woman has long hair, it's a glory to her. For her hair is given to her for a covering. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone here. But, okay, a woman has long hair that's given to her for a covering. And it said earlier, a woman should have her head covered. So if verse 15 weren't in this chapter, we might be confused. We might be caught up with the others where I've got to put a doily on my... I've seen various things. And I don't mean to put anyone down because I've seen some stylish, nice looking head coverings.

But the point is, the Bible here interprets for us clearly. And Paul seems to be saying women should have longer hair and men should have shorter hair. At ABC, we get into a discussion later in the school year about how long is long. And when we talk about dress and grooming and all that, there's still questions we might have. But when it comes down to this, the Bible interprets the Bible. The Bible, I think, does not contradict itself. We're going to get to that a little bit more later. But we want to use the Bible to understand the Bible. Like I said, and in doing so, we want to avoid using one scripture. Especially if it's one of those not-quite-so-clear scriptures. We don't want to use it to establish a doctrinal conclusion.

We don't want to say, well, again, we could get into Isagesis if we say, this translation teaches it the way I want it to teach it. Whereas all the others don't. So you understand there's various translations of the Bible. And a lot of us like nice, new, modern ones. Some of them are really good and effective. How much do I want to... I'm not an expert on translation and canonization. I've read just enough to be dangerous. But we understand that some translations do word-for-word. Let's try to establish this Greek word means this word in English. And sometimes, because of the vagaries, you have to supply words to give the full meaning. Other translations are more idea-for-idea. And I believe the King James and the New King James are word-for-word. Whereas the Revised Standard Edition, I believe when it came out, was meant to be idea-for-idea. Which can be good, as long as you have the right idea. But if you don't have Rule No. 1 working for you, you might not have the right idea. Okay. And then there's the New International Version and the New Revised Version are based on a set of transcripts from Alexandria. Whereas the King James were based on the ones from Antioch, the Received Text.

Sorry, I've got this in my notes, but I don't think I want to get sidetracked any more than this. The other thing, the third rule is what we call the unity of the faith.

Okay, that's...and that comes from Ephesians 4, verse 13, where Paul is describing one spirit, one baptism, one faith.

But I would turn to John 10, verse 35. Actually, I'm not sure if I need to turn there because I want one basic phrase, but I brought a Bible that can actually turn the Scriptures in.

Yeah, in the latter part of this verse it says, "...to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken." And that's the part I want to get at. The Scripture can't be broken. The Bible does not contradict itself, is what I'm getting at. Okay, the Bible, you know, it fits together. It has one message. And if it appears to contradict itself, say, I read this Scripture and I think it says this, and this other Scripture seems to be saying the opposite, where is the problem?

I didn't set that up very well. I'm out of practice. If I think this Scripture means this, and I think this other Scripture is telling me the opposite of this, which Scripture is at fault? Neither Scripture. Where is the fault? It's with me. I must be misunderstanding something if I think they're contradicting, because the Scripture can't be broken. Jesus Christ said that. There's a unity of the faith.

Now, some Scriptures we might need to look for, why do I think it's contradicting that one? What am I missing? Maybe I need to add. But we could say, I don't think the Bible is going to contradict itself.

So, if I've got, the Holy Spirit is guiding me, the Bible interprets the Bible, the Bible won't contradict itself, then I want to go to three rules of Isegesis.

Okay? No, Exegesis. Don't let me say the opposite. That's bad. I told you earlier why that's wrong. Actually, I knew these, and then I heard Len Martin sum them up in a way that I thought was pretty clever. And he said, this is the game he used to play as a family. He called it, What? What? And then, so what?

And that actually is a clever, handy way to remember these things. Okay? So, when I say the first, What, that refers to, What does it actually say? Okay, What do the words on the page mean? Okay, I'll spend some time on that.

Well, let me explain what the What's are, and then I'm going to back up. Okay, What does it say? Number two, which is also What, is, What did it mean at the time it was written to the audience to whom it was written? Like Paul's epistles. It's very clear who he wrote them to. You know, the congregation at Philippi is what the book of Philippians was written to. Well, Paul wrote it and said it to them. What did it mean to them? But you know what? We're not them. So, the last, So What, is, Well, what does it mean to us? What good is it for me to read someone else's mail from 2,000 years ago? Well, there is a lot of good, but we've got to answer that question. So What? Now, let's back up and look at some of this. And I'm trying to pace myself. This is where I wanted to spend most of my time for this session.

Let's talk about the What does it mean? Okay, What does the passage say? Now, I'm guessing everybody in this room can read and write. Okay, so that's not an issue. Not a question at all, right? Or is there a reason that it is an issue? Sarah's nodding her head. Does anybody volunteer? What's the point? Where does the issue come up in determining what the passage says?

