Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast. Making theology central. Well, I did it again, ladies and gentlemen. Why do I keep doing this? It just kind of happens, right? I get ready to go live, and right when I get ready to do that introduction, I notice, well, do I say good morning or do I say good afternoon? Because once again, I think the other day when I did it was like 11.59 a.m. Well, today it was 11.57 a.m., so I guess I'm supposed to say good morning, For just a few minutes, it's 11.57 a.m. Central Time. It is Thursday, January the 23rd, 2025. And, well, I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. I think I don't even really schedule it but if you notice a lot of my broadcasts kind of happen around that 10 30 between 10 30 and 11 59 a.m. Central time now I sometimes I do one sometimes I do broadcast later in the afternoon but this sometimes kind of finds the time where I I kind of make myself you know I make my way up the stairs to the microphone and then I have something to talk about. So this is just kind of when it occurs. Ultimately, it doesn't matter when it happens since most people listen not live. They listen to this later on, you know, on a podcast app or wherever. So ultimately, it doesn't matter when I broadcast, but it does matter to me as far as the different times of the day or evening or night definitely has a different feel for And so I think some content works better at this time, some content works better at this time, or maybe I'm just overthinking it, which is probably the case. And speaking of overthinking, well, we're going to be, uh, hopefully I'm going to be causing you to do a little bit of overthinking here because, uh, maybe, maybe should, shouldn't we, should we call it overthinking? Maybe it's just thinking, maybe, maybe just trying to get you to it and really engage your mind. And I hope, I hope you are ready. Okay. Here we go, all right? Now, what I'm about to do is I'm going to put forth some questions. I'm gonna put forth some ideas. And what I want you to do is to be very, very, very honest with yourself. The things I'm about to say, if I phrase it as a question or if I just phrase it as a statement, I need you to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, does this make me uncomfortable? Does this make me feel like I need to defend? Does it make you defensive? Does it make you want to argue with me? I want you to ask yourself, if he was to ask and say these things at my church during the adult Sunday school class or adult Bible study, How would his comments, how would his questions be received? I really want you to answer this. How does it make you feel? And how do you think my comments that I'm about to say, how do you think they would be received in your church? I want you to, and if you want to answer it, that would be great. But I really want to know, because I'm going to say some things here. I'm going to phrase it maybe in a question form, maybe I will not, maybe it just be as a declarative statement. But however I phrase it, I want you to really think about how does it make you feel? Because for some of you, you're not going to like what's about to happen here. You're going to get very irritated with me. It's going to bother you. Long-time listeners, I'm like, well, that's typical. He says these kinds of things all the time. I've gotten used to it. People who may not be used to it, they're going to get very upset. They're going to get very defensive. In my estimation, in my perspective, and I could be wrong here, I feel that in most churches, I would be like, people would not like what I'm doing. They would be very upset. It would probably create almost a conflict, would probably break out at your church if I showed up and said the things I'm about to say. So are you ready? All right. This sets the foundation for everything we're going to be doing. Here we go. Yesterday, there was a school shooting in Tennessee. I believe it was in the Nashville area. A young girl was shot and killed. The shooter shot himself. And I think one other student, I think, was wounded. I don't have all the facts in front of me, but there was a school shooting yesterday. And immediately after, once the reports came out and news articles started being posted on maybe Christian websites or even non-Christian websites, you almost inevitably heard the praying for the wounded, praying for the victim's family, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying. A lot of discussion about praying after another school shooting. And I get frustrated when I hear this, right? So I kind of raised some questions. And of course, it did not make everyone happy. And of course, it's not going to make everyone happy now. So I would state something like this. And tell me if this bothers you, or if I would be basically booted out of your church. I'd be like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're going to pray? So a school shooting has occurred, and now we're going to pray? Is it not true that we are now about to pray to the very God who knew the school shooting was going to occur and did absolutely nothing to stop it, did not intervene in it, but now we're going to pray to that God to do what? Intervene now? what, bring healing to the wounded? I mean, we know he's not going to raise the person who was shot and killed to life. There's not going to be a resurrection here in this life, but he's going to heal. So, hey, the person who's dead, he's not going to raise them from life, but the person in the hospital, we'll pray that he will heal them. Oh, what's going on here? So, again, I would be the one raising my hand going, wait, so you want us to pray now after the shooting? And we're going to pray to the very God who knew the shooting was going to occur and did nothing to stop it and did not intervene, but now we want him to intervene. Now, we only want him to intervene in healing the wounded or bringing some kind of vague, subjective comfort to the family whose daughter was killed. And exactly how does that work? So it's like, okay, I'm God. So just try to understand this from an illustration purpose. So the God who did nothing to save your daughter, the God who did nothing to intervene to stop it from happening, that's the God now I want to comfort you. The God who could have stopped it, the God who could have prevented it, is that God now, I'm going to pray, will comfort you. So God's going to be like, well, I did nothing to stop it. I'm not going to resurrect your daughter. I did nothing to prevent it, but I'm here to put my arms around you. Wait, so you could have stopped it. You could have prevented it. You could raise my daughter from the dead, but you're not. But I'm supposed to have you now what? Hug me, figuratively speaking? Wrap your arms around me? My daughter is dead. I know, but I'm here to comfort you. Comfort, comfort, comfort. Now, see, if I raise these kinds of questions, I can already hear some of you getting very angry and getting very upset. Some of you will be very bothered. Yesterday, I raised some of these questions in a comment section under a news article, and oh, let me tell you, some people weren't happy. In fact, I immediately got basically what I refer to as Sunday school apologetics, where someone's like, you just don't know