Well, good morning and welcome to Christian Life Academy. And this morning is the second Sunday of the month, so we are once again on the subject of Bible study, interpretation, how do we read and understand the Word of God. So, I'm hiding behind a pole. I'll move over a few inches. So, as we think about this, as believers, God has given us his word, and so we are people of the book, people of the word, and so we want to study it, we want to understand it. So, by way of review, briefly, as we read the scripture and study it for ourselves, our goal in doing so is to arrive at the divinely intended meaning of the text. Our goal is not to get at what does it mean to me or what did it mean to these people, but rather what did God mean by this text. To do that, we've talked about various methods of interpretation that we use to get there. We start by looking for the literal sense of the text, the grammatical literal sense. What do these words say? What do they mean? What do the sentences mean? What are the ideas? How are they connected to each other? What is the historical and literal context of this passage, and so we want to arrive at what does the text literally mean from a grammatical standpoint. And then we moved on to talk about what we called Christological literalism. We want to know what this text means in the context of redemptive history. How should this text be interpreted in light of the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ? How is it connected to Christ as the central figure in all of scripture and all of redemptive history? And so we talked about various methods of interpretation that help us with that, typology, and analogy and prospological reading of things like the Psalms and the Prophets. But we're going to move on this morning to the third sense of the text that we might get as we study the scripture. So the first sense is the literal sense. The second sense is the Christological sense. And the third sense is the moral sense of the text. And this is where we usually jump too soon, right? Because this is where we're asking the question, How should I live in response to this text? So we've gotten to the point of application right now. And this is where we usually want to go too soon, right? We want to go, what am I supposed to do with this? What does this text mean to me? How am I supposed to respond to it? But we have to do the first two first. We have to do those first two steps before we get to application. The first two steps are really the process of exegesis, and now we're moving on to application. Now, anybody heard the word exegesis before? Okay, so the word exegesis is a compound word of two Greek words that literally means to lead out of. That's what exegesis means. It means to lead out of, and so the idea is that when you come to the text, you analyze and study the text so that you pull out of the text what is there. The opposite of this is isogesis. It has nothing to do with the word isolation. It sounds like it, but it's not even spelled the same. It's spelled with an E, not an I. Isogesis, again, a compound word in the Greek that means to lead into, and so that's when you come to the text and you impose on the text your preconceived ideas, agendas, biases, etc. We don't want to do that because when we do that then we're ignoring God's divinely intended meaning in the text. So we want to do exegesis. We want to pull out of the text what God put into it. So we have to do that first before we can apply it to our own lives. Once we know the grammatical sense of the text, the Christological sense, then we're ready to move on to this phase of application. There are a couple of errors that I want us to avoid as we think about this, just sort of review and leading into application. And the first one is what I'm calling impressionistic reading. You know what impressionistic painting is, where a painter paints a scene and he doesn't really paint the details, he just gives you an impression of a sunset or whatever. Impressionistic reading of the text would be when we read the text too quickly and we don't slow down and do the careful, diligent study of the text through exegesis and instead We just get an impression of the general sense of the text, and then we want to run straight to application. We don't want to do that. We want to slow down, take our time, do the hard work of diligently studying the text before we move to application. The other thing we want to avoid is confirmation bias. This is where eisegesis often comes in. I have an idea. I have something I believe or something that I want to say and so then I go to the Bible to find a verse to support what I want to say. I heard a pastor once say that this is using the Bible the way a drunk uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination. We want to use the Bible for illumination, not just to support ourselves and our own ideas. And the third error that we want to avoid, which is very, very common today in American churches, is this idea of a fresh word. We want something new, something that nobody else has said. We want to hear from God. We want to hear a fresh word from God. Now, this is very popular in evangelical circles today, but it's really rooted in Roman Catholicism and mysticism. There's a practice that comes from the Benedictine monks known as Lecto Divina. This is divine reading of the text. And so this is a practice where you read the text and then you pick one word or one phrase or one idea in the text and you meditate on that idea or that word for an extended period of time. And then you begin to pray over that word and verbalize whatever just comes into your mind. And then you contemplate, you listen to God, and you write down those things that have come into your mind. This is not diligent study of the text. It's more mystical than that, right? It sounds very spiritual and pious. Well, you're all caught up in your mind and books and studying, and I just want to listen to the Spirit. The truth is that God has told us to come and reason together with Him and to