Translations. Translations. The Bible was not written in English. Moses did not read or write English. Neither did Paul or Daniel or any of those guys. The Bible was mostly written in Hebrew, Greek, and a smattering of Aramaic in the Old Testament. And so well-learned men translated it into English.

But there could be a challenge of, okay, did they translate it exactly the best? Now, personally, I believe God was involved. And when I see the story, especially of the King James Bible and how we got the Bible in English, I think God worked miraculously to get us the Bible. But even so, there are questions where He said, You know, you've heard me a lot of times, I'll say, I think this would be better translated this way, and other translators that agree. So we do what's called word studies sometimes. What is this word that Paul used in Greek, and how do we understand it? Is it the best in English? And there's a question even with English words.

Now, I should be more straightforward, but do words have more than one meaning? Lots of words do. Get a dictionary and look up the word heart. It's a muscle in our chest, but it's also all these other things, or the word run. I was surprised. I thought run is really simple. But a run can be me. It can be a verb. It could be running a program. It could be a stretch of water. For some reason, in southwest Ohio, a lot of streams or creeks are called runs. And so on and so on. So words have more than one meaning in English. Certainly they did in Greek, and really did in Hebrew. Hebrew had, Mr. Melodirim, about as many words as Greek, or even less than that. That's an approximation, I think, that you're materially accurate. Okay, so it's a lot fewer words.

Yeah, so the word might mean this here, but this here. So we want to be aware of that. And how long did it take to write the Bible? It was largely put together over the course of a couple thousand years, we think. And words can and do change meaning. They have in English some words have changed quite a bit in my lifetime. Yes? Okay, that's one of the best examples.

And have you ever seen the old cartoon, The Flintstones? Flintstones, meet the Flintstones. At the end of that song, we'll have a gay old time. I watched that growing up, and what does that mean? It means happy fun. Not anymore. You can't use it that way much anymore, because nowadays, if I got together a group, let's have a gay old time, they would probably think something different than what Fred and Wilma and Barney were doing, right?

I shouldn't leave out Betty, or Pebbles, and Bam Bam, and Dino. I love making pop culture references. Okay, so words change meaning. They have in my lifetime in English. Think the time from when Moses wrote until Jeremiah wrote. They were both writing in Hebrew, but words change meaning. So there's this challenge of trying to get the right one. Oh, I've got a good example of words having more than one meaning in 1 Peter 1.

1 Peter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again. That word begotten is guanal.

I'm not sure of the Greek, but it looks almost like that in Greek, if I were writing Greek letters. Okay, begotten us again, get anaganal. If you look to verse 23 of that same chapter, having been born again of corruptible seed, it's the same Greek word, anaganal. So which is the correct interpretation? Begotten again or born again? Both are correct interpretations of the word.

We've done this a lot. We used to have a booklet called... Now, what was that called? Just what do you mean born again? I remember when I was a teenager, me and a friend used to be not the best attitude. I remember him saying, I want to go to my friends at school and say, I'm not born again and neither are you, because we understood born again to mean something different. We believe we are conceived when we receive God's Holy Spirit, that we'll be born when we're resurrected or transformed in the moment, the twinkling of an eye. But it's the same Greek word. Okay, so, as I said, we have these differences of words, and I want to add into this grammar and syntax. Grammar is punctuation and spelling, and a syntax refers to how the sentence is put together.

Different languages use it differently. Mr. Miller, in German, does the verb usually come at the end of a sentence, or am I remembering that incorrectly? It can come anywhere. Oh, so that's even harder. Yeah. One of the problems with English is that, because it's not a declinated language, you have to have pretty much a syntax of subject or object. Yeah. Where in German, I can put the object first, if I want to emphasize what was it to take an example over who hit the ball. Ah, yeah, so that's a syntax.

That's how you put it together in different words. And so, English is different than Greek and Hebrew. And so, and I'm no less about Greek than I do of Hebrew, but they say sometimes the syntax determines the correct way to translate a word. If it had been put in a different way, a different translation would be possible.

And that can get confusing, although sometimes it helps us get to the bottom of these detailed doctrinal matters. It's one thing I learned when I started being in council meetings, when they were going through a doctrinal paper, and it finds out the syntax says this has to be the right translation, not that. I can't remember any examples off the top of my head, but I remember a light bulb going off going, oh, that's something I didn't realize before. So these things come into the what.