anything about free will. And I'm like, really, that's your go-to. Which version of free will are you referring to? Which one? Which one are you referring to? Libertarian free will? Irenaeus, Stratolian, the Augustinian free will? Maybe the free will version of Thomas Aquinas or the Franciscans? I mean, I could go on. Molinism. I could go through all the different views of free will throughout church history. Which one do you prefer? and whichever one you throw out there. And the argument was, you just don't understand free will because God never intervenes that would impact someone's free will. Well, if God never intervenes to impact someone's free will, then why do we pray? And God never intervened in people's free will in the Bible. I mean, oh, just so many theological issues. I'm just like, ah, what? But see, people get defensive because I'm raising some very difficult questions. And some of you don't even like the questions. So, I mean, just think about the situation. So, there's a shooting. Now, you've got to remember, right? So, a shooting occurs. Now, we can all agree on this. God, before the foundations of the world, knew that a school shooting would happen in Tennessee on January the 22nd, 2025, and someone would die. He knew that before the foundations of the world because he's all-knowing. We also know that the God who knew it was going to happen is omnipresent, present everywhere at all times, so he was present. Not only that, he's omnipotent, so he could have stopped it. He could have prevented it. He could have done something in such an ordinary way where you would not even have known God was involved. The gun could have gotten jammed. The gun could have not fired. The gun could have malfunctioned. or someone could have found out that the student had a gun before anything happened and stopped it. There's a million things that could happen that you wouldn't even know God was involved. It doesn't require the parting of the Red Sea. It doesn't require fire from heaven. Could have been small little things that could have prevented it, but it didn't. So the student walks in, kills this girl. And then Christians say, pray. Pray to the God who did not stop it and allowed it to occur. And we're not even getting into decrees. We're not even getting into that, whether God decreed it. We're not even getting into that theological issue. We know he allowed it. We know he did nothing to prevent it. So either now you have to believe God could have intervened, but chose not to intervene. Well, if he chose not to intervene, now you're going to pray for him to do what? Now intervene? Well, he chose not to intervene there, but now you're going to ask him to intervene after the fact? The whole thing becomes confounding and confusing. Now, asking these kinds of questions bothers some of you greatly. And again, I could ask a million other questions in regards to God knowing, God not, well, we could get into open theism and does that even fix anything? Or does that become more problematic? Does God intervene? Does God not intervene? What does it mean, comfort the victims? What does that mean? That's so subjective. And again, the God who allowed your daughter to die is the God now you're gonna look to for comfort. That's so confounding and confusing, right? That's like, that is so, so difficult to wrap my mind around at times. Now, these questions I know makes people very upset. And the reason I'm asking these questions now is this fits perfectly with the broadcast we did a few days ago, may have been even, I don't know, a week ago, where we talked about Christianity and questions. And we went through a whole list of things about Christianity and questions. And I made the argument that Christianity needs to be the place where hard questions can be asked. But for the most part, the church does not like hard questions. We don't like that. We want certainty. We want it simple and easy. We want a Disney-fied version of things. We don't want to face reality. I think I said something along these lines at the end of that broadcast was that asking hard questions about scripture and life is not a sign of weak faith, but of a strong desire to know God more deeply. The Bible invites us to wrestle with its truths, even when they are difficult or uncomfortable. Churches should foster environments where these questions can be asked honestly, creating a space for growth, healing, and a deeper understanding of God's purposes. I think something along those lines is how I ended that broadcast, or pretty close to the end. The church needs to be the place where you can ask these questions. But if I was in church and I said some of these things, oh, it'd be, you just don't understand free will. You just don't understand God's sovereignty. And people would get very defensive and just throw out every little bumper sticker cliche that they've learned in church. They wouldn't go, that is difficult. So a school shooting occurred. God knew it was going to happen. God did nothing to stop it. So now we're going to ask God to intervene after the fact. But we know he's not going to intervene in resurrecting the dead girl. He's not going to resurrect the dead girl. So that's not going to happen. So we'll ask him to heal the person who was wounded. And we'll ask him to comfort the parents of the dead girl. But wait, we're going to ask the God who allowed it to happen and did nothing to stop it, who's not going to resurrect their daughter, to comfort them. That seems a little confusing. Yeah, you would hope that church would be willing to acknowledge that and accept that. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nobody wants to go there because that makes everyone uncomfortable. But I believe we have to be willing to answer these, not necessarily, let me take that back. I was gonna say to answer these questions. We can't necessarily answer these questions. There is no good answer. You can try to come up with every, you can play every word game you want to play to try to make it make sense to you. You can play every little game. I mean, you can, I've heard all the justifications and answers and somehow it makes Christians feel better. But anyone just looking through and going, come on now, none of that makes any real sense. It kind of falls apart. But we have to be willing to accept that because I think faith that never questions? A faith that is not willing to face head-on these difficulties? Is it even really a legitimate faith of any kind? I mean, if you create kind of a fake reality about God and how everything works, and so that it all makes perfect sense and it fits together perfectly. I mean, is that real faith? Because real faith is where you have faith, but yet that faith exists in the face of reality, and you don't try to shape it or change it. to make it all seem so wonderful and perfect and pretty, because it's not wonderful, perfect, and pretty. It's ugly, it's hard, it's filled with death, pain, suffering, confusion, darkness, and sometimes you're left with very few answers. To me, a faith that can't embrace the reality of life is a faith that's just built on a facade. It's built on an illusion. And I don't think that that's a real, genuine faith. See, when I raise these kinds of questions, immediately I will be accused of, you don't