your Bibles if you will to 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15. You can probably quote this verse by now, I hope so anyway, or at least know the context of the verse. But we've been going through the series on how to study the Bible. And last week we dealt with the allegorical method of study. And tonight, as I mentioned last week, we're going to go into the literal method of And in 2 Timothy 2 in verse 15, the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now, as we have looked at that verse, as we've studied that verse, we have found that it's not only speaking of reading the Word of God, and reading it's a wonderful thing, we should be reading our Bible, but studying it is what we've been called to do. We are to be students of the book. And we know that we are who we hang around, and that's what a lot of people would say, a statement that people would say, you are who you hang around. Well, the reality is you are what you take in. And many times we complain about what's going on in this world, and we complain about the way that people talk and the way that people think, and we would ask ourselves, well, how could anyone think that way? It's because that's what they are continually and just constantly, every day of their life, they're taking it in, whether it's through social media or news outlets, whatever it may be, that's what they're taking in. Can I ask you a question tonight? What are you taking in? Is Sunday the only time that you allow the Lord to speak to your heart? Is it, uh, is it only when you come through these doors or are you in the word of God? Uh, oftentimes, and that's how we need to be. We need to be in the word of God and a studying to show ourself approved. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. We'll get into this message tonight and to talk about the literal, uh, method. Dear heavenly father, we come before you tonight. Lord, we're just so thankful for all that you're doing. We thank you, Lord, for your goodness and your grace to us. Lord, I pray that each and every one of us would just draw closer to you in this area of study. I pray that we would see, Lord, exactly what you would have us to see and learn from this passage tonight and from this study. Lord, we know that there are many people out there in groups who are trying to pervert the word of God. Lord, I pray that we would stand true on what you have given to us and Lord, that we would study it to show ourselves approved unto you as your word commands us. Lord, I pray that if there's anyone here or under the sound of my voice on the live stream that does not know you as their savior, that they would come to know you this evening. And we ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen. Well, last week we discussed, as we were studying the schools of interpretation, the allegorical method. And if you remember, and I'll repeat the summary statement, if you will, of the allegorical method, but it was defined as this, the method of interpreting the literary text that regards the literal sense as a vehicle for a secondary, more spiritual, and more profound sense. It can be also said this way, it is looking further than what the scripture intends for you to look. It is trying to dig into something that's not there. It's saying that there is a meaning in scripture and in our minds we say, well, I think it means this. Well, we can only say that if the scripture truly does mean that. If the scripture truly does say that, We need to allow the scripture to speak for itself. And we talked about that last week. And I love studying. I love word studies. I love textual studies and geographical studies. I love those things. But we have to keep ourselves, and I'll go into this a little bit later. We have to keep ourselves between the guardrails of scripture. You cannot allow yourself to fall off either side or else you will find yourself taking scripture completely out of context. You have to stay with what the Bible says. And here's what it means for us. So though that statement about the allegorical method, though it sounds like a nice statement, it's a gateway to a trap. if you truly understand what they're trying to do. It's not the way that Scripture as a whole should be interpreted. Are there allegories in Scripture? Of course there are. There are parables and types and things like that. There are. And we see those all throughout the Word of God. But the Bible is to be taken literally unless The Bible itself gives us grounds to go into the allegorical. We must remember that in the context of all scripture. And that leads us to the literal method of interpreting the scripture tonight. And this method is in direct opposition to what we studied last week, the allegorical method. So first of all tonight, I want us to notice this, the definition of the literal method. The literal method of interpretation is also known, and if you do studies on how to study the Bible and those things, you're going to find this term, the grammatical-historical method. Now, there's a lot of letters when you put grammatical and historical together, and there's a little dash there in the middle, but it is quite simple to understand what the grammatical-historical method is. It is this, it takes into account grammatical considerations, things of grammar, and also historical considerations. It doesn't matter what historians try to tell you, what the Bible says happened and where the Bible says cities were and where the cities that the Bible says were there, They were there. This world may say, well, there's no proof of that. All I need is what the Bible says. That's the proof right there. I can guarantee you when we get to heaven, if the Lord doesn't show us proof more than the pages that he's given to us here, if he doesn't show us the actual architectural proof or whatever in that area, when we get to heaven, we'll know, yes, it was true. We should know it now just as we will know it then. Why? Because the Bible says so. Don't trust a a professor over the Word of God. When studying the Bible, we must preach the whole counsel of God. We cannot try to make our ideas fit somewhere in the Bible. We must read it for what it says and we must take the truth of the Bible and apply it to our lives. As I mentioned many times, if you just