All right, well, part two today of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth. Sorry that I missed last week, not feeling so well. Both of these weeks, week one, week two, are really very introductory and just enough to stir us up a bit towards the remainder of the, I don't know, 10, 12 weeks that we have on this topic of hermeneutics and interpretation. And so let's start there. Let's start there. Let's do a little recap. You can see the agenda on the board, recap Bible, old, new, big picture and quiz. Okay, that's what we're gonna walk through. This could take us easily several hours. And here we have not one hour, but 45 minutes. So it's gonna be fast paced. Stop me if you have a question, but I won't look at you so I can't see if you're asking. Okay, so just jump in there. Recap from last week. This is really the handout. And I just want to say a few items. I didn't get a chance to listen to Matt. But when we talk about hermeneutics, we're talking about, let's just keep it very simple at this point, just the interpretation, how we interpret the Bible. Now, hermeneutics also apply to any literature that we read, right? There's principles, there's a method, that you want to use, principles we want to find and use to be able to explain a text. And of course, scripture is a unique book, which is our focus today. And so we have some important and unique principles that we want to use when interpreting scripture. So hermeneutics, I'm sure you recall Acts 14, 12, when Barnabas, they called Zeus and Paul Hermes. same idea Hermes was the messenger so this is where we get this idea this Greek word hermeneia or translation interpretation the verb form of that of course is to translate or make clear to make clear so it's simple a simple way to put it I'm sure you've seen this you know this but it's the art and science of biblical interpretation there's an art to it because it takes some effort and skill there's a science to it because there are specific rules and principles and methods. Ultimately then we want to rightly derive the meaning of the text and apply it to our lives. And then last week there were a snapshot of hermeneutical principles. that again, this is the point of the study over the next, this whole spring, is to review each one of these in greater detail. So this is just to give you a little snapshot, set you a foundation. And Matt started that. I just want to highlight a few of these maybe. He mentioned, I think, authorial intent. a hermeneutic, a method, a principle, we do not want to neglect. We want to remember what was the original intent of the author. What did the author intend to say? Let's not read into what we think the author means. We try to grasp what the author means in any text that we read. And of course, Related to that is trying to understand how the original hearer, original reader, would have understood it. So we're thinking of those two things always. And then here's some additional principles that follow. Again, really quick, this is just a review from last week. When we read scripture, we wanna think of progressive revelation. We wanna remember, of course, that we don't have all the information about the snake crusher in the Old Testament. This gets progressively revealed to us and made clear to us in the New Testament, okay? That's gonna impact how you then read the Old and New Testaments. The analogy of faith, scripture interprets scripture. So when you open the word of God and there's some lack of clarity, you want to go to where it's clear to try to interpret it. But more than that, it's letting scripture itself interpret itself. Yeah. Scripture, scripture, interpret scripture. Yeah. One, another principle, one interpretation. If you go to any text, any verse, any passage, this is true of parables as well, we're going to find one meaning there. There might be multiple applications, one meaning. If there's various interpretations about the meaning, this is where you get debates and denominations. But you want to try to, you want to remember as you approach a text that there's one interpretation, or I should say one meaning of that text. Another harmony of scripture, there's no contradiction. There's apparent contradiction sometimes, there's challenges and difficulties of course. But there'll be no contradictions and you're gonna see that scripture is harmonious, through and through from Genesis 1 to Revelation. Another one that's important as we approach any text, any passage, Pericope, there's a fancy word for saying any portion of scripture that kind of holds together, sort of like a parable might you read together, we call that a pericope. You want to remember the contextual or the principle of context. In real estate, what's the most important thing about real estate when you're looking for a new property? Location, location, location. Same thing in biblical interpretation. Context, context, context. You probably heard never read a Bible verse. That's a funny way to remember that you want to read the verse before, the verse after, and probably several verses before and several verses after, and perhaps the whole chapter, and perhaps the particular author, and so on. We don't want to pull a text out and make