have faith, you don't trust God. And it's like, no, it's the opposite. I'm willing to believe in God, even when this doesn't make any sense to me. Asking hard questions is not a sign of denying the faith. It's not even a sign of a weak faith. I think asking the hard questions is a sign of a strong, mature faith. Immature faith, just, they got to shut that down and give me a simple answer. Oh, let me go find an apologetics book. Oh, here's a good answer. Okay, I'm satisfied. You just want certainty at the expense of truth. Now, I spent 17 minutes going through all of that, because the whole goal, when I did the last broadcast, is to move us towards, we have to be people within Christianity in general and the church who embrace difficult questions. but that questioning mentality that we have about, well, a shooting and like, okay, wait a minute, how do we, how do we, what's the right way to address this? What's the right way? We're going to talk about prayer. That raises some serious questions. We have to be willing to do that. And then that questioning mentality, that questioning perspective then must be brought over to the Bible itself. because Bible study is the art of asking good, difficult questions. To be a good Bible student, you have to be good at asking the text hard questions. Bible study is the art of asking good questions. A good Bible student is the one who can ask good questions. So what we're going to do now, now I'll probably have to take this. And we'll circle back because obviously this introduction is going to tick off a lot of people and they're going to miss everything that comes after. And I understand that that was the danger of doing this, but it fits perfectly because we just had a broadcast a couple, you know, like a week ago on the subject of asking hard questions. And then yesterday presented me a perfect example of, well, here we go. Here's some hard questions that any reasonable person should ask. It shouldn't be left to the atheist or to the agnostic. Every Christian should be like, wait, how do we, wait, we're going to pray to the very God who, wait, this is confusing. But that questioning now, if we're going to, I want us to now try to formulate This is what my goal ultimately is. This is what I'm moving to. And this may be repeated in future broadcasts, who knows. But I really want 2025 to be a year where we really embrace this idea of learning how to ask the text difficult and right questions. And we need to formulate the kind of questions that we need to ask. So I wanna try to outline and summarize some of the hard questions a great Bible student will ask about each verse and every text in the Bible. These are the kinds of questions that every good Bible student should ask. A great Bible student will ask hard and difficult questions that will push past surface meanings and will engage with the deeper implications, the tensions, and the realities of Scripture. I'm going to state that again. A great Bible student will ask hard and difficult questions that push past surface meanings and will engage with the deeper implications, the tensions, and the realities of Scripture. So let's kind of break these down into maybe categories of questions, and we will kind of, we'll just keep working through this, maybe I don't know how long, and just kind of, we'll continue to mold this and shape this, kind of like we're doing with AI versus Lordship Salvation. We kind of keep adding some things and we'll clean that up and maybe try to find a way to put it all together. And the same thing we're gonna do with this in regards to questions about the text. Now questions in general, maybe we should just say the kind of questions Christians should ask all the time. Maybe we should have two kind of lists. Here's the questions Christians should just be asking about life and every issue. And here are the kinds of questions directly related to the Bible. Maybe we need two lists. But the key is you don't necessarily need a list. You just need to be a person who can ask questions. And I think yesterday, asking the question about the shooting and everyone's call for prayer, I think it's, I think it's called for. Now, whenever I do that, again, Christians get mad at me. Hey, let's pray about this. Okay, wait, I gotta make sure I understand this. You're gonna pray to the God who, did not stop it. I'm confused to exactly who we're praying to, because it's almost like we're praying to a guy who wasn't involved in the situation, and now we're asking God to get involved in the situation, but he knew the situation before the foundations of the world and did nothing to stop the situation. Now you want him to intervene in the situation, but he didn't intervene prior, so I don't understand. It gets all confusing, and we've talked about this before. But for now, we'll set aside those difficult questions come to the Bible. So, the first kind of questions, the first category is contextual questions. Now, when I say that, listen, listen to me closely, everyone makes this claim, oh, context matters, context matters, context matters. Look, if we've seen anything and all of the sermons that we have reviewed on Isaiah chapter 40 through Isaiah chapter 55, is everyone gives lip service to the context. Oh, the context is this. Now we don't care anymore. Let's make it about us. Everyone asks the context questions only simply to look like they care about the context. If you ask the context question, then that context has to become a key factor factor in how you handle the text. It's of no value to ask a context question, establish that Isaiah 40-55 are words of comfort to those in Babylonian captivity who's about to come out, and then somehow acknowledge that, then just ignore it and make it all about us. Well, there's no point in asking the context. I would almost prefer the person doesn't even bother asking the context question if they're just going to turn around and ignore it. Once you ask the context question, that context now has to become the driving force in how you handle the text. So some contextual questions, all right? I think the idea when we ask context questions is, does this text make sense in its context? you see the scripture, does this scripture make sense? Not in my context, not to me, but does it make sense in its context? And so we're going to ask contextual questions, and here's the way. We're going to break these contextual questions down into three—historical context, literary context, and immediate context. So the first thing you need to do when you come to any text of the Bible is you need to think of contextual questions. And really, they're going to go three directions, the historical context, the literary context, and the immediate context. So let's look at historical context. You would ask questions like, what was happening in the historical, cultural, and social settings of this verse? So what was happening in the historical, cultural, and social settings of this verse? Whatever passage you come to, that's what you need. Okay, slow down before I do anything else. Before I make it about me, before I talk about us, before I talk about the church, before I talk about Christianity, wait a minute, wait a minute. What was happening in the historical, cultural, and social setting of this verse? If you cannot identify and explain what was going on historically, culturally, and socially, and the setting of that verse, then you should not even be interpreting the verse, and you should just stop talking. I almost want to make that a rule when people want to argue with me. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's the historical setting? What's going on in a historical, cultural, and social setting? Oh, you don't have a clue? Then why do you think you know what the verse means? Does the text reflect practices, customs, or beliefs that are foreign to my modern understanding? This is all the historical context. So what was happening in the historical, cultural, and social setting? And does the text, is it reflecting a practice, a custom, a belief that may be completely foreign to me? Because I got to step in there and try to figure it out. what was going on here? What are they saying here? Because what we'll do is we'll go and say, oh, this, Isaiah was saying this to us. And you're like, no, I don't think Isaiah is saying that to you in any way, shape, or form. Isaiah is saying that in the context of Babylon and their religious, cultural, and social setting. So the historical context, we have to ask these questions about what was happening in the historical, cultural, and social setting, and does the text reflect practices, customs, or beliefs that are foreign to my modern understanding? That's historical context. Those are kind of questions we ask about historical context. And you can come up with other questions as well about historical context, but you're just asking that, wait, when did this happen? What was going on? How was this happen? Who, what, where, when, how, kind of type of thing, all right? Next, literary context. How does this verse fit into the broader passage, chapter, or book? When you see the verse, you have to go, wait, wait, wait, how does it fit in? to the broader passage, to the chapter, or to the book? How does this fit in? What's going on? Well, if you go to Isaiah 40, anything you see after Isaiah 40, verse 1, you know that if you go back to Isaiah 39, the last five verses of 39, it sets up the Babylonian captivity. So chapter 40, verse 1, begins, Comfort ye, comfort ye. Well, who is the call to comfort? the people in Babylonian captivity. If 40 through 55 is all about the comforting of those people, then everything is a... First, you're going to see them more as words of comfort, and you're going to see them as words of comfort for those of Babylonian captivity. Not about you or me! Is this verse part of a larger argument, narrative, or poetic structure? So when you see it, wait, is this making an argument? Is this a part of a narrative? Is this a part of a poetic structure? If it's a poetic structure, you've got to identify the poetic structure and go, okay. If it's a part of an argument, where does the argument begin and where does it end? And if it's a part of a narrative, where does the narrative begin and where does the narrative end? Because you can't just reach into the middle of an argument and to the middle of a narrative or into the middle of a poetic structure and just say, boom, I've got a sermon. But most people sitting in the pew don't care if that's happening, as long as the sermon is good. And the sermon doesn't make me uncomfortable, I guess. So the historical context. Literary context. Immediate context. Does the surrounding text provide clarity or does this verse seem out of place? When you look at the verse, you may be like, what is going on here? Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Does it fit in? And if it seems out of place, why is it out of place? What's going on here? Where did this come from? This seems to me, I say that all the time. This doesn't seem to make any sense. Why is this verse here? Now, sometimes we take a step back and go, okay, I think we can figure this out. How does the verse, or I'm sorry, how do the verses, that's probably the correct way to say that, how do the verses before and after affect the meaning of the text? All right, you've got the verse. All right, now wait, wait, wait. What comes before and what comes after? So you could look at a verse and go, you could do it this way. I think the verse means this, stop. All right, now let me look at what comes before and let's look at what comes after. Does that change the meaning that I have arrived at? Now, if it changes the meaning, sorry, your sermon may have to be scrapped, but how many sermons are based off one verse? We've seen that in Isaiah 40. We ended up with Isaiah 40, what was it? Isaiah 40. most bizarre thing we've ever—one of the most bizarre things we've ever encountered. Isaiah 40, verse 11, "...he shall feed his flock like a shepherd, he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." We heard a sermon on Isaiah 40, verse 11, and that somehow became about infant baptism Are you out of your ever-living mind? What in the name of bubblegum is going on? That is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Every other thing I could possibly say. What is that? That's not a thing to do with infant baptism. Has nothing to do with baptism. has something to do with God because of a covenant that he made with Israel that he's going to feed his flock, Israel, in this particular case, Judah is in Babylonian captivity, like a shepherd. He's going to gather his lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and he shall gently those that are with young. And that is about leading them out of Babylonian captivity back into Judah. And how is he going to do it? He's going to do it through Cyrus. He's going to do it through ordinary means. We've had all of these conversations. So there's contextual questions, historical, literary, and immediate context. Now, how about philological questions? How about philological questions? What does this text say about God and reality? So when it comes to philological questions, okay, wait, what is this text saying about God? What is it saying about reality? Now you could break these down primarily under two major headings. Theological questions, we're going to deal with God's character and human experience. So we would do something like this. How does this text portray God's love, justice, mercy, sovereignty, or holiness? Does the text teach us or demonstrate something about God's attributes, God's character? Does it say anything? But you gotta be willing to ask tough questions. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Man, what is God doing here? I mean, God set Job up. That's hard to process, right? Why would, wait, God intervened here. He left these people out to just nothing. Like, he raised Lazarus from the dead, John the Baptist, so sorry, so sad. I mean, we can go, I mean, there's all, and it's okay to ask those kinds of questions. See, in Bible study, you're only, you're only supposed to ask questions a certain way, a certain, no, you, it's a, when you get to ask questions, you can ask any question, no matter what it is. And if it makes Christians uncomfortable, it's the Christian's fault. Forget them. You don't need them if they can't handle it. Just like if I was to ask those questions as I started this entire discussion about prayer and God, what does that all mean about God and prayer? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Little Christians are going to get their feelings hurt. Well, I don't need them then. You've got to be able to ask difficult questions when it comes to God's character and attributes. So we're going to ask theological questions about God's character. How does the text demonstrate God's love, justice, mercy, sovereignty, holiness? Does this text challenge or expand your current understanding of who God is? Look, it may greatly challenge your understanding of God because you may say, and it's okay to do this, This makes no sense. This is disturbing. This bothers me. I don't understand. I know you're not supposed to do that in church. I'm telling you, sometimes church is the place where Bible study comes to die. because you can't ask some of these questions or people will get offended and get mad. Or they just get defensive and they start going into, you know, Sunday school apologetic hour and they start throwing out every known cliche that they've learned. And most of them don't really even answer the question you're trying to struggle with. Sometimes you read the text and you're like, that challenges my understanding of God completely. I don't understand what he was doing here. I mean, if he could intervene to stop the sin that could have possibly happened with Sarai, Sarah, when Abraham basically like, hey, she's my sister, take her. He intervened in those situations to stop anything from happening to her, stopping any sin from occurring. He literally intervened and stopped it. But in other situations, he's like, well, you know, not going to intervene here. Go ahead. Go ahead and sleep with Hagar, whether she gives consent or not. Not my problem. Hey, David, well, I'm not going to intervene. Now, God intervenes in other situations with David, but hey, when you get ready to commit that sin of adultery and murder, I'm just going to go completely silent. Other situations, I'm going to step immediately in and actually intervene in a very real, tangible way. But in these other situations, I'm just going to go completely silent and disappear. And you're on your own. Even if that means someone's husband gets killed. I mean, you know, well, that happens. Or, I'm going to intervene here, but I'm not going to intervene when you lie and tell everyone you're on a mission from the king when you're not. And then, well, Saul comes in and slaughters everyone, all the priests and everyone in the city. Well, I'm not going to intervene to stop that in any way, shape, or form. But over here, I'm going to intervene. If that doesn't challenge you and make things like, oh, that makes no sense. Now, I know, see, if you're in Sunday school, well, you just have to understand, God is sovereign. He can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Now, just get over it. See, that's just a way to shut you down from thinking and asking questions. But you should be asking those questions because sometimes it's a little confounding and confusing, especially in the Old Testament where you have God intervening in very direct, in many cases, miraculous ways. Parting the Red Sea, plagues, speaking, Shekinah glory, all these things, just like massive intervention, manna coming from heaven. And in other situations, Where's God? I have no idea. He's not showing up here. Now people say, well, it's all a part of his plan. And you can throw at every little Sunday school cliche, but it doesn't answer the questions. And asking those questions, the people asking those questions, don't look down upon them as if their faith is wrong. They're the ones asking the questions that typically is a sign of a stronger faith. It's the ones who can't handle the questions. Does the text challenge or expand your current understanding of who God is? I think constantly you are. So when we ask theological questions, we ask questions about God's character. We also ask questions about human experience. How does this verse explain or address human suffering, sin, or purpose? When you look at a verse, does this explain or address suffering or the reality of sin? I mean, Alec, when you come to the Bible, you read a verse, you don't have to forget the reality that's happening right outside your front door. You may be sitting in your study. You may have a nice little setup in your house. You may be on the couch with a cup of coffee with your Bible. Doesn't mean you forget everything going on in the world around you. You don't forget everything going on in real life. So many times when we come to the Bible, we almost like enter into a fantasy world. Like, you know, we're reading, you know, a novel or something. No, we're reading a book about God's interaction and God's work. But when we come to the text, we can be like, well, wait a minute. What does this text say about the reality of suffering? I don't know if you realize suffering is occurring right now as you sit here and listen to this podcast. There's people dying. There's children with horrible terminal diseases, never gonna even make it to 16. There's children being molested. There's women being sexually assaulted. There's murder. There's theft. There's all this is happening. You can't deny that. Now you may, while you're sitting here having your nice little cup of coffee, reading the Psalms, you may feel like everything is wonderful, but it's ugly on the outside. So how does it fit? You may try to read a text and go, hmm, yeah. When we become saved, we're all basically perfect. You've got to acknowledge your own sin and the sin of all around you. And then purpose. You ask questions. How does this verse talk about suffering, sin, or purpose? If the text speaks of God's promises, or speak of God's protection, or speak of God's judgment, why does real life experiences often, if not frequently, if not the majority of the time, seem to contradict this? So you gotta bring your human experience to it. Hey, someone reads a passage, God's going to protect you. He's your rock. He's your refuge. He's your shield. He's your deliverer. And then you're like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What about, wait, what about this and this and this and this and this? got questions." Now maybe the answer to those questions is people are taking verses that are not necessarily making a universal promise, especially not making a universal promise to us. And it may have been more about promises made to a specific people who are under a specific covenant, namely Israel. And so God did do those things for Israel, but there's no guarantee he's going to do any of that for me. So maybe it's preachers ripping verses out of context. But by asking these questions, you'll be led to question how these are applied. So, you have to ask the contextual questions, and you've got to be willing to ask the theological questions. Now, the problem is, church will be like, shh, we don't want your questions here, shh, just shut up and color, stay within the lines. Someone needs to take the crayon and just color all over the page and say, I'm not following your stinking lines because we have to ask these questions. So number one, we ask contextual questions. Number two, we ask theological questions. Number three, we need to ask hard questions about application. Yes, we do. We need to ask hard questions about application. For