take one verse or one passage or just a piece of scripture, you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. But when you put it into context of Scripture, what you're going to find is the Bible says one thing. There's many applications of Scripture, but there's one interpretation of Scripture. And we must study the Bible We must read it as the inspired and preserved Word of God. If you take into consideration the whole Bible, literally, grammatically, and historically, you will come to the conclusion that leaves no room for man's ideas, but rather it gives us over to God's wisdom. And that's what we must follow. The literal method is defined this way. Remember that great statement, if you will, that we define the allegorical method in. The literal method is this, the method that gives to each word the same exact basic meaning it would have in normal, ordinary, customary usage, whether employed in writing, speaking, or thinking. Whatever the word means. That's what it means. That's the literal method of interpreting scripture. As I mentioned last week, when the Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, it means whosoever. It does not mean whosoever of the elect. It doesn't mean, well, these people, but not these people. It means whoever calls upon the name of the Lord, they shall be saved. That's a promise from God's word. But it also, when it says, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, it means all have It's a literal word of God. A man by the name of Ram put it this way, the literal method of interpreting the Bible is to accept the basic literal rendering of the sentences, unless by virtue of the nature of the sentence, phrase or clause within the sentence, this is not possible. What he's saying is this, if the Bible leads you to see it allegorically, then do so. But if not, you take it literally. It's pretty simple. There is not a whole lot to say about the literal method as far as the definition other than that. What we read in the Bible, you take it as literal unless itself tells you this is an allegory. So move past the first point quick tonight, amen. So first of all, we saw the definition of the literal method. What the Bible says, It's what it says. I want you to notice number two tonight. The definition, or no, the misconceptions of the literal method. There are some misconceptions. There are some that claim to be ones who study the Bible literally. But it's not the literal school that we're talking about here. The literal method is quite different than that. What you'll find is that no matter what someone says or does, whether right or wrong, there are going to be some who completely disregard it and some who call you a heretic, but there's going to be others who take what you say and they're going to exaggerate it. Uh, they're going to, uh, take what you said completely out of context. And here's what I mean by that. There are people who are completely, this is what they say. They're completely for the literal method. And, but yet they, they take what they, uh, what they say is a literal method and they fall into what they call letter ism. We'll get into that in just a moment, but remember that term letter ism. There are people who take the literal method, and rightfully so, the literal method is what keeps you between those guardrails of scripture, but some are so bent on the literal that they refuse to see anything Well, just as with the allegorical school, when we were talking about studying the Bible that way, just as if you saw everything as some mystical thing and some deeper meeting and some deeper truth and those things, well, that's going to cause you to fall off the road on this side, go through the guardrail and off the cliff. Well, if you do what they're doing and you don't give any leeway to any allegories, you're going off the cliff on the other side. So you have to keep it between the roads. How do we do that? By allowing the Bible to speak for itself. By not looking for something that the Bible doesn't say. It's also, it's called letterism, but it's also called hyper-letterism. literalism. No matter what the term is, they always have a way of adding that hyper to the beginning of it. Amen. There's Calvinist and then there's hyper-Calvinist. You say, well, what's the difference there? They don't even know. So how would I know? Amen. But there is all these terms that are thrown around, but there's these ones that only see the literal, it's hyper-literalism or letterism. And here is what is remembered with the allegories. We say they look for a deeper, more profound truth. Well, the hyperliteral and the letterist believe that nothing in scripture is incidental. And therefore, all of the grammatical, here's what they say, all of the grammatical phenomenons of scripture have a meaning to the interpreter. Now, you may say, what does all that mean? Here's what it means. They believe that every letter of every word, the individual letter, stands for a word itself. So you have to take a word and you have to figure out, okay, so if you have the word love, okay, what does L stand for in this verse? What does O stand for? What does V stand for in E? And then they can find the deeper truth. Sounds a lot like the allegorical method, but they say that they're only for the literal. Now, these are things that you're going to run into and you're gonna find people that are in these snares, if you will. What they're saying is that each letter of the word must be taken literally and studied to find out what that letter stands for. What's the problem with that? It's not going to tell you what the Bible says. It's going to tell you what man thinks. It's going to tell you what man's mind wants you to hear. The Bible says what it says. God said that he would preserve his word. It says forever. Oh, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. He promised to preserve it for a thousand generations, it says there forever. The Bible talks about all over. And when you read the book of Psalms, it talks about the word of God standing forever and being in heaven and all of these things. What mankind has done to a fault is they've allowed their study to take them much further. than what God intended and because of that, we have modern perversions of the Bible today. You go into a