work through the text of the scripture. What you'll hear people say is, well, the Spirit revealed to me, or what I heard from God this week was, or maybe just so bold as to say, God told me such and such. A few years ago, there was a very popular book out by the name of Jesus Calling. Anybody familiar with this book? Alright, so the woman who wrote this book, this is the process that she used, and when she was in that phase of lecto divina, of listening, she just wrote down whatever it was that came into her mind, and these are the words of Jesus calling to her. I mean, if that's the case, then this is inspired text, just like the scripture. but it's not, right? So, we want to avoid that. This is a completely subjective way of handling the scriptures, and we don't want to do that. We want to be careful to study the text, to understand the literal sense of the text, the Christological sense of the text, and then we can move on to application. So, when it comes to application, I'm just going to show you how I do it. This is, every time I study a text, this is how I think about application. And I take this primarily from 2 Timothy, so if you want to turn in your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 3. There are other passages of the scripture that we could go to that say basically the same thing, but it's fairly well summarized here in this passage in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Timothy is in Ephesus. Paul has left him there at that church. And there's a lot going on in that church, and so Paul's instructing him on how to pastor the church there. And Paul tells him, beginning in verse 16, we have this wonderful passage that we're familiar with, 2 Timothy 3, 16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. And then into chapter four, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching. So what's going on here is in the previous verses, Paul has reminded Timothy of his familiarity with the scriptures from his youth. And now Paul is telling him that, he says in verse 15, that from your childhood you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So all of the scriptures, including the Old Testament, which is what Timothy primarily had at this point, reveals the gospel of salvation, the good news of Christ, right? And then Paul gives him this teaching about the nature of Scripture, that it is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness, that it accomplishes this work of bringing the person who studies it to maturity and equipping them for every good work, for living the Christian life. Now he's not saying that every text in the scripture does all of these things, but he is saying that scripture as a whole does these things. It's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction. And then in verse two of chapter four, he tells Timothy to preach the word and to use the word to convince, rebuke, and exhort his listeners. So there are seven terms that Paul uses here, and I condense these down to four headings. that when I look at a text of scripture, this is the question I ask, what is this text doing? I want to study it and get at what do the words mean, how is it connected to Christ, and then I want to ask, what is this text doing? Is it teaching doctrine? Is it reproving false teaching? Is it training or giving us instruction in how to live the godly life? Or is it correcting ungodly behavior? Is it testing the state of my heart? and giving me proof to prove whether my heart is right before the Lord or not? Is it convicting my conscience of sin? Or is it exhorting and encouraging and motivating me in some way? So those are my four headings, teaching, refuting, training, correcting, testing, convicting, exhorting, and encouraging. And so I always ask myself, what is this text primarily doing? Some texts will do more than one thing. but they all usually are primarily doing one of these four things. If we look at chapter 3, verse 16, he says that the Scripture is profitable for doctrine. This is teaching of scriptural truth, of God's truth. For reproof, which is rebuking or refuting false teaching. So, we have another one of these chiastic arrangements that we see in the Scripture. The Scripture teaches correct doctrine, refutes false doctrine, corrects false practice, teaches correct practice. And then in chapter four, verse two, we see that it also convinces, rebukes, and exhorts. So when it convinces, this is the testing of the heart. This is legal courtroom language that talks about putting something to the test or providing proof or evidence. And when it when he says to rebuke others. Again, this is courtroom language that means to accuse someone of being a criminal. So this is convicting the conscience of sin. And then exhorting means to animate or to move someone, to motivate them, move them to action by encouragement or comfort. So when I come to the text of scripture, I always ask, what is this text doing? It's doing one of these four things primarily. When we think about teaching or reproving, teaching correct doctrine or reproving false doctrine, one of the things that we want to keep in mind is that without right doctrine, right living is impossible. Now it's possible to have right doctrine and live wrongly. as a hypocrite, but it's impossible to have wrong doctrine and live rightly. This is not going to happen. So, what the scripture does, in large part, is teaches us what we are to believe concerning God, man, salvation, etc. If we turn over and look to 1 Thessalonians, a few pages over, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, We have this passage that we're familiar with beginning in verse 13 where Paul is instructing them regarding those believers who have died and how we are to think about this. And so Paul says in verse 13, but I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. And then he goes on to instruct them about what they are to believe about those who have died in the faith and what will happen at the return of Christ. So Paul says they're ignorant. They don't know. They