example, this would go something like this. Can this text be reconciled with real-life experiences? You've got to be willing to ask that question. Can we reconcile this with real life. Can we? That's why it drives me crazy when I hear pastors say, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away. All things have become new. And they speak of that in a practical way. Now, if you speak of that of a positional way, well, then you don't have a problem, right? Because positionally, I am a new creature. Old things are passed away. All things have become new because I'm declared to be perfect and righteous because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. I'm not practically righteous. I'm not practically a new creature, but positionally, I am. Okay, it makes sense, but pastors will say, hey, this is true practically, but then at the same time, you're like, if any reasonable person would be like, wait a minute, wait a minute. How do I reconcile that with real life? Sin here, sin there, sin in me, sin in you, sin all around us. It doesn't look like a church made up of new creatures. Looks like a church made up of sinners. Well, that's exactly what we—and sometimes pastors will contradict themselves. On one hand, everyone's supposedly a new creature. At the same time, they'll say the church is made up of sinners and it's not perfect. Well, if we're all new creatures and the old is gone and everything is new, the church should be made up of nothing but perfect people. So can you make up your mind? So let's break these hard questions about application down into basically, we'll break these down into basically two categories, suffering and evil and Christian living. Or maybe we'll break it down, suffering and evil, God's promises in Christian living. Let's do it that way. Let's start with suffering and evil. If the text speaks of God's protection or justice, how do you reconcile it with the prevalence of evil, suffering and injustice in the world? If you read a passage about God's protection and justice and all of this, and you're sitting there and you're reading it, how do you reconcile that with, wait, all around me, there's evil. All around me, there's suffering. All around me, there's injustice. How do you reconcile that? Does the verse address the problem of evil or does it leave it unanswered? So that's suffering and evil. We've got to be willing when we read the text and people, there's a passage and they want to apply it, we can't just apply it without acknowledging, wait a minute, if we apply that, that seems to go against everything we know about the reality of suffering and evil and injustice in the world. So how do we reconcile this? If the application is a complete contradiction to reality, you got to at least stop and go, maybe we're just misunderstanding this. That's why I greatly challenge the way people interpret, you know, if anyone's in crisis, a new creature will pass away, all things will become new. Because in most every interpretation you hear in most sermons, it completely denies reality. And in many cases, in the very same sermon, they will acknowledge that reality and never even catch the fact that they've contradicted themselves. So, when we talk about hard questions about application, we need to talk about suffering and evil. Second, we need to talk about God's promises. If the text contains a promise, is it conditional? Is it unconditional? Or maybe it's not applicable to you, it was applicable to them, probably meaning Israel or to a specific person. So when you see a promise in the Bible, it doesn't mean all the promises are our promises. That's ridiculous. Some of the promises in the Bible have nothing to do with you, nothing to do with me, nothing to do with America, nothing to do with the church. Some of the promises are conditional, some of the promises unconditional, and some of the promises are clearly just not applicable to us. Why do some promises in Scripture seem unfulfilled in the life of believers? So we need to ask questions about suffering and evil. We need to ask questions about God's promises. If the text contains a promise, is it conditional? Unconditional? Is it not applicable? And why do some promises in Scripture seem unfulfilled in the life of believers? If you're going to say, well, God is making this promise for every believer, then why do some believers not experience this? Some people's answer is, well, because they're not really saved, which then, of course, you could go with that direction. We see how that always typically falls apart. Now you're judging people's salvation not on the basis of an imputed faith, you're judging it on the basis of an impute, you end up right back to the lordship discussion. I won't go through all of that again. Another category I guess we could break hard questions about application into is Christian living. If the text commands holiness or obedience, why do even mature Christians fail repeatedly? If you see a text that says, BE YE HOLY AS HE IS HOLY, well, how come no one ever accomplishes that? Be perfect as your heavenly—well, nobody ever accomplishes that. Love God with all your heart—nobody ever does that. Love your neighbor—nobody ever does that. Do all things without complaining and murmuring—okay, nobody ever does that. Why is it that over and over and over all these scriptures that seem to call for holiness and sinlessness is never fulfilled and it never occurs? Now that may then change, we may have to go, maybe we need to understand these passages as, for example, these are law, law says what we should do, and they reveal that what we can't do, and they reveal what we don't do, so we'll be driven to Christ. Maybe we see these passages as law pointing us to Christ, and that in Christ we fulfill all of these laws because he did for us. Now see, now you need a law gospel distinction to be able to handle that. But many people won't just admit, wait a minute, This seems to make no sense. God tells us to do this and this and this and nobody does it. Nobody can do it. So, how do I understand this? Nobody wants to ever even approach that. Does this verse imply a standard of perfection that seems unattainable? Those are some questions we should ask. So, we need to ask hard questions about application. Well, let's go all the way back. We need to ask contextual questions. This is broken down into three basic categories, historical context questions, literary context questions, and immediate context questions. We need to ask philological questions. Philological questions are broken down into the following categories. categories, questions about God's character, questions about human experience. Then we need to ask hard questions about application. These are broken down into three basic categories, questions about suffering and evil, questions about God's promises, questions about Christian living. Then we need to ask hermeneutical questions. Hermeneutical questions we would ask is, how do I interpret basically this text faithfully? So, we would ask questions about genre and symbolism. Is this text meant to be taken literally, figuratively, or both? Are there cultural idioms or symbols that I might misunderstand? So we got to ask questions about genre and symbolism. Is this symbolism? What genre is this? Is this poetry? Is this