How to Study the Bible III - Principles of Interpretation IA

A few different things. One, last week we pointed out the last page has sort of a one-page chart. Go ahead and grab a crop there. It's like several pages together. And so one of the things we pointed out last week is that we've been, for the first six months roughly, been going through observation. tools for observing, and now we're moving on to interpretation.

In the end, it's application and then personal and church body appropriation is the fourth step here. So just to kind of keep the big picture, the Bible is intended to be appropriated, not just stuck in our head, not even just written down as here's the application, but not personally and church body-wise appropriate. So I think we point that out. These are all guided by scripture, and one of the reasons we have scripture there is a key point. So we just got started on the first page here on the front, and one of the things that we pointed out, and it's from the Word, from the Bible, is the Bible is God's inspired Word. Now let me ask this question. What difference does that make when we go to interpret the Bible? To understand it as God's inspired Word. What difference does that make?

It comes from high authority. Yes, it comes from high authority. We have absolute truth. If I were to say, okay, here is the testimony of this fellow who is a criminal record. And here's his written testimony. How am I going to read that? You're going to read it real carefully and be a little skeptical, right? Because you just figure, OK, this guy has a criminal record and not good judgment. And so I'm going to be real careful how I read this and look at it skeptically.

If, on the other hand, I look at it and I say, this is God's inspired word, 66 books, about 40 authors, over 1500 years time, but I'm instead going to look at it as this is God who is behind it, who is behind its authorship, and therefore I'm going to look at it as a singular authorship behind the human authors. I'm going to not look at it skeptically, but carefully and respectfully. The next one we have down here, the Bible is necessary for spiritual growth and understanding. Did God intend that we just store a lot of Biblical information?

No, he did not. We'll sit here and spend six months going over all the different tools for how to study the Bible, but in the end, we don't want to just be a bunch of academics. How many seminary degrees saved people? Absolutely none. And it doesn't matter how many you have, You can fill up your hard drive full of Bible stuff. That by itself, my hard drive, has lots of Bible stuff on it. My hard drive isn't going to heaven. So just storing biblical data is not sufficient.

It's intended to be understood and to have an impact. One of the charts we have here is there is an appropriate food, spiritual food, for different levels of maturity. And the Bible addresses that rather consistently. Here's the milk and the meat and the four different stages of growth. It's got one, two, and in a couple of cases, three different scripture passages indicating what that food is for that level of growth.

So here's 1 Peter 2.2, like newborn babes, that's that one you see, brephos, on the left hand side of the chart, long for, so long is the imperative, right, for the pure milk of the word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.

2 Peter 3.18, but grow, so now grow is the imperative, in 2 Peter 3.18, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

So grow is the imperative. So let's ask this question, is growing spiritually something optional for the Christian? No, this says no. He doesn't say I encourage you to grow. For some of you, it would be nice if you grew, right? He writes to a whole bunch of them and says you must grow. And by the way, is growing just memorizing scripture? Will that by itself do it? No, memorization by itself won't do it.

Here is 2 Corinthians 3, 18, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. So, the Word of God is instrumental in our being changed. Okay, so now, the unbeliever and the out of fellowship or immature believer have limited understanding.

Ever heard of college classes on the Bible as literature? Ever hear about that? Yeah. And you'll have people teaching those and quite often it's an unbeliever teaching the class and they'll go through it and they can teach it as just simply as literature. Right?

And so they'll go through it and the reality is they don't get much out of it. What's the problem? Yeah, in order to start looking at the things we've just covered They don't get. They don't look at it as inspired. They don't look at it as, hey, God's behind this. They don't look at it as God's revelation. They don't look at it as really having any spiritual significance, unless you feel inspired or something.

Yes? One of the things is that even though they may feel that it's inspired a lot of times, They're spending a lot of time trying to make it fit their particular pre-ordained thoughts. If you're charismatic, then it's got to fit the charismatic style. So you don't look at it as just being inspired, but it's inspired plus. Plus a lot happens, let's say, in the charismatic mode, because I've been in charismatic churches and have charismatic relatives and all that.