Bible bookstore and of course you can find them at Walmart and any place that sells Bibles. You find so many different versions and people walk in and they have no idea what they're looking at. They don't know which one to get and if they were to ask someone, the person, that's there to help them. They're either going to just point them to whatever the newest one is or whichever one they use. There's no backing to it. So how did we get into this mess? People not studying their Bible the way they're supposed to be. So as we go through these studies here, and we've got a little bit of ways to go in this how to study the Bible, as we go through these things, I'm hoping it causes some guardrails to be formed in our minds to help us to realize there is a right and a wrong way to studying the word of God. I'm all for Bible study, and of course that's what this series is about, but the reality is when other men try to convince us that we need them in order for us to understand the Bible, we've fallen into the snare of Satan that he has used to entrap millions of people through Catholicism and other pagan religions for thousands of years. If we think to ourselves, well, I need man to explain the Bible to me, That's a problem. Are there helps? Of course there are. We've discussed those. We discussed Strong's Concordances and maps and those types of things. We've discussed those things and there are great helps out there, but not one time is anything that any man says supposed to be taken over what the Word of God says. We must study the Word of God. This has been seen in recent days with what is called numberism. A lot of isms when you try to figure out what people are studying and how they're studying. But religious people have tried to associate political figures and the number of letters in their name. to numbers like 666 or 777. Now, are there many times in the Bible in which numbers are important? Of course there are. There's a great study that you can find as far as numbers go in the Bible. I'm not talking about the book. That's a great study as well. But the number of perfection and those types of things, you can study that out. It's a wonderful study. When you're a hyper-literalist, what you're going to find is that these people, they try to look for these little clues, if you will, all over the place rather than just reading what the Bible says. Lord, help us. So first of all, we see the definition of the literal method. Second of all, we saw some misconceptions about the literal method. I want us to notice also this, some supporting evidence for employing the literal method. So how do we know? that this is the way that we're supposed to study. Well, obviously, there's all sorts of studies out there, is there not? There's all sorts of ways to study. There's different schools of study. There's ways that people will tell you, well, this is how you do it, and this is how you do it. So how do we know that the literal method, of course, giving ground to the allegories as the Bible allows us to, how do we know that that's the right way? Well, it's not hard to understand. This concept is quite easy, but many times it's the plain truths that we forget about. Many times we get so caught up on finding something that we've never heard that we miss the plain truths that are right in front of our faces. It's not hard to understand this concept, but when we forget about those plain truths, we fall into these strange beliefs and these doctrinal errors. The first proof of studying the literal is this, the literal meaning of sentences is the normal approach in every human language. Every one. There's not one human language that when you're speaking to someone, they automatically think you're talking in allegories. No, every language, it is normal to approach it in a literal sense when you're talking to one another. There has never been and never will be a language that does not interpret literally firsthand. Also, the majority of the Bible, now get this, the majority of the Bible makes perfect sense when you read it and you apply it literally, the majority of the Bible. Now, are there things in there that of course are allegories? We talked about the book of Ezekiel. We talked about the book of Revelation. There are things there that you wonder, what are they talking about there? But I'm talking about the plain truths in scripture. If you just sit down and you read the Bible for what it says, and you take it literally, this is what God's word says, and here's what it says, and here's what it means to me, it's going to make sense to you. It will. Of course, there are things that the Holy Spirit will show us as we read the Bible and as we interpret the Bible, as we study the Bible. It's a wonderful thing, but a majority of the Bible will make sense when you read it and interpret it literally. When someone sits down, if someone has a desire, they're searching for truth, and they were to sit down and read John 3, 16, they would have no question on what it's saying. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." They're going to know what that verse is talking about. Of course, there's supporting verses for that, and we would take people through those verses and things like that, but there are plain truths in the Bible that are there. The issue is, many people refuse to see them. Also the allegorical method rules out the literal method. But notice this, the literal does not rule out allegories. It doesn't rule out figures of speech or symbols or types. It just simply allows the context to dictate the literal or the allegorical method. Now there are Some things in life that you would say, well, I want to take a part of this and I don't want anything to do with that. There are things in life that we would say that with. But when it comes to Bible study, when you talk to someone and they say something like this, I'm the only one who can explain the Bible to you, run. When someone says the only way you can study the Bible is allegorically speaking, run. Don't listen to that. If someone says, well, everything in the Bible is literal, there are no allegories. Run from that as well, because there are. Allow the Bible to speak for itself. Remember how we said that the allegorical method is seeing everything as having some deeper meaning, and that left the authority and the meaning up to the interpreter. Well, the literal method of interpretation is the only check on the imagination of man. Our imaginations can run wild, can they not? We can read a scripture and based on our preconceived notions, we can say, well, here's what that scripture means. Well, reading it literally, it'll keep us in check. It'll help us to see that, wait a second, here's why we're not Calvinist, because Christ died for everyone. Here's why we know that we have the word of God, because God promised that he would preserve his word. Over and over again, we can find promises in the Word of God. How do we know that we can have our fellowship with God restored? 