What does it actually say? What does it mean? Oh, I wrote down an example. I've heard this idea of grammar and syntax and words. You've seen the thing about when you're studying animals, and they say, the great panda, you know, the black and white. It eats, shoots, and leaves. But you could also, if you use different meaning, different sentences, it could be, it eats, shoots, and leaves. It sounds like someone comes in and fires off around and then exits. So, same words, different grammar and syntax. Anyways. Okay, I'm going to run out of time here. So, lots of questions in the what, and that's a vital part of exegesis.

But then there's the what, not what do the words mean, what did they mean to the person or group to whom they were written. And that comes down largely to context. There's two types of context we want to consider. One is what's called the literary context, meaning within the passage as written. So, you know, if the passage is talking about such and such, then what it meant probably is interpreted as with such and such. I thought there's an example in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 1, in my notes. You could use the phrase, now concerning this, and Paul uses that.

1 Corinthians 7 is talking largely about marriage and sexual relations. And he starts off by saying, now concerning the things of which you wrote to me, it's good for a man not to touch a woman, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so if Paul had just said, it's good for a man to never touch a woman, that might have a very different meaning to, he said, now concerning what you wrote to me.

So this is telling us that somebody wrote to Paul, and they were suggesting that men and women shouldn't touch each other. So that tells us Paul wrote the words, it's good for a man not to touch a woman, but he wasn't giving a command. He's about to address a question or correct a wrong assumption.

So the context is vital, and we would look at all of what's in 1 Corinthians 7 as being within that context, where Paul's basically explaining proper marital relations and things like that. Okay, there's also cultural and historical context. The background in history, the culture, times were different back then, am I right? So people lived differently. One of the classic examples is in Deuteronomy, it says that you have to put a guardrail around your roof.

Now, most of you probably live in homes similar to mine, where it would be pretty silly to go put a guardrail around your roof. Why would you do that? But in that culture, they had flat roofs that were used as living space. The equivalent now is if you've got a deck in your backyard, and especially if it's off the second story, you should have a guardrail around that. It's showing concern for others that it's a safety thing. So in that context, that's what it means. Another one I was thinking, I think I learned this from Scott Ashley.

There's a passage in the Gospels where you're familiar with the story. A woman who's a sinner comes, and she washes Jesus' teeth with her tears and wipes his feet with her hair. You all familiar with that? But before she starts... Yes? Tears? Tears. Sorry. Who knows what I might have said? But before it gets to the actual crying and washing, it says this woman came and stood at his feet behind him.

And then started washing his feet. We always think of sitting at a table where he's sitting here. How does she stand at his feet behind him and get at his feet? But then, Mr. Ashley showed that it was common at formal dinners, they would sit at what's called a triclinium with tables that are about this low and recline on cushions. So they'd be sitting and leaning on one side, and their feet would be behind him.

Someone could easily walk up behind someone, and the feet are what's there. It's like, oh! That's a totally different cultural phenomenon. And what I'm glad we don't do... The only time I like to recline eating is when I'm stretched out on the couch with a bag of chips.

Sue wants to wash my feet while I'm doing it. I'm glad you all laughed. She would laugh, too, if she hadn't left the room. Okay, so the culture and the social context makes a huge difference for us. Another thing that comes into this is... And here's where I actually brought a hand out, because I didn't want to take too much time. But understanding what's called literal versus figurative meaning.

What's a figure of speech? I'll tell you what. I didn't know. Yeah, actually, you could share these with families or whatever. But basically, it's a list of figures of speech and literary styles in the Bible. So if we're looking at something that we have the question, do I take this as literal, or is it a figure of speech? And there's a lot of figurative speech in the Bible. A figure of speech is something that... The meaning of the phrase is different than its literal meaning. There's ones we use all the time. Like, later on today, Sue and Connor and I are driving for home, and I might come up to Connor and say, come on, Connor, it's time to hit the road.

Now, what does that mean to him? Get in the car. It doesn't mean go out and hit the road because you could smash up your fingers. Connor is playing piano. You could learn to play by ear. Right? You listen to it, and that doesn't mean playing by ear doesn't mean I'm going to bang on the keys with my ear. So in English, we have a lot of these figures of speech.

They did in Hebrew. They did in Greek as well. Matter of fact, well, it just popped into mind. It's funny, we sometimes will see what we call Hebraisms, and I may or may not be pronouncing that correctly, but something that's a figure of speech in Hebrew that they still use that style in Greek. One of is to call someone the son of their most prominent characteristic. Like, you're familiar with Barnabas? Does anybody know what Barnabas means? Remember? Son of encouragement. Son of encouragement. So if I call him the son of encouragement, what does that mean? It means he's encouraging as one of his greatest characteristics.