The tendency is to have the Bible be the point of tangency. The Bible is a place to go tangent from, to take off and head off in some direction. rather than what does the Word of God say, and to take it straight on. That's one reason we spend so much time and study tools for observation, because whatever system people have, people tend to observe just a few different things, jump to their system, and then run with it.

That is real common. You'll have people debating about, OK, I'm a reformed, or I'm dispensational, and all that. And in the end, the tendency is to not observe very well, and then grab the system, and then just start interpreting. Right? Because it fits the system. rather than observe, observe, observe, observe, observe very, very, very carefully and thoroughly. The more you observe carefully, the less you rely on a system to do your interpretation for you. And that's just one of the reasons why we have all these different denominations and schools of thought and approaches to scripture is a failure to observe. And then people just observe a few things and then run to their system, and off they go.

It's a hazard with, say, for example, a life application Bible. Ever heard about that? Here's a life application Bible. Well, wait a minute. Did you observe first? Did you interpret correctly before you did all this application stuff? So, observe, observe, observe. It's key, and that's why we spend, you know, here we have four steps, and the first half of our elective here is all about observing. Carefully, real carefully. Our approach must be with diligence.

2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself, prove to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. So diligence. And by the way, this accurately handling, key point. So is it possible to inaccurately handle? Yes, it is. So then we start with objective observations. We observe about the elements of language, history, and culture. So let's ask this question, why is it that you can have two guys who both know their Greek quite well and end up with a different conclusion about what the Bible means? How can that happen? Doesn't knowing a Greek just nail it all down?

Yeah, Morty? Yeah, the history and culture aspects are big. A little big. Yeah. Pre-suppositions. OK. Right. Yep. People will have their pre-suppositions and woo. Yeah, it's amazing what those things mean. So they'll read that right on top of scripture. Yeah.

Sometimes, if you look at just one book in scripture, you get a certain take on that. But it may be repeated in another book, like Ephesians and Colossians, a further defined. So you have to know all the scripture. You can't just know a chapter or a paragraph. You really need to be well-versed in the entire book. Yeah. And because it's all inspired, I can take things learn from one place and carefully take that in other places.

One of them that we're going to point out this morning in the main service is that the New Testament, and this is consistent from the Gospels on into the end of the New Testament, there is a set of terms, the age, this age, this present evil age, which refers to the time from Adam until the Messiah is coming.

And so you'll find that term throughout the New Testament. Jesus uses it and it's used by the Apostles and other parts of Scripture. So the age, this age, and then the next age is the Messiah's age. And that is that age, as we'll see in this passage this morning, the age to come or the one to come. And so that pattern of terms is consistent in the New Testament. Jesus speaks it.

Paul writes it. The author of Hebrews uses it. So that's something, once you observe that, oh, OK. Something else we point out culturally, when God does something without hands, the figure of speech means he's accomplished something in the spiritual realm. When God does something with hands, he's accomplished something in the physical realm. So it doesn't matter what your Greek knowledge is, if you don't understand the figure of speech, you're not going to get it. With hands? Without hands? Wait a minute, God doesn't even have hands. So a key thing to look at. So when we look at things, language, history, and culture.

And we look at all those elements and we look at things very carefully. We have another pattern throughout the Bible that's one of these cultural patterns, and you see it again and again and again. Unless the Bible is talking about a physical son or offspring, when it talks about son of or child of, it means like in character and close in relationship. And you can use that in the Bible again and again and again and again.

We're sons of God. What does that mean? We who believe are called sons of God. It means we are like in character and close in relationship. But also sons of disobedience. Like in character and close in relationship. You're a child of God. It means you're like in character and close in relationship. And you can use that in the Bible again and again and again.

But if you don't understand the figure of speech, I don't care how good your Greek is, you're not going to get it. You're not going to understand it. All right, so the observations are complete. There's no missing information. The observations do not include any misinformation. Mistaken observations. Mistaken observations can be The same English word, but a different Greek word behind it. And then I'm drawing conclusions based on just the English. Mistaken observation can be including some mythology.