narrative? What is this? You've got to ask those kinds of questions of the text. If you don't, your interpretation is, well, it's going to be flawed. So you've got to ask hermeneutical questions about genre and symbolism. You've got to ask questions about tension between text. Does this verse seem to be in conflict with other parts of Scripture? I know we're not supposed to say that. Right? Pastors will say, the scriptures never contradict. They only complement. There's no conflict in scripture. That's what those atheists and agnostics say and Bible deniers. I think any good Christian can be like, well, wait a minute here. Hmm. There seems to be some tension here. This verse seems to say this, but this verse seems to say this. You've got to embrace that tension. See that there's a possible conflict and try to figure out why. Don't just take a little Sunday school cliche and not ever deal with it. Sometimes you got to go, wait, man, I'm over here. But over here says, huh, James seems to imply that we're not justified by faith alone. In fact, he almost emphatically states it. Paul says we are justified by faith alone. Huh. Now, pastors will be like, it's no big deal. It's really simple. It's simply this. And people sitting in the pew will be like, yay, that answered my question. And they're like, did it really answer your question? Are you just satisfied that you got a simple answer and got out by noon so you could get to the buffet before the Methodist? We need to ask hermeneutical questions about translation in original languages. Are there nuances in the original language that are not clear in your translation? Are there any textual variants that could possibly affect the meaning of this verse? Those are the kind of questions we have to ask. These are hermeneutical questions about genre and symbolism, about tension between texts, and about language. Now, well, let's see if we can get a couple more, all right? Next, we need to ask questions about ethical, well, we need to ask ethical and philosophical questions. This kind of goes with what we were talking about before. Does the text align with moral reality? Now, these are ethical and philosophical questions that everyone should ask when reading the Bible. We'll break these down basically. In regards to ethics, we could ask questions like this. Does the text provide a moral command or principle? If so, how is it applied in a complex or modern context? This seems to be offering a moral command. How does that work here? How does that work today? How do we understand that today? How do we process this? We may ask questions in regards to ethics about, are there examples in Scripture where this command is broken? If so, why? So we look, is the text providing a moral command or principle? How is that applied today? And is there an example where the command is broken and why is it being broken? Now, I think we ultimately see almost all the commands in Scripture being broken. Why are they all broken? Well, I think that seems to demonstrate that man is incapable of keeping God's law. Okay, now you see when by asking those questions, you're going to be driven in a certain direction theologically. You need to ask philosophical questions. Those are more ethical questions. You need to ask philosophical questions. How does this text address ultimate questions of purpose, existence, and mortality, or morality, I should say? How does this text deal with ultimate questions like your purpose or your existence or morality? And I think sometimes they do. Does the verse provide an explanation for the problem of evil or human suffering? Well, I don't think you're going to find any answers ultimately. If you want to see the problem of evil and human suffering, in the beginning, God, there you go. Now, I know theologically people don't like that, but that's how the Bible begins. In the beginning, God, and everything after that is human suffering and evil, okay? So if God is in the beginning and he's the cause of all things, he creates all, he's the only eternal, he's the eternal beginning. Everything flows from him. Well, then when you take the problem of suffering and evil, you're going to end up right back at, in the beginning, God. There's no way to get around that. You can try to come up with secondary causes, and you can come up with all the theological answers, but guess what? There is God. He is the first cause of everything, and though it flows from after, in the beginning, God. That's why I always say, when I read Genesis 1-1, I almost start yelling, in the beginning, God. I'm like, stop! Stop it! Don't do the next thing! Because in the beginning God created, and then what comes from that creation is sin, evil, pain, suffering, death, torment. But we got to be willing to ask those questions. Those are some ethical and philosophical questions. Let's skip down. I've got so many different things to choose from here. Let's ask questions about challenges and doubts. I think these are something people need to be encouraged to do. What hard realities does this text force me to face? When you read the Bible, I want you to ask questions about challenges and doubts, and it should be framed this way. What hard reality Does that text force me to face? When you read the Bible, sometimes it's making you face hard realities and you're not going to like it. For example, the hard reality of, in the beginning, God. Well, that's a hard reality because I know what flows, what comes after. Wait, God created Satan? Wait, God did not destroy Satan when Satan fell? Wait, God allowed Satan entry into the garden? Wait, God allowed Adam and Eve to procreate and bring forth children even after they sin, knowing those children would be born with a sin nature? So now everyone is born with a sin nature? Therefore, meaning people were gonna die and go to hell. Okay, wait, I got questions. And it all started with, in the beginning, God. If I read a question about God's omnipotence, he's all powerful. Does that not make me face some hard realities? That makes me face a reality I may not want to face. Wait, God is all powerful. Yet a teenage girl was shot and killed yesterday, and she was not resurrected. And that's just one news story. Challenges and doubts. When you read the Bible, you are challenged and forced to face realities that you may not want to face. And when we come to challenges and doubts, we could break down these questions into really two categories. Unanswered questions. Does the text leave questions unanswered about God's actions, justice, or purpose? So many times you're like, I don't understand this. The text does not provide an answer. Pastors love to come along and smooth it over, make it feel like, oh, don't worry about it. Everything's okay. Look over here. Butterfly, look over there. Don't worry. Don't worry about this. But sometimes the text leaves you with questions completely unanswered, leaves you with doubt, leaves you with confusion about God's actions, his justice, and his purpose. I mean, come on. So wait, there's an eternal hell. How do I end up in eternal hell? Well, I'm a sinner. Well, how did I become a sinner? I was born that way. So I go to hell based on the way I was born? I didn't choose to be a sinner. You could argue in some ways you don't choose to sin to a certain degree