it a proof text for some fancy new doctrine or something that we like or dislike. So context is king. Okay, much more to be said, and we're going to spend multiple weeks on this last one that I'll mention, and that is a literal interpretation. Jesus is the door. Is he a physical door? Does he swing on hinges? Of course not. So we read the Bible in a sort of plain way, to find the plain meaning, and we read it for understanding the genre that it's in. It might be a history book, a historical narrative. It might be a parable. It might be prophetic literature like Revelation. a particular way of interpreting that. But by and large, we want to say, yeah, we want to read it literally. We want to read the scripture to try to understand what it means and what the author means. We take a literal approach, unless, obviously, the genre or the context gives us an allegory. And we read it like that. So we read it in the way that the author intends it. We want to understand, try to understand historical and grammatical approach as we do so. Okay, all very quick, fast, and review from last week. Next, and this is really the purpose of today, I wanna just walk us through the Bible to get you a little reminder about how we, when we open up this large book, do we read it from beginning to end? You could, right? But is that the way that it's written? Is that the way that it's put together chronologically? Um, so really to grasp this thing anew and remind ourselves about what this book is and how we might approach it. And so I think, and I hope you'll find this part very helpful to you. So turn to Hebrews chapter four, Hebrews four, then Matthew, your, could you give one of those to each family? Hebrews 4, 12. Would somebody read that for me? Nice and loud. Okay, so you got a handout going around of which you have some some blank lines that if you have a pen you could fill this in. The Bible is what we're interpreting. And we're talking about hermeneutics, methods, art and science, and principles of interpretation. But what are we interpreting? We're talking about God's word, the sacred scriptures, the word of God. It's no ordinary book. And we could go many places to see this in scripture, old and new. But I just want to take you to Hebrews 4.12 to point out that there seem to be four things there. It's living, it's active, it's piercing, and it's discerning. So it's living and active. This is no ordinary book and we ought to take care in how we handle it. We ought to rightly divide the word of truth or we wrongly divide Christ church. So we want to handle with care because this is a living book. It's an active book. It's piercing. It's piercing to four, four things in some ways, in some, in some way, this description of how it divides and digs into soul, spirit joints and marrow. It's not going to have a superficial impact on your life. and it's discerning or it's judging your thoughts and intentions. This is the living Word of God and it will get into your thoughts even to your intentions as it convicts you and pierces you because it is living and active. I saw a video of an interview a while back and Rosaria Butterfield had this comment to say about how she looked back to the time when she first started reading the Bible as an unbeliever. And she said that it wasn't so much that she was reading the Bible as much as it was the Bible that was reading her. And of course, that's in fact what really happens, isn't it? It's God's holy, infallible, and errant word. So let's think through what we mean by that real quick. Inerrant, and infallible, and authoritative. Does somebody have a quick definition, or did I write it on your handout, of inerrant? Well done, well done. Containing no errors. Or infallible, impossibility of error. Which one of those is actually I don't know, the higher standard infallible. It's not possible that there is an error. Let me ask you this. Am I talking about error in the NIV translation or ESV translation at this late stage of the game? When we talk about inerrancy and infallibility, where? In the original autographs, in the original letters. Right? That we're inspired. The writers themselves being inspired. The Word itself being inspired. The Bible is authoritative. It's the final and ultimate authority for our lives. It's impossible to have errors. In fact, it contains none. This is the Word of God. This is what we're trying to interpret. This is why we're trying to determine if there's methods and principles that we should use for drawing out the meaning of the text, because it's no ordinary book. How does the Bible then describe itself? Again, I lay this out for you here so you can do some further reading, but the Bible says about itself, it's self-attestation. That it is scripture. It is scripture. That verb form for that word is it is written, right? It's scripture. A second Timothy three 15 sacred writings. Mark seven. It's the word of God. First Peter one. It's the word of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3 calls it a covenant. And the passage really that is shaping the title of our spring study, the word of truth. So it's scripture, their sacred writing, it's the word of God, it's the word of the Lord, it's covenant, it's