And we have mythology that is crept in among us Christians. Let me give an example. Anybody ever heard that the high priest went in on the Day of Atonement and he had a rope tied around his waist or his ankle? Ever hear that? It's mythology. Not true. Not true. And believe it or not, both the Christians and the Jews have a problem with that piece of mythology. The Jews have the rabbis who are knowledgeable have to go, no, no, no. So both Christians and Jews have had that problem.

So mistaken observations. Look carefully. Recheck things. Make sure we've got that. And the next one, observations do not include any from outside the context of language, history, and culture. What I mean by that, that I'm observing something and the reality is my observation is based on my system. I've got a system that I'm going to superimpose on the meaning instead of looking at the text.

Yes? Yeah. It has been an issue in the past because There was a tendency to just read things, even if you knew your Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all that, to just read things and not understand it in the context of the culture. Jesus said, hate your father and mother. Do I interpret that literally? It's a Jewish figure of speech. So I need to understand that and not interpret it. Otherwise, boy, I'm going to really mistreat my parents and think that's biblical. Let's take it, for instance, where a system superimposes its meaning on the text of scripture.

Here would be John 3.16 Calvinist interpretation. For God so loved the world that he elect and chosen, that he gave his only begotten son only for those who are elect and chosen, that whosoever believes, which will only be those who are elect and chosen, shall have everlasting life.

Now, what have I done? I've not looked at the text. I've taken my system and inserted the meaning several times into the passage. And now I've got something that's not in the Bible at all. It's in my system. When we have a sufficiently complete set of observations, we will be able to use those observations to logically arrive at the one interpretation that was the original intended meaning. So Christ, for example, proved the Sadducees wrong with a verb tense. And that's what we're going to see the Luke version of it here this morning. So Matthew 22, 29, and 32. So what did Christ use? All he used was a verb tense. That was enough to silence the Sadducees. They never asked him a question again.

Because what it says there is I am the God in the present tense, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the living. Paul appealed to a clear historical sequence of law and grace to convey that we live under the principle of grace and are no longer under the principle of law, using the culturally understood word picture of a slave who acted as a child-training tutor, a pedagogos. See the Greek pottery illustration of the pedagogos to the right.

So sequence matters, too. Let's ask this question. I've been identified with Christ, and is death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding, does that sequence matter? Yes, it does. And it needs to start with I've been crucified with Christ. Yeah?

What does the word genomic mean? Oh, this is called gnomic. I am, and it's in the present tense, what that means is I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To shorten it up there, I am always in the present. The nomic means it's an always true statement.

If I say I am standing up, that's good for now, but a little while from now, that's not going to be good. But if I say I am Vern Peterman, That's a nomic present tense because that's always the case. It's not just my present standing or present position. I'm of the opinion that, but I could change it tomorrow, right? That's not nomic present. So the nomic present refers to something, a present tense statement that's always the case. Will God ever stop being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? No, he will not. He will always be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's what we mean by a gnomic present tense.

So we have, here's Galatians 3, 24 and 25, Therefore the law has become our tutor, our pedagogos, to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. The translation is tutor. The reality is that you have to understand the culture to know what the Apostle Paul was talking about, and why this particular word was the right word for him to choose.

A pedagogos would be a hired slave who would take the child and hold him by the hand and take him to school and sit there in the back and listen to the teacher while the student is doing their work. The slave would then drill, while he's taking the student home, drill the student on the things that the student was supposed to have learned that day, and drill them, and drill them, and drill until dinner time, and maybe even drill them afterwards. And then the next morning, guess what they'd do on the way to school? Drill them some more, and drill them some more, and he'd grab them by the hand and just drill them, and drill them, and drill them on what the teacher taught.

And the whole cycle would go on, and you would stay with that one Paitagogos, typically, until you're done with school. This is more than just a tutor. And guess what? When you're done with that Paitagogos, are you relieved that you're no longer under the Paitagogos? Yes. So Paul says, we're no longer under a tutor. And people are thinking, thank God, I'm no longer under a tutor. That was like being in prison, right? So when he would tell them that, they would say, oh, I do not want to be under a tutor.