don't have right doctrine. And because they don't have right doctrine, they're going to sorrow incorrectly. They're going to grieve wrongly. So in order to help them grieve properly, he teaches them right doctrine. So that now they have the right belief and understanding, so now they can grieve properly. So this text is teaching correct doctrine. Now it's encouraging, right? It's comforting. He says down at verse 18, therefore comfort one another with these words. Texts often do more than one thing, but primarily Paul's goal is to teach them correct doctrine concerning the resurrection so that they will grieve properly. Correct doctrine is like learning your multiplication tables as a kid. It doesn't seem fun, necessarily, when you're learning your multiplication tables, but it's important. It becomes very important and very practical later. After you've memorized the multiplication tables, then you see all the places throughout life where you're going to use that knowledge. Correct doctrine is sort of the same way. You need to learn the doctrine and then you will have it there to help you later as you deal with the difficulties of life. So, as we come to text that we can see, oh, this text is clearly teaching a doctrine. We can ask ourselves, well, what truth is being taught by this text? If we've discerned that this is what the text is doing, it's teaching, or it's correcting false doctrine, we can say, well, what truth is it teaching me? Or what error is it telling me to avoid? What error is it reproving? And we can ask ourselves, well, why will this be important? Why is this multiplication table going to be important later? So those are the questions that I primarily ask when I'm looking at a text. I go, what is this text doing? Looks like its primary concern is to teach doctrine. Then I go, what doctrine is being taught? What doctrine is being opposed? Why is this doctrine important? If we come to a text and we think, we ask, what is this text doing? And we say, well, this text looks like it is training or correcting our behavior. Then we can ask questions like, well, what is this text telling me I'm supposed to do? And this is where we usually want to go when we think about application, right? What am I supposed to do? We don't often think of application as what am I supposed to believe, but that is one aspect of application. But some texts are just telling us to do things, right? What am I supposed to do or what am I not supposed to do? How am I supposed to do the thing that I'm supposed to do? In 2 Timothy 3, where we begun, Timothy is in Ephesus, and Paul is warning him earlier in the chapter that there are false teachers, and that these false teachers are teaching things that are not true. They're actually opposed to the truth, he says in verse 8. They're resisting the truth, and the problem is that these false teachers are likely going to gather a crowd. He says in verse 6, for of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins led away by various lusts or desires, right? So, they're gathering people to themselves. He says in verse 13, but evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived. They're deceiving others. These false teachers, they're teaching falsehood, but it's working in the sense that they're gathering a crowd to themselves. So what does Paul tell Timothy? He says, don't do that. don't adopt their methods, don't adopt their doctrines. Instead, you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of. So he tells Timothy what to do. Cling to the scriptures, the scriptures that you knew from your childhood. Cling to the truth of Christ that was revealed to you in the scriptures. And then he tells Timothy how to do it as well. In verses 16 and 17, he's telling Timothy to cling to the scriptures with confidence knowing that these scriptures are profitable for these various things. So this text as a whole is teaching us some doctrine, but primarily what this text is doing is warning pastors, is telling pastors and elders, don't do this, do this instead. So that's the sort of application that this text has. It's a text that is training our behavior and correcting false behavior. If we come to a text and we ask it, what is this text doing, and we determine that this text is testing and convicting, we'll know that because we'll see that in the text we're given standards or marks by which we can measure our own heart and our own practice. The text will offer us some measure against which we can evaluate ourselves to see if our heart is right with the Lord. And so we can ask, well, how is this text aiding me in self-examination and helping me to measure my own heart? Or how is it convicting me of sin or of the neglect of my duties? One text that we've looked at recently that does this is in James chapter four. As we just recently finished preaching through the book of James, it's a passage that we're now familiar with. But James chapter 4, James asks, where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain, you fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously. But he gives more grace, therefore he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. What is this text doing? It's offering us a measure against which to test our own hearts. Do you find yourself in conflict with others on a regular basis? Well, is that because you are selfishly pursuing your own desires rather than the good of others? Are you praying and not receiving answers to your prayers? Well, is that because you're praying amiss? You're praying selfishly, trying to get things from God to spend it on your own selfish desires. Are you a friend of the world and an enemy of God? This text is giving us measures against which to examine ourselves. Now there's a Christological connection. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Where does that grace come from? It comes through Christ and the forgiveness that is found in him in the gospel. So there's our Christological connection in this text, but this text is primarily asking us to examine our own heart and how are we conducting ourselves. Are we conducting ourselves in selfishness and self-pursuit or are we thinking of the good of others, the good of the church as a whole. So that's a text that is testing and convicting us of sin. The final one that I want to spend some time on before we look at a few more examples is this idea of exhorting and encouraging. And I think this is a difficult one for us because I think we get a little bit uncomfortable sometimes with the idea of encouragement from the text. Now, we're okay with the idea of comfort if we're grieving the loss of a loved one or things of that nature, but there are passages that we read where Paul is encouraging believers that they have done certain things well. And sometimes we look at these a little bit askew, particularly, you know, in 1 Corinthians or someplace, and we go, man, the church in Corinth was really messed up. How can Paul be so thankful for them or encouraging them in this thing that they're doing right when they were doing so many things wrong? And so we're uncomfortable with this idea of finding this application of encouragement in the text. And I think one of the reasons for that is because we often have a deficient view of the gospel. and of grace. We think that we need to work harder and so what we want from the text of the scripture, what we want from our Bible study or from sermons is we want the text to tell us what we're doing wrong or what we need to do right or what we can do. We want something to wrap our hands around that we can accomplish. Most of us by nature I think are legalists. We want to know what is the list of things that I can check off and say, I've done it. I've lived the Christian life. I've done the things that please God. But the gospel is almost scandalous in the grace that it offers to us. And Martin Lloyd-Jones once commented that if a preacher is never accused of being too lenient and preaching too much grace, then he's probably not preaching the gospel correctly. But we're a little uncomfortable with that, I think. So we need to be willing to let the text of Scripture encourage us and exhort us in the grace of God. So when we come to a text and we determine that's what's happening here, this text is encouraging, it's motivating us with love and grace, then there's some questions that we can ask. We can ask, You know, what exhortation is being given? How is this scripture motivating me to live a godly life? And we can ask, well, how does that challenge me? Because it's difficult for me to accept that type of motivation. I want a different, more legalistic or hands-on approach to motivation. You know, what sort of encouragement is being given and how can I be motivated by that to godliness? Because the truth is, is that The gospel does warn us against error, it does warn us against disobedience, it does exhort us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but primarily the gospel motivates us with grace. It motivates us with the love of Christ for us, to which we are to respond, right? So we need to look for that. Turn and look at Romans chapter eight as an example of this. Romans chapter eight, And this is a passage that we're all familiar with. Romans 8 verse 28, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of a son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called, whom he called, these he also justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified. Now we can come to this text and we can go, wow. There's some doctrine here. This text is teaching doctrine, and it is. But what is this text primarily doing? This text primarily is encouraging. It's encouraging us to know that all things work together for good to those who are called according to the purpose of God. So are you called? Are you one of the elect, saved by the blood of Christ? Then this text is here to encourage you, not primarily to teach you doctrine. The doctrine will help encourage you, but its primary purpose is encouragement. Here's another one that is sort of interesting. Let's turn back to Deuteronomy chapter 16. Deuteronomy chapter 16. Now here we're being given the law, right? This is the book of Moses. We're being given the law of the Old Covenant. And this is a law that has to do with the Passover. And so in Deuteronomy 16, beginning in verse one, it says, observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God. For in the month of Abib, the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. Therefore, you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd in the place where the Lord chooses to put his name. You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it. That is the bread of affliction for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life, and no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any meat of which you sacrificed the first day at twilight remain overnight until morning. You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates which the Lord your God gives you, but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. There you shall sacrifice the Passover at twilight at the going down of the sun at the time you came out of Egypt. And you shall roast and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses, and in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it. So here's a passage in the Old Covenant that is instructing the Israelites in how they are to observe the Passover. Now we can do the exegesis on this text and see what is this text literally telling them. It's telling them how to keep the Passover, where they are to keep it, and some of the regulations of how they are to keep it. And then if we move on to that Christological literalism step, and we go, how is this connected to Christ? Well, Christ is the Passover lamb. He is the final sacrifice of the new covenant. So as believers, members of the new covenant, we look back on this text and we go, this text is not telling me to keep Passover. No Christian is keeping Passover. because Christ is our Passover lamb who has been sacrificed for us. And