Okay, that's a figure of speech. Like, James and John were referred to as sons of thunder. That doesn't mean that Zebedee, their father, was thunder. Sometimes wondered if it was saying something about that, but it was making a comment on their characteristic. And so there are things like that that come out in the Bible. So we want to look for those. You've got to list some of the common ones. A simile or a metaphor. Those are easy to identify because they're saying something is this or like that. Words of association. I'm looking. I'm supposed to be done in about three minutes.

I might go a little bit long and cut the other one short, but I'll let you read some of these personification, euphemisms, hyperbole. Hyperbole is one of my favorite words. Like Jesus said, consider the plank that's in your eye. The Greek word is literally a big wooden beam instead of getting the speck of sawdust out of your brother's eye. We also, when looking at these, want to look at the various literary styles that the Bible has. And there are, over the near 2,000 years of writing, it was written in different ways.

Like history. A lot of the Bible is history. It's one of my favorite parts because it's pretty much straightforward. It means what it says. It's using mostly normal language. Then there's prophecy. Prophecy, well, it's straightforward, but it's often written as poetry. And it's communicating in a different way because it's a communication from God. And that's one of the things I like to emphasize when I teach the classes on prophecy, that they're not just predictions of the future. It's largely God trying to communicate something about what he's thinking or what he wants.

So that's what prophecy technically is, even though it often does include the future. We've got books that are, well, a subtype of prophecy is apocalyptic writing, which sounds really cool to say. But it's messages from God, usually about the future in very dramatic language. Poetry is important.

And most of the prophetic books were written in poetry, the wisdom literature, like Psalms and Proverbs and Job. But poetry in Hebrew is not like poetry in English. I'm still having trouble getting my mind around it, largely because I don't read Hebrew. But to write poetry in English, what do we normally want to do? Rhyme. Rhyme. Okay, what is a rhyme? Think about when you were in the second grade and you had to learn what the word rhyme means.

Similar sounds. Okay, similar sounds, especially at the end of the word. With English, we have rhyme and usually meter, the rhythm. So one of the most famous poems, roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.

Okay, that's poetry to us, right? Hebrew doesn't do it that way. And Hebrew, the way I like to say it is they rhyme ideas or rhyme meanings. And the term they use for that is parallelism. So instead of having roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, so the words sound alike, it's getting the meaning to be alike. And they do that in different ways. So a typical one might be synthetic parallelism, where it's okay, same meaning but different words.

Sometimes they do that in an escalating sense. So it means the same thing but more so, and then more so. But then, what you'll see in the Proverbs, there's what I love to say this, even though it's hard to say, is antithetical parallelism. So antithetic is the opposite of synthetic. So I'm going to say this and then the opposite. And Solomon did that all the time. I'm trying to think of a good example. You know, a diligent man will eat well, but a lazy man will starve. So you've got these two opposite ideas. So it's still a type of poetry.

And then I should also mention what's called a chiasm. That's usually spelled in English. C-H-I-A-S-M. And that's sort of a bigger stair step, where you've got a central idea and you have these parallel parts that sort of build up. And it's common in the poetry and sometimes other areas. I think sometimes people can try to see chiasm where they may or may not be there, but you see that in certain passages.

And Clint Porter, a friend of mine back at the home office, loves to study those. And he's given me some good lessons on how you can see that in the creation account and such. Anyways, moving on, other things. We've got parables and allegories. And we've got the epistles, the writing. Okay, I need to move into... All of this is still the what. What do the words mean? What did they mean to the people at the time?

But where the rubber hits the road for us. Another turn of phrase. So what? What does it mean to us? Could there be something meaningful for us and something that was written 4,000 years ago to a bunch of people in a desert? Could there? I think yes. The question is, how do we know there could be? Why is something meaningful to me that was written to somebody living in ancient Egypt or Palestine or... Okay, I knew Mr. Miller would he? It's the principle of it that applies. I mean, something that I believe deeply is I learned way more about how to run an organization.

Looking at the nuances of the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, or the promised land that it and my master's degree in organizational management. I agree with that. And the underlying reason is... It's true. And people are still people. Our circumstances might change, our clothes change, our tools and our toys change, but people are people. We don't change except by God's Spirit working in us. So those ancient Israelites were a lot like us. And I know this is basically a thing, but that helps us answer the so what question. Because those underlying principles will still matter. So we're looking for the underlying principle. Let me give you an example. If you turn to 1 Corinthians 9, because my Bible is already open to 1 Corinthians.