Just pay to go, guys. So that's the cultural meaning. This person was just with you all the time, constantly drilling you on this. Holding your hand, boy, you are going to school and you can't say, yeah, but I don't have that homework. No. Whatever homework you assign, I was there. I listened to it. You are going to do it. But they didn't have to be a special thing. Like in our culture, when we think that if you're teaching a child, you're gentle with them, or this, that, and the other thing, you'll be entertaining. But it sounds like that wasn't even on the table. No. The responsibility is you'll get them to school. You'll get them back.

The pedagogos is going to sit there and hear everything the teacher's saying. And the student isn't going to be able to get away with this or that, or different excuses, You know, anything like that. A pay-to-go glass is just going to be like you're shackled to this person and constantly drilling them. No excuses. Nothing. You're not getting out of anything. Nothing's going to slide because you're going to get drilled.

Yeah. That describes the law perfectly. That's exactly what it is. This thing is constantly there. We can't keep the law because of our sin nature. And the law keeps drilling it in. Yeah, keeps drilling it in and keeps pushing you along. You're going to school? You're coming home. All the way you're going to get drilled both ways. No excuses. I know exactly what the teacher said and what they assigned. You're going to do it. You've got to do it perfectly. Yes, yeah, and your parents have bought me for this purpose.

So then the tutor is more or less replaced by the longing that we talked about before, right? Because if you don't have the tutor driving you and giving you this, that, and the other thing, then you have to have some motivation to proceed, right? So yeah, what's our motive? Because the tutor is just controlling everything. Forget motive. This tutor is going to drive everything. But for us under grace, what is our motive? We have a grace motive, right? Forgive one another because God in Christ has forgiven you. Isn't that the longing that we talked about?

You must long for the pure milk of the word, imperative. And also that comes to seeing it as food, as essential. So from the complete set of accurate observations, free of extraneous non-biblical observations, we can then logically draw out the one correct interpretation of the passage, which was the author's intended meaning for the passage and is God's intended message. We are then able to respond to Paul's urging that we say the same thing and mend, heal, and restore any doctrinal differences among ourselves, or even better, to head off any doctrinal differences altogether and to preserve the unity of the Spirit. The unity of the Spirit does not come from allowing variation from within our teachings, but centers on one faith, Just as the observation of the facts regarding scripture are to be objective and repeatable, so the process of interpretation is to be open, verifiable, and consistent.

So here's 2 Peter 120. But notice, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. So interpreting scripture is not a veiled nor private process, nor is it to be controlled by one individual or group. Certainly, there are principles that guide the interpretation, which are not enumerated here.

And we'll be getting into more of those. One of the things to point out here, how many meanings were intended by each author of scripture? One. So if we'd say, well, people interpret it in three different ways. Do I just stop there? No. So there's one intended meaning. Just to take an example, if I said, I would like you to come over to our place for dinner at 6 o'clock tonight. You hopefully from that don't get the idea of, what do you mean? Six o'clock New York time? And an art place. Well Vern used to live here.

Did I have one intended meaning when I said it? Yes, right? And all the other possibles that people might think, wow, I wonder if he meant this or that, are not what I intended. So it's pursuing the intended meaning. that the author of scripture had. What do you think it means? How does it make you feel?

I think that puts a whole new light on what Jesus said, what is truth? What is truth? That's a pretty good question. Pursuing the idea that there is truth, and we're pursuing the truth. Actually, didn't Pilate say that? Pilate was truth, right? And Jesus then talked about, you will know the truth. And that's one thing, is if you look in the New Testament, there's definite article, you know, faith, the faith, as a set of teachings starting in Acts 6, right? Continuing on through the New Testament, the set of teachings of the apostles is stated as singular. And then there is also the truth. Definite article in front of it.

Yeah, Crystal? I think it also escapes people that one day everybody is going to know the truth. We want to know what it is. It's not like at the end of the day, or at the end of this age, suddenly we're going to be confused. That's excessively clear to everybody who's ever been a woman. Here it doesn't. So I mean, I think sometimes we think it's more of a esoteric, academic situation when we're studying scripture, but it's not.