the word of truth. So when we over this spring season talk about in greater detail, these principles, these methods we use for rightly dividing God's Word, we want to remember that it's no ordinary book. There's no errors. It's authoritative for us. And maybe that will take us to this next topic. So you all have a handout. And I got a second that I want to give you in just a bit when we get to the New Testament. But let's just start with this. When we think of the Bible, this is God's word, how much you think about it, how much you describe it to me, just in a sentence. Could you do it? A man on the street walks up to you and says, what are you holding there? You say, the Bible. What would you add to that? Maybe you say God's Word. God's Word. OK. OK. We'll break it down a little further. Are there multiple parts to it? But it's not just simply a book of moral platitudes and moral guidance to ethical living and a happier view. OK. So it's not. So it's not a book of moral platitudes. It's much more than that. Okay, well, all right, so just as you touch it and feel it, tell me how this, are there multiple parts to it? Okay, tell me, what is that? Okay, 66 books? 40 even? 40-ish? Is there, or is there only one author? Both and? Yeah, one author, multiple authors. over centuries written. Right down here somewhere, two thirds in, there's a break, isn't there? And how do we divvy this thing up? How do we describe it? We call it the old and new what? Okay, much could be said about that, the use of testament or covenant, but old and new testament. So let's consider the old. When we look at the Old Testament, what's the first book in the Old Testament? What's the last book in the Old Testament? Was Genesis actually the first book written? Was the last book, which was what? In the Old Testament we're talking about. Malachi, was that the last book written? Chronologically in terms of time? Well, I'm not giving you the answer today, okay? That might be in your quiz. But is the Old Testament written and meant to be read chronologically? Start with Genesis, end in Malachi. Okay, so you certainly could read it through, of course, but it's put together in by genre. It's been collected writings put together by genre. Sometimes that means that Genesis clearly happened before Malachi. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. But it doesn't mean every event follows naturally like one before the other. So we wouldn't read it like a novel. So we wanna try to grasp what are the parts? What are the genres? How do those groupings, as they're placed, All right, and collected. Okay, so let's talk about that. So what are the first five books of the Old Testament called? Okay, you call it the law, the Pentateuch, that's a Greek word meaning what? Okay, and what's another way we can describe it? The Torah, which means? the law, okay? So we'll look at this in a second, but the New Testament, we wanna look to how does the New Testament describe the Old Testament, right? How did Jesus himself, how did he describe the way it's sort of put together? Go ahead. Yeah, we'll get to that in one second. So it's not chronological, but it's topical or genre-based, all right? And the first five books are called the law, the Torah, Can somebody tell me what those first five books are? Thank you. Very good. Good question. Anybody got an answer to that? Who's the author of the first five books? Did Moses finish it off and put the last period on? It's Deuteronomy? Or did somebody need to finish that up? Because it does describe Moses' death. Yeah, Moses is the primary author, right? So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. You recall that history there? Was that chronological? Yeah. So there you go. Even within a category or a genre, you might have a chronological list. We might break them down like this, law, historical, wisdom, prophets, right? So the law or Pentateuch or Torah, first five books, we might call that the foundation for Christ. Remember, the Bible has a red thread running through every book of the Bible, okay? Christ on every page, okay? So the law or the Torah is the foundation for Christ. And then we get 12 history books. And by the way, it's more complicated than this because, of course, if you go back to see how various groups, the Jews I'm speaking of specifically, would have lumped various books together. The Roman Catholic Church has added some books in the Old Testament, but also might categorize things a little differently. That's a little deeper than we wanna go today. Following the law, the foundation for Christ, we have history, preparation for Christ. Poetry, aspiration for Christ, five books. And then the prophets, of which we typically break into major and minor. Why, is it like baseball? You got major league and minor league, or why do we call them the major prophets, minor prophets? So just the length, yeah, the length of the letters or writings. And the prophets, which five and 12 would be expectation of Christ. Now, as we kind of leaked out earlier, Gary mentioned, I think, how does the New Testament describe or categorize the Old Testament? Well, various ways, it might just be summed up with the Law and Prophets. It doesn't mean they're