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's talking about our fellowship with God, not our relationship, that's only through the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but our fellowship. We know that, why? By taking the Bible literally. That's how we know that. This method of studying and reading is the only reason that we are able to combat false doctrines because many false prophets and false doctrines they will claim that the Bible means something different. I was talking to somebody one day I worked with and this he had just gotten out of Bible college if you want to call it that for lack of better terms. And I was working with him and he always had Bible questions and he wanted to talk about things and all. And being able to work with him we were able to have some conversations. And he would ask some questions and he would say, well what do you think this scripture means? And I would always say, well it's not what I think this scripture means, here's what the Bible says. And I would answer that way. And many times here's what he would say, well that's what you think. What I think is, and then he would go on into something else, and of course I would always remind him, it's not what I think. The Bible says, and I would fill in X, Y, Z, but he was trying to put in there what his thoughts were, and many times it's exactly what they will do because they have to change what the Bible means in order to fit their doctrine into it. But if we take the Bible literally, and only apply allegories as it allows us to, then we as Bible believers can stand up and unashamedly say, this is what the Bible says. We can do that by studying the Word of God what it says. Then I want us to see also, we're going to turn to some scriptures here. I want us to see some biblical examples of employing the literal method of interpretation. There are many reasons why we should, and there's many things of course that we just discussed, being a check system on our our imagination and all of that. But there are biblical examples as well. I want you to look at Ezra, or we are going to look at the man Ezra in the book of Nehemiah. We talked about this earlier in the week and then also I guess about a week and a half ago when Brother England was here in Nehemiah chapter 8. I'm going to get there eventually. Nehemiah chapter 8, and verse one through eight. I'm not going to read all of this, but just want to pick some things out here. Look at verse one of Nehemiah eight. And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate. And they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding upon the first day of the seventh month. And notice there in verse three, and he read there in before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday before the men and the women and those that could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. Jump down to verse five. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people. And when he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Jump down to verse, in verse, the end of verse seven. Caused the people to understand the law and people stood in their place. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. What did they do? They read what the Bible said and they told the people, here's what the Bible means. Here's what God wants us to know. It wasn't about, well, here's what is going to help us get ahead politically. Here's what's going to help us to get a bigger crowd and all of those things. No, it was, this is what the Bible says. And he caused them to understand the book, to understand the Bible. What was Ezra doing? He was saying, thus saith the Lord. This was 500 BC. What were they doing? the Bible. Also, turn over, if you will, to Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11, and look at verse 23 and 24. Matthew chapter 11, verse 23 and 24. We're going to see that the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ He spoke literally here and He talked about places. It says in Matthew 11, 23 and 24, Let me ask you a question, who was the Lord speaking to? Capernaum. Who was He speaking about? Sodom. How do we know that? Because that's what the Bible says. But the ones who are always searching for this, this deeper and more profound sense, they they would look at it and they would say the land of Sodom. I wonder what the Lord was really saying there. Well, here's an idea. How about we just realize that the Lord said exactly what he meant. And he talked about Sodom. Look at Matthew chapter 12 in verse 40. Notice here the Lord speaking of a historical account. It says, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He's talking about Jonah. They knew exactly what that story was. They knew that he was swallowed by that fish. They knew it was because of his disobedience to God. They knew that the revival that was sent across Nineveh when he finally got himself together and went there and preached what God wanted him to preach, and God showed great grace there. They knew that he was placed into that whale's belly. They knew it was three days and it was three nights, and they would have no question on what the Lord was talking about here when he said, so shall the Son of Man be in the earth three days and three nights. If you look back, remember we were talking about the gap theory all the way in the beginning, how each day of creation had to have represented 1,000 years, they said, not literal days. Well, they would look at this passage as well and say, now, what's the Lord really speaking about here? Where's He going to be for, get this, they would