Here is Romans 5, 4 through 6. It says, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction. so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind. So is variation of understanding what God wants? Is God okay with it? Be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus so that with one accord you may with one voice, that's literally one mouth, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

One voice, one mouth. So here's the church in Rome. How many opinions are there in Rome? Lots of human opinions about all kinds of different things. But in the end, the same view as a church body there in Rome. You need to come down to one united message.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Rome, so far as we know, he had not been there. But in Romans 6, verse 3, he says, and do you not know? And that, if you look in Romans 7, means, and yes you do. And then in verse 6, he says, knowing, and it's a particular form of participle that means since you know or because you know. So he knew that they knew, even though he hadn't been there. And then verse 9, the same thing. So verse 3, verse 6, verse 9, all three of them indicate you know this. I know that you know this. OK, so let's take a look.

We've got another section there. It's titled Constructive Caution Regarding Some Greek Grammar and Vocabulary Resources. And the intent here is not to keep you from looking up anything. But just saying a number of the resources out there do have a flaw here and there. And so you need to be aware of those, otherwise use them. So that's what the intent is. The intent is not to just scurry away from them all.

But for example, Kenneth Wiest is one who's written a lot of really good materials. He does well at bringing Greek grammar across without requiring the use of the Greek alphabet. So someone who doesn't have a knowledge of Greek can frequently gain some good insights from there.

Cautions have been expressed that Wiest has a tendency to overstate definitions or points of grammar at times. So you might want to cross-check what he has. Can at times lean toward an interpretation influenced by the views of the early church fathers? Above that is scripture. And I've encountered that in one place where he referred to the early church fathers rather than scripture regarding what does scripture teach. a caution, expresses the aorist tense as having an expression of time in some instances where it does not have a time significance.

The aorist tense is, and I won't go into too much detail, but the aorist tense is frequently abused. And people say, oh, it means this. It means that, right? The aorist tense only means past with the indicative and participle mood. That's it. It doesn't mean past otherwise. Otherwise is something we don't have in English, is a decline to state the time mode of expression. It doesn't mean anything about time, unlike a lot of Greek verbs. So it's something we don't have. And so people will make statements about the eris means this and the eris means that.

It does not, in some singular fashion, indicate time, unless it's indicative or participle. Here's a for instance. The Apostle John, he's at the beginning, first chapter of Revelation. Revelation 119 is the passage, and here Christ is talking to John. And he's saying, John, write. And he tells him in an aorist imperative, you must write. And then he says, the things which were, the things which are, and the things which are to come.

So why would they use the aorist? Because the timing indicators are elsewhere in the verse. And so it doesn't mean something as respect to time, it means decline to state because the indicators are somewhere else. We don't have that in English, but that's one of those things where people will very frequently come up with some kind of a simple summary of what the heiress means and it doesn't mean whatever the summary is.

Okay, so you have that. Here is Ray Summers' Essentials of the Greek New Testament. I have that in my Greek class. It's what has been used here. It's a good book in general. It is outstanding. It's a very good book. So there's one other important caution regarding Summers' book in the original, as edited by Sawyer. The heiress tense is misrepresented as relating to the past tense or being punctiliar, which is not universally the case. So anyway. So good. So use it. But just be aware of that thing.

We'll go through these various ones. I won't go through them in detail, other than to point out There are a number of them we have available for free, I think, in the coffee room here. Vines, for instance. And it's a good reference. There are just a couple of places, I point out at the bottom of page two, where he makes a couple of mistakes.

And so you just need to be aware of that. So the intent is not to keep you away from using these, but just if you have one of these as a resource, You might want to take this and mark it on the page or put it inside the cover or something like that. Otherwise use them because the resources are good. Just with these little cautions. Some of these are with regards to grammar. Some of them are with regards to word definition. So I say grammar and vocabulary resources and just some little things to watch for.

Now, let's return to our one page reference here, this one. This little chart that has the two rectangles at the bottom. This is the one that shows observation, interpretation, application, and appropriation. So the first part, observation and interpretation, is objective. What I mean by that is I can look there and I can say, well, see this?