excluding Psalms. It's just a snapshot way of saying the Law and the Prophets. Or a kind of threefold way of describing the Old Testament, the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, or the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. And you see that in Luke 24, 44. Somebody want to read that for us? Luke 24, 44. I'll read it. Then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. That's a powerful passage as we think about what the holistic unity of scripture, everything written about me. Where was it? In the entire Old Testament, old, excuse me, law, prophets, and the writings, okay? Okay, let's turn to the New Testament. Let me ask you again, are these books put together in the translations we have now, chronologically? So we start with Matthew, first thing that was written in time, to Revelation, last thing that was written in time? Or are they put together genre-based? Do you have the historical notes, I guess? Do you have the epistles? Okay. Okay. So you have, uh, here, here, here they are. Gospels. How many are there? Okay. We'll talk more about that in a bit. The gospels. What's next Matthew acts, which is what kind of book history book. Uh, next. Not the specific book, but the genre, the groupings that would come next would be the epistles, the letters, right? So we'll talk about the Pauline versus the general letters or epistles. I get some people, I've heard it arranged as you have the manifestation of Christ, you have the proclamation of Christ in Acts. In Gospels, it would be the manifestation of Christ, Acts would be the proclamation, then the epistles would be the explanation. There you go, there you go. All right, that's what I have, essentially. Gospels, manifestation of Christ. History, propagation of Christ. The epistles, the interpretation and application of Christ. And prophecy, which is what book? Revelation, the last book. The consummation of Christ. So in the gospels, you have four books. Much could be said about that. but we want to note that there's at least one distinction we want to make between the four. How do we typically do that? Synoptic meaning what? Similar or seen together. They kind of hold together. Why do we call Matthew, Mark, and Luke the synoptic gospels? Yes, precisely. Yes, yep, yep. That's right. John is written by the apostle that Jesus loved, of course. Half of the book or so is really the last week of Jesus's life. And it doesn't have all of the parables and many of the writings, as John said, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke do. There's some other reasons why we might sort of think about this. I'm sure if you've ever dug into this, you'll hear this idea of Q and all this. That's the background to maybe Mark or whatever, and just ignore that. No, read it, think about it. But those books are seen together because there's a lot of similarities, a lot of overlap. in what each of the authors is writing. So let's dig in just a little bit deeper to the gospels then. Who is the author of Matthew? Who is the author? Okay, and who was he? Tax collector and keep going. He was an apostle, so called to be an apostle. Okay, so we have an eyewitness, one of the 12 writing this first gospel. Mark, author of Mark. Did Mark write anything else? Is Mark known elsewhere in the scriptures? He's an ax. Does he have a little conflict with anybody? Okay, did Paul and Mark eventually reconcile? Seems to be. Yeah, seems to be. Paul wants Mark, wants to connect with Mark again, of course. Yes, but they have a bit of conflict on the first missionary journey or afterwards. Or Mark didn't want to go on the first missionary journey. I think that's what it was. And where do we hear that story? in Acts, the history book, which tells about the propagation of Christ. Coming to that again, talk about the timeline there. But Matthew and Mark, Mark is also, is he a relative of anybody? Do we know this for a fact or is this just extra biblical knowledge here? Where's Mark get his source to write the gospel? Okay, so much more we could dig into here, right? We're just barely touching the surface. Matthew, Mark, Luke, who wrote Luke? What else did Luke write? Luke acts is almost like one book. It's intimately connected. Look at the introductions to both of those books and the purpose for which he wrote. Remember, the gospels, that's how we might define the genre. It's a gospel. It's not a true biography. It's not covering every key element of Jesus's life. But it is something like that, right? It's the story of the life of Jesus, looking back to who he was and how he was prophesied to come, and then pushing him forward and focusing on the Church and how the Church was going to live out the kingdom of God. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke, Acts, we mentioned. We'll come back to Acts. And then the non-synoptic gospel is? Who's the author of John? John the Baptist? John, the beloved disciple. So one of the 12, and not only one of the 12, but one of the inner three, right? If you read a really good book by John MacArthur, what, does anybody know the name of that about the disciples? The 12 ordinary men. Really helpful way to sort of think about their lives and, how ordinary and extraordinary they were. But in that book is where I first learned that there's all of these lists of the apostles or disciples, and they're always listed in the same order. And there's always John and James, the brothers, and Peter together as this inner circle. And so you have, and this is a, Interesting application here, but I think it's true. You might have 12 friends, but you're not gonna share everything with those 12 friends, are you? You're gonna have three closer friends, right? And this was something like Peter, James, and John to Jesus, okay? So you have John, one of the three, and you have Matthew, one of the 12, and you have Mark connected to Peter, and you have Luke, who was a Jew or a Gentile, Gentile. We're even throwing Gentiles in there now. Did that happen in the old Testament? Did a Gentile ever write one of the old Testament books? So we're throwing in a Gentile now. Yeah. We're not sure. Yeah. Yeah. But we know explicitly Luke is not a Jew and yet he writes two and he's in Iowa. He was with Paul starting in the second missionary journey. Okay, so that's how Luke comes into the story. And he's a historian, like any Greek historian of the time in the sort of model of Thucydides. Okay, the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then you come to what book? Matthew, I'm ready for that handout there. What's next? Acts. Acts, as we said, is a history book. It's a history book written by Luke, I'm handing out to you, Matthew is, a very helpful, I think we gave it out when we went through Philippians, but a very helpful tool for you to keep in your Bible to use as you read through any of the epistles. You wanna remember in Acts, we see the chronology of, let's say, the first 30 years or so of the early church after the resurrection, you can, in Acts, find out where every epistle is written, at least by Paul. And so that little half sheet is really valuable. Mark. Did you say Acts, do you mean 2nd Theophilus? No. Did you say Hebrews? On what? Yeah, we'll come to that. We'll come to that. We'll come to that pseudo debate. Acts, so you're gonna use this to think through where am I, when I'm reading Colossians, what's happening with Paul? Where is he? And you go to Acts to figure that out. So Acts is a history book. It covers approximately 30 years of the life of the early church. The first, did you know this? The first nine chapters of Acts really is only about three years in time, chronological time. And then the remaining portion of Acts, through Acts chapter 28, so chapter 10 through 28 is about, again, 27 years, probably a little more, for a total of 30 years or so of time. So it's all, just like John, you know, you get the upper room, and the last week is the bulk of the gospel. Same with Acts. Three years is crammed into this nine chapters or so. So again, you can see, and this is not just an academic exercise. I think it's really valuable to be thinking kind of contextually like this. You know, after, like, where's Paul come on the scene and the stoning of Stephen, Acts 7, and then later in Acts 9, on the roads of Damascus. His first journey, 47, 48 or so. The Jerusalem Council, 49. There's some debate here, but not really from conservative commentators. Et cetera, et cetera, right? So you can see the letters that were written. roughly the time he was traveling around the Mediterranean and the dates that he was traveling around the Mediterranean. You can see the spread and the propagation of the gospel. Okay, let's talk about this Paul, this Paul who converts on the road to Damascus. He sees the living God. The living God tells him, Paul, you're kicking against the goads. The Pauline epistles, of which some might claim Hebrews, but I don't, but you could, might be broken down into these categories. Capital epistles, prison epistles, pastoral epistles. Perhaps there's more. What are the capital epistles of Paul? 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans. How about the prison epistles? No, close. You can see it on years 61 to 62. Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians. This is when Paul is in his first Roman imprisonment. And he's right. He'll say that in these epistles, that he's in prison for Christ. in Rome, and we see this in Acts 28. Here's another key piece to understanding Acts, is Acts ends without resolution. We don't see Paul released in Acts, but we know that he was. And he was out of the Roman prison for several years until he's rearrested. Then he writes his final letter, which is 2 Timothy. So 1 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Timothy, at pastoral epistles, that's how we would categorize them, with 2 Timothy being the very last letter he would write, which took place after Acts 28. So we don't see that recorded in Acts. So Acts goes from the Ascension all the way to Paul's Roman imprisonment, his first Roman imprisonment. So if you can see there on the page, what do you think was Paul's earliest epistle that he wrote? First Corinthians was very early, probably early 50s, but I don't think so. Galatians. Yeah, minor debate on this probably, but I think by and large, most conservative scholars recognize Galatians as the earliest, but again, there's plenty of people