But I'm going to tie it back to something that was written in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 25 and verse 4, God had Moses say, "'You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.'" Don't muzzle an ox while it's treading the grain, which basically is humanitarianism. The ox is there doing work, and he's got that food there that he can smell. Don't be cruel to him. Let him eat. And God cares about animals, but there's something more to it. In 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 9, it says, "'It is written in the law of Moses," Deuteronomy 25, 4, "'You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.'" And then Paul says, is it oxen God is concerned about?

I think this is a place where I think it might have been better translated. It is only oxen, because I think God does care about oxen, but I think he's more concerned about people. So Paul said, does he not say it all together for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt this is written, "'That he who plow shall plow in hope, he who thresh in hope, and be the partaker.'" If we have sown spiritual things, is it a great matter if we reap your material things?

And he's making the case that, okay, it's okay for elders to be paid, to have a paid ministry. And he expounds it a little further in 1 Timothy 5, verse 17. The reason I wanted to quote this one, because we see three scriptures where we pull out this message. 1 Timothy 5, verse 17, Why? The scripture says, So Paul is looking at an underlying intent, sort of like I said, the underlying intent of building a guardrail around your roof, is to keep people safe, so we can apply that to my deck in my backyard.

Although my deck is only this high off the ground, so I don't have a guardrail. But if I were higher, I would. Okay, one of the last things I want to comment on is, a key in this, as we're looking for what does it mean to us in trying to get that underlying intent, is to discern between temporal instruction and timeless command. A temporal means a particular time and place. And a timeless command means it applies pretty much anywhere. Let me give you an example. If you look at Romans 16 and verse 16, greet one another with a holy kiss.

I just got an image. I remember taking class. Rod Meredith was teaching my epistles. He said when he was younger, he thought a holy kiss was like oils coming out of your lips or something. It was funny the way he said it. Does that mean we're required to kiss any Christian when we see them, and what makes it holy or not? No, it's a matter of that was the greeting, and it probably means a kiss on the cheek like we see in Europe today.

It means a warm greeting as is customary in your society. If Paul were writing this today, he might say, greet each other with a hug or a hearty handshake. I think that's what it means. That's the timeless intent. Because we're Americans. We don't kiss each other. Well, we kiss each other, but not in the same setting or place. Let me move on before I get in trouble.

Another example in Exodus 35 verse 3, I won't turn there, but there's a command that says, Kindle no fire throughout your dwellings on the Sabbath. Now, that seems problematic. No fire. Ultra-Orthodox Jews say, okay, you can't have your furnace on, or you have to have it lit beforehand and leave it. You can't flip a switch because there could be a spark. Well, is that what Moses was saying?

We look at the context and look for the understanding because it doesn't say that in any other command about the Sabbath. In the context of that, he would just given all this instruction for building the tabernacle, including a lot of smelting metal. We see that as the temporal instruction is, hey, you're building the temple. There's a lot of work to do. You've got to have these big fires going to melt metal. But stop doing it on the Sabbath.

Even building the tabernacle is not more important than keeping the Sabbath. But we don't see it as meaning no one anywhere on planet Earth can ever strike a match on the Sabbath. This is a case of using other, more clear scriptures to interpret one that we have a question on. I'm linking back to some of these earlier rules. Sorry if I'm talking fast, but that's because I've gone about 10 minutes over.

The last thing I have on this section is responsibility for elders in the Church. Some of us in this room have that responsibility. All of us are going to have a responsibility to teach in God's Kingdom. It's important for us to have these things in mind as we teach and to be humble about it. I wanted to quote 2 Corinthians 1, verse 24. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 24 is where Paul said, We don't have dominion over your faith. We are fellow workers for your joy. So that's what the ministry is meant to do to help people understand, to help them to learn, not to have dominion. James 1, verse 3 says, teachers will receive a stricter judgment. That's all of us as we use the principles of hermeneutics and the rules of exegesis. We want to be careful about bringing judgment on ourselves if we don't do it carefully. That's where humility plays a big factor. I want to wrap up with Titus 1, verse 9. Back page after this is blank. That means we're almost to a break. Titus 1, verse 9. Holding fast the faithful word as he's been taught, this is an instruction for elders, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. So we, I want to emphasize the first part of that. All of us want to hold fast to the faithful word as we've been taught, and have sound doctrine from properly understanding and interpreting God's word. You know, right about now, a bell should ring in the back of the room. Those of you who have been to ABC are familiar with the bells that sound like a doorbell. So I think we're scheduled to take about a 10-minute break. Do we want to make it like 8? I'll catch up the time, because I do want to get into that passage in Ezekiel. But we definitely want to take a break, and then we'll come back and get into it then.