Here it has this word. That's the same word as is used elsewhere. And you can look that up. There's no like, OK, this means this, and I just told you. Anything that's observed, you can also observe and you can point out to someone else to observe. That's a key thing to look at.

As we go into the second part, application and appropriation, there's where we move from the objective to the personal. Because we're talking about personal application. And that's where everybody says, don't take it personally. That's where you want to take it personally. That's where you want to take it personally.

But after you've made the appropriate observation, interpretation, application. I've been in situations with different Christians where they will use, oh, but I felt blessed as either a determination of what is true or whether something is morally good and spiritually good or not.

And I keep running into it because it's something that a great many Christians have slid into where they're determining what's true or what is false. based on subjective feelings. So what is that? They're going back over here where we've got really great objectivity, and they're putting their understanding of things based on feelings back there. And it really is not. I like this interpretation. So it's something that Christians have been pulled into. Here's how I feel about this or that. when, in fact, this is objective. This is objective. Yeah?

Could you also say that application and appropriation are subjective? They're moving in the direction of subjective. Let's take a for instance about application. One of the things that happened here at Holly Hills before my time, been here about 15 years now, before my time was that they had a last vote, as I understand, to vote out voting.

And so what was that? It was based on scripture teaches an elder-led church body. And so in that case, we did that by observation. We looked at, here's what the Bible teaches about elders. And here's what it says about the direction of the church. Just a quick, for instance, the apostle Paul went into the churches of Galatia. And on the first loop, they went in there They evangelized, and people came to the Lord. The return loop, what did they do? They went in and appointed elders, and they taught them more.

So what you see from beginning to end of the New Testament is this principle of elders, elder leadership. So while people, especially here in the United States, are really big on democracy, That's not what the Bible teaches. It doesn't mean that things are done in complete ignorance of or defiance of how people feel about things and that sort of thing, but it means that that's not the last guidance. So, that would be an example of All right, objectively, I see that the church should be elder-led. And therefore, I can spell out in the application that this is how we should carry it out. But then the subjective and personal part of that is you actually do it and carry it out with what scripture gives as guidance. So it's a matter of looking at what, for example, are the qualifications for elders. And that you can look at objectively. And not just, well, I like this guy. This guy's such a really nice guy.

I'm aware of a church over in Nevada where there was a fellow who was a pastor there for a fair amount of time. And he apparently gave great sermons. Great sermons. The only problem was he ended up having sexual involvement with several different ladies in the church. Several. And there were people who said, but he preaches such good sermons.

And objectively, this guy has a problem. So objectively, I look at the qualifications for elders and say this guy's not qualified. And it doesn't matter how good his sermons are. So that's where objectivity is key, and not just, boy, this guy is such a nice guy, and I really like his sermons. That doesn't cut it. So objectivity is key here.

What does the Bible say? We're looking at that. That would be a church-wide application. All right. Now, we've been over this. Any thoughts, questions, things you'd like to discuss? Yes, Morgan. I guess I'm still unclear, and I know you've mentioned this several times, but the difference between application and appropriation. Yes. In application, I can think about it, talk about it, or write it down.

And I can talk about what that looks like. Let me give you a for instance. When I went over to Uganda some years back, I had 60 students in the class. And I separated them into groups of six. So ten groups of six. And I had been teaching through Ephesians chapter 5 verses 21 to 33.

So I'd been teaching through that passage, and I said, OK, now there are four kinds of love in that passage. One is sacrificial love. The next is sanctifying love, spiritual care. And the next one is a caring love, caring about physical and emotional needs. And then the fourth kind, then, is a bonded love, a physical intimacy.

So I said, there's four kinds of love in there, but the difficulty that I had was making application in a different culture. What does this look like in a different culture, right? And so I said, that's your assignment, guys. I want you to work together in groups and write down what that looks like in terms of application. Here is a for instance.

In that culture, women exclusively are responsible for carrying the water. How far away is the water? The water might be several miles away, and you're expecting this gal to carry the water for the household from this well that's several miles away. One expression of love and care for her might be to dig a well that's closer. to dig a well that's closer.

Us, we wouldn't even think of that, right? So the guys went down, and I thought they did a pretty good job of saying, okay, here's what this looks like, what is the application in our culture? And they wrote it down, I said, pick a spokesman, and so they read out, for each group, they read out what those things were, and they came up with some really good things, and things we wouldn't have thought of because the culture is so different. And so when you say application, it's application within the cultural context, application, and it's the sort of thing we can write it out.

Now, how many of those guys went out and appropriated that in their own lives? Well, I tell you, a number of them didn't because they were single. But if they ever did get married, they'd be in a position to have recognized these things. Others, it's possible that some guy was in the class and said, OK, here's all the things, and he heard what all the different groups said, and didn't do anything with it. So the appropriation is personal, within families, within churches. But it's actually putting things into action. And so I could write down an application and think about it and talk about it in the seminary class instead of doing anything with it.

So if you know the application, you've got to do your mind, but you don't live it out, you start becoming kind of legalistic, right? Well, either legalistic, or there's some other thing, because God's Word then isn't going anywhere, it's not having its intended implementation. in our lives, and I might, you know, hey, I'm supposed to do this, that, the other thing, and just do nothing with it. Would that hinder your growth?

Yeah, very definitely, because God's Word is intended to have effect, right? And so what I'm doing is, I might be going through very well through all these four, you know, first part of the four steps, but in my personal life, if I do not apply those things, then that's going to be a problem. God's Word is not intended to be just stuck up here and ignored. Yes? In the appropriation part of it, could you say that that is the work of the Holy Spirit within us? Yes, if you look at it, how does this get lived out? In other words, if you look at it, God inspired through the Holy Spirit, His Word, right?

I'm observing it and looking at it and interpreting, and then the appropriation of it Walk in the Spirit and you won't satisfy the desires of the flesh. Here, the Spirit has a ministry involving how I walk, how I live, how I order my life step by step.

God does not delegate the appropriation of it to us. It's not our job. I've been crucified with Christ, so it's no longer I who do the appropriation, to put the words in there. It's no longer I who do the appropriation, but Christ does the appropriation, living it out within me.

I've seen instances in my own life where you have difficulties with an individual or something, and you start praying about this, and, Lord, I can't do that, and then all of a sudden you start seeing that person differently. And I guess that's kind of what I was thinking about when I asked. Yeah, and in the midst of that, you know, just, okay, how do I deal with, you know, dealing with difficult people can be a real challenge, you know. And then, all right, how is that done? How do I carry that out, you know, in different circumstances? being brought to my attention. So appropriation is personal.

One of the things that we're teaching here is not just to have people just be eggheads. Know a lot of stuff. be a Bible freak, right? So that's not the purpose of it, right? It's intended to be lived out. It's intended to be personally appropriated. It's intended to be appropriated within families. It's intended to be appropriated in the church body. So there's all those different levels. Yeah? Does that? Yeah. Yeah. And so I think a lot of people that think of application, the application is either something we think about, talk about or write, but the appropriation is the personal living it out. That's just the one I refer to frequently because it's so easily contrasted.

Forgive one another as God and Christ has forgiven you. So grace motivation. I'm not doing it according to what the Sermon on the Mount says, which is under law. which says you forgive in order to be forgiven. I'm forgiving because I've been forgiven.

But I might know that. Is it possible that I might know it, but I really don't forgive that person? It's possible that I don't forgive, even though I've got it, I've got it memorized and all that, it's all right here, but I'm not going to forgive that guy. Not for what he did. So I won't forgive this guy, even though I know that all the way along it's, have I observed correctly in the Bible?

Have I interpreted correctly? Yep. Have I written down and do I understand the application? Yep. I'm not doing it. So that's the appropriation part of it. It's possible to stop short, and nothing in the Bible is intended to be that way. Nothing in the Bible is intended to be that way. If we stop short of what we know, that's called hypocrisy. And Jesus pointed that out among a lot of the Pharisees and Sadducees and different well-respected people. He says, you guys know this, or you ought to know, but you're not doing it