that would debate. Think about this. I think that Galatians was written, and many do, prior to the Jerusalem Council. The Jerusalem Council happened in Acts 15, a really pivotal moment in the history of the early church. Honestly, I think maybe it gets sort of under-focused, but it's not as significant as the complete temple being destroyed in AD 70, but we don't have that recorded in Scripture. Here is a pivotal moment, and right in the middle of Acts, interestingly enough as well, where What happens? What happens at the Jerusalem Council? It's the first council. Right. Do I have to be a Jew before I can be a Christian? Or do I have to follow Jewish law to remain a Christian? Maybe another way to think about it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is the first church council, and they're debating a very key, important issue that Paul writes about in Galatians prior to the council. So the Judaizers, what do they do? They follow Paul. really up to Galatians after his first missionary journey up to Galatia, modern Turkey. And they're perverting them there. They're perverting the folks in Antioch, which is north of Jerusalem, of course, up the coast there. And maybe, I don't know if that's modern Syria or Turkey. And telling them they have to be circumcised to be saved. Very controversial. What is it? What does it mean to change the customs of Moses, as Luke writes about in Acts? What does it mean to be saved? How is one a Christian? That's what this council answered. And there was a conflict between who? Peter, the Peter, and Paul. And Paul confronted him to his face and said he was wrong. Why? Because he pulled away from fellow Jews. or I should say pulled away from Gentiles because Jews came down from Jerusalem to tell them, hey man, you can't be, you gotta follow the old rules. You can't have table fellowship with those Gentiles. So Paul called Peter and Barnabas hypocrites, hypocrites. This all happened maybe 47, 48, or 49, just prior to the Jerusalem council. That's important to know. That's important to piece the parts together as we read Acts and the epistles, and particularly Galatians, I think. Many Romans, yep. Luther's favorite book, favorite letter was Galatians. All right, now we have the general epistles. So those are the Pauline. By the way, anybody can read me through all of the 13 Pauline epistles? You can? I can, but I have a question about the office thing. Yeah, but Acts was written, although it was to Theophilus, it was written to tell the historical story of the early church, whereas an epistle itself, not a wife of an apostle, an epistle itself was written to a person or a church, and likely, oftentimes, to be read. Some might even say Hebrews maybe was a sermon. I don't recall from the text that but that certainly Luke's point in writing the book was he says in all that I have done in the first book which is to show you what Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up And then his purpose in this book is to finish up the story of the early church. So I don't know if he was commissioned. I'm not sure that we know who Theophilus is. Okay, those were Paul's epistles. Anybody give me all the Pauline, 13, some say 14, epistles? Go ahead, read them through. First and second Corinthians, second Timothy, Okay, so 13, 13 plus, 13 plus. Yeah, we, you know, when you're, when you're a parent of young kids, you teach them God's electric power company, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, you know, help the kids memorize that. The letters of Paul. Okay. The letters of Paul, but then there are the general epistles. Can somebody tell me what those are again? I did not. What do you have? Yes. All right. So Hebrews, again, there's debate about whether that belongs to Paul, but if it's not Paul and we don't know who it belongs to and Usually chapter two, verse three is cited as the strongest evidence that it's not a Pauline epistle. Talk about that offline. Hebrews, got some options there for who might have written it. I'm going with the Paulos, you know, just making things up. I might be wrong. I might be wrong. What's after Hebrews? What's the book? Who's James? Yeah, brother to Jesus, wow. Okay, this is the James of the Jerusalem council, the leader of the Jerusalem church, the brother of Jesus. Okay, what's after James? By the way, many people believe James is the earliest written in the New Testament, even before Galatians in 49-ish. After James is no, not first John. Peter, Peter, and that's the Peter, as we mentioned him earlier, who had a conflict with Paul. What's after Peter? First John, second John, third John? That's John the Baptist? No, that's John the Apostle, the same one that wrote the gospel, and the same one that wrote which final book of the New Testament? Fourth John, the prophetic John. Is that actually 1015? Oh, man. Okay, I was having fun up here. I didn't realize. So you're gonna have to solve, you're gonna have to answer your own quiz, okay? Look it up. Was written? Oh, well, I'm of the opinion that it was written prior to 70. But there's some debate on that. Yeah. It is. Sorry I didn't get to the end, which was the quiz answers from last week, but you can find those online. Let me pray.