say 3,000 years. But that's not what the Bible says. It clearly says three days and three nights. It is that simple. Once you look at Matthew chapter four in verse four, some people say, well, some passages can be taken literally, especially speaking of the New Testament, but the Old Testament, well, there's some room there to kind of use our liberty, they would say. Well, look at Matthew 4.4. The Bible says this, But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. You know where that passage is taken from? Deuteronomy chapter 8 and verse 3. Let's turn over there. I'm going to take the Bible into context. Well, the Lord didn't have any problem quoting what the Old Testament said. Here in Deuteronomy chapter eight in verse three, I believe it is. Deuteronomy chapter eight in verse three, it says, and he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna, which thou knowest not, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Sounds like the Lord was taking those scriptures literally, does it not? Sounds like he knew what the Bible said. Well, of course he did. I mean, he was the Lord. Well, we are given this, and this is the word of God himself. Therefore, let's study it as such. Turn over, if you will, to the book of Acts, the book of Acts chapter 7. We're not going to read the chapter there, but as you glance through that chapter, what you're going to find is it's filled with literal events. Acts chapter 7. You're going to find that there was the stoning of Stephen there. You're going to find that Of course, Stephen, he had preached that message or accused those people. He had the speech there in the beginning of chapter seven and talked about Moses being delivered and a prophet being raised up and Joseph being sold into slavery. Acts chapter seven is talking about literal historical events. They weren't looked at as fairy tales. And they shouldn't be looked at as fairy tales today either. We should see these things How about the book of Romans chapter 5 and verse 12. Romans chapter 5 and verse 12. Romans 5, 12, the Bible says this, Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin. When it says by one man sin entered into the world, who is it talking about? Adam. That's what he was talking about. The one all the way back in the very beginning of creation there when Adam and Eve were on the earth and they sinned against God. There's talking about that these many years later. It was a literal happening. Look at the book of Jude. Book of Jude in verse five through verse 14. Jude chapter or Jude verse five and through, uh, verse 14, just read a couple of things here. It says, I will therefore, uh, put you in remembrance though. You once knew this out the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt afterward, destroyed them that believe not. What is, what's this, uh, this writer doing here? He's reminding them of a literal historical account that happened in scripture. In verse 6, it talks about angels. Verse 7, it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah. In verse 9, it talks about Michael the archangel. It talks about Cain. It talks about Abel. It talks about, in verse 13, raging waves of the sea, foaming out of their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam. It talks about all of these things. The Bible takes itself literally. We need to see that these things are literal events. I'm gonna say this and I'll be done. I truthfully believe that the failure in society, I'm talking about society as a whole. Now, we'll narrow it down to America just because I know that America has an abundance of Bibles. Now, I understand that not everybody owns a Bible, but there are a majority of of people in America because of our heritage that we have, at least know what a Bible is, or at least had a dad or a mom or a grandparent, someone that read the Bible or went to church, we'll narrow it down to that. But I truthfully believe that the failure in society has not been the absence of God's word. Because God's word is in our society. There are Bibles everywhere. But as a whole, I believe that the issue is not the absence of God's word, it's that God's word, even by believers, for too long has been treated as a book of fairy tales. Has been treated as just a feel-good book that gets taken to church on Sunday and placed on a shelf the rest of the week. Not studied the way that it should be. It's just full of what some people consider cute stories that make people feel good, but the reality is, church, this stuff is real. It's real. These things happened. They really did. They literally happened. And what hasn't happened yet, it will. Our Lord's coming back. Well, you've been saying that for thousands of years since He left. That means we're thousands of years closer to Him coming back. He is. He's returning. Let's study the Word of God literally, unless itself gives us the reason to depart from that. When you take the Word of God for what it says, and you don't allow man to have all sorts of perversions in your mind, what you're going to find is this, that when you're going through something, when you're going through a trial, when you've made it a habit of taking God's Word literally, the verse that says that His mercies are new every morning are going to mean a whole lot more to you when you know that His Word is true. When you're in the deepest, darkest trial, maybe you're going through a pain or a torment, if you will, and you read that passage in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, when it says, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. When you read the Bible as something that's literal, the actual Word of God, those verses will mean something to you. There's a lot of believers today who walk around defeated. Why is that? Because they do not read the Word of God for what it truly is. They don't see that this is where we get our help from. They don't see that this is the way that the Lord speaks to our hearts. Well, God hasn't spoken to my heart in a long time. Well, God's speaking, it's our ears oftentimes that are the things that are closed. Lord, help us. Let's study the Word of God literally, and let's understand that God has these things in His Word for a purpose, and He will guide and direct us based on what His Word says, not what man says. Amen?