because you're going to sin because that's in your nature. It's naturally what you're going to do. Those are questions and you're not going to get easy answers about it because it all goes back to, in the beginning, God. How do I deal with silence or mystery in this passage? That's a question you need to ask about challenges and doubts. What do you do when you don't get an answer? What do you do when they're like, I don't understand. Well, I can tell you one thing you don't do. You just don't come up with a little Sunday school bumper sticker to appease yourself and to make yourself feel better. You don't simply choose certainty over the uncertainty. You have to embrace the uncertainty. How about, those are questions about challenges, unanswered questions and doubts, those are challenges. And now how about, those are unanswered questions, okay, I should say. So we have to ask questions about challenges and doubts, and that deals with unanswered questions. How about doubts? Well, if you struggle to believe or accept this verse, what does that reveal about your heart or faith? If you find yourself struggling to accept something a verse says, what does that say about you? Now, I don't think the answer is always negative. I don't think that says, oh, you're in rebellion to God, or you just have little faith. I think it may say, because there's something in the verse that's troubling, and there's something in me that's bothered by it, I think you can just acknowledge that. And then I like this one. I think that when we're asking questions about challenges and doubts, I think we could ask this, how can I wrestle in an honest way with the text without necessarily rejecting it. Now, a lot of people get very confused by that. I ask all of these hard questions, people get mad and think, you're just rejecting God. I'm not rejecting anything. I'm honestly dealing with the things that we see, read and the realities that we face. That doesn't mean I'm rejecting anything. It means I'm wrestling with it and you should be willing to wrestle with it. Wrestling with it, doubting, struggling is not rejecting. See, by asking hard questions, and I'm not even going to get into all the other questions I wanted to get into, but that's okay. See, by asking hard questions, Bible students develop a richer, more authentic understanding of Scripture, and it equips them to engage with life's complexities while still at the same time struggling to trust in God's wisdom and His sovereignty. When you open the Bible and you come to any verse, you have questions to ask. If you are willing to ask those questions, it will make you a better Bible student. The better you are in asking those questions, the better Bible student you will become. the quality of your questions are absolutely – well, let me say this. The quality of your interpretation is based on the quality of your questions. But see, what most people think is you ask questions in a very like non- offensive way, but you can ask very difficult questions that some people say, I think you're calling into question. I think you're doubting. It's not questioning or doubting. Well, it's questioning, but it's not doubting necessarily. Well, it may even be doubt. Let me state this. It's okay to question and doubt, but it doesn't mean you're rejecting. It doesn't mean you're being a skeptic. It doesn't mean you're being a Bible denier. It means you're saying, man, I've got to figure this out. Psalm 46, God is our refuge. I just happened to have the Bible open. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Okay, now wait, now wait. How do I, what do I do with that? Is God a refuge and strength and very present help in every time of trouble? First, what's the historical setting here? Is this possibly directly related to Israel, which that language would make sense to Israel if you look at the covenant promises He made to them. But how does that relate to me? I mean Psalm 46 one immediately. I got questions and it's okay to have those questions If God is my strength, how does He strengthen me? Right? Because if He gives me strength, shouldn't He just be able to give me strength so that I never sin again? Well, He doesn't give me strength to not sin again. So there's a limit to His strength. Or maybe He doesn't give any strength to help me stop from sinning. So then, well, does He or doesn't He? And if He's my refuge, well, then I don't do... What's God going to protect me from? Is it spiritual protection? Is it physical protection? He's an ever-present help in trouble? He's an ever-present help in trouble unless, I don't know, you're a child going to church being molested by a church leader. Where was his help there? Or a wife being beaten by her Christian husband? I mean, come on, see, now we've got to take this and ask questions about what it's saying and then not denying the reality in which we live. That's what I'm talking about. And it's okay to do that. Other than the typical, oh, amen, it's true, okay? You can say amen and it's true, it still leaves you with, How does this work? What does this mean in a practical way? Other than just being a nice little slogan, a nice little cliche, something you put on a t-shirt, something you put and you just throw those words out in the face of a reality that seems to say, I got questions here. Now those questions make everyone uncomfortable. The quality of Bible studies depended on the quality of questions the student will ask. Those questions sometimes are just very basic contextual questions, linguistic questions, theological questions, but in the midst of those kinds of questions are these deeper questions. They're like, I don't really know what to do with this text. And wait a minute, this seems to make no sense. And how does this apply in this situation? This seems to contradict this, and this seems to be difficult here. It's okay. Now, you may not be okay in your small group, may not be okay in your church. because in most cases you're gonna be looked upon as something's wrong with you, you make everyone uncomfortable, and they may not say it, but there's gonna be kind of a, there's gonna be this, you're gonna start getting the vibe that everybody wants you to leave. Because you're gonna disrupt that little, nice, we just come to church and we don't really wanna deal with these difficult situations. Now, I'm saying in a small group or Sunday school, there's a time, obviously, to ask questions, and there's a time not, all right? I mean, there are some people who love to ask very difficult questions, but they just want to disrupt everything to ask the difficult questions. There's a time and place, obviously. My point is, these kinds of questions are not typically welcomed anywhere at any time. All right. Those are some of the hard questions that we need to be asking the text. We've got 66 minutes, so now the hard question is, why are you still talking? And the answer is, because I talked too long. So I'll stop. There's a lot there I feel like needs clarification, but it's going to be up to you to see how you're going to embrace questioning and bring that to your Bible study. And well, I think it will be very important. Oh, I think it will be transformative if you really do that. Thanks for listening. Everyone have a great Thursday, now afternoon. God bless.