so this text connects to Christ. It's typological, pointing forward to him. And we have the ordinance of the Lord's Supper and the New Covenant that is rooted in the Passover meal. And so we can look at this text and we can see how it directs our mind to Christ. The Passover had to do with their exodus out of bondage and slavery in Egypt. Christ, our Passover lamb was sacrificed, has to do with our exodus from the bondage and slavery to sin into the freedom of Christ. And so we can see these connections. But what is this text doing primarily? Was it even instructing them primarily in how they were to observe the Passover? I don't think so. I think the primary thing that this text is doing is encouraging them. This text is encouraging them and therefore is encouraging us to remember how you were brought out of slavery into the freedom of God. This is a text encouraging us to remember the source of our salvation. It was God who brought them out of bondage in Egypt. That's why they keep the Passover. It was Christ and His sacrifice on the cross that freed us from bondage to sin, and therefore that's why we observed the Lord's Supper. So this text is encouraging us to remember the source of our salvation. That's the primary purpose of this text, and so that's where we ought to go with application. Another text that we can look at in John chapter 13, it's very clear in this one. John chapter 13, Jesus is speaking and he says in verse 34, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you that you also love one another. So here's a command, go do this. This is a text that is training us in how we are to live. But then in verse 35 he says, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Here's a test that has just been given to us, something to measure ourselves against. Am I truly a disciple of Christ, a follower of Him? How do I know that? How do I measure the state of my heart? I measure it by asking myself the question, am I loving other Christians the way I'm supposed to? If I'm loving other Christians, it's a witness to the world that I truly am Christ's disciple. So here's a text in which Christ is instructing us, training us for righteousness, love one another, but it's a text that is also giving us a test to measure ourselves against, to see, am I truly living up to my calling as a child of God? So when we think about application, at this point in our Bible study, we want to ask ourselves, we've studied the text, we've done the work of exegesis, we know what the text says, we know what it means, how it's connected to Christ. And now we want to ask, what is this text doing? What is God's intended purpose with this text? How is He using it in my life? Is He using it to teach me some doctrine or to correct some false belief that I might have? Is He using it to train me in what I am to do as a Christian or to correct some false behavior that I might have? Is He using it to help me test my heart, to convict me of sin, or is he using it to encourage me, to motivate me to live the Christian life? When we think about application, we need to be clear on what application is not. When we come to the text of scripture to apply it, application is not asking, well what does this text mean to me? And that is where application often goes in modern Bible studies. But that's not doing the diligent work of finding out, what does this text mean according to God's design? What did God mean by this text? Application is not adding something onto the text that isn't there. It's not going, well, here's what this text means, now let me figure out some way that I can apply it in my life. and we're just bolting something onto it that's not there. No, we're doing our exegesis. We're trying to draw out of the text what is there, and the application is part of what we're drawing out of the text by asking, what is this text doing? So application is understanding the text, both in its grammatical literal sense and in its Christological sense, well enough to discern what is God's intended meaning and what is his intended purpose. To draw out of the text what God put into the text, both for us to know and for us to do and believe and be encouraged by. That's how I primarily approach the question of application. If we get this backwards and we come to the text and we don't do the work of exegesis first, grammatically, literally, what does the text say? Christologically, what is it saying? And instead we just jump to application. What am I supposed to do in response? What we end up doing is we end up missing where we should see Christ in the text and we see ourselves there instead. So the obvious one is the story of David and Goliath. We read the story and we go, okay, David slew this giant, so what giants in my life am I supposed to slay? Anybody ever heard sermons like this? And Goliath had brothers, and so there are five giants I have to slay in my life. No. If we do the work of studying the text, grammatically, literally, this is a story about David, a shepherd boy who becomes king. He defies the Philistine. But if we look at the Christological connections here, we go, David is a type. Christ is the antitype. Christ is the good shepherd who is the king. Christ is the one who slays the giant of sin. We're not David. Christ is David. We're David's brothers hiding in the background, cowering in fear because of the giant. we need to be delivered by Christ. So if we don't do the work of exegesis and of looking for the connection to Christ, we'll stick ourselves in the story and make ourselves the hero and miss what the text is actually doing. So we have to be very careful that we do these steps in the proper order. Next month we'll return for our last session in this series on Bible study, and we're going to look at the final step in this fourfold sense of scripture, which is the eschatological sense of scripture. How does this scripture give us hope for the coming of the kingdom? And so that'll be our final step, and then we'll move on to some other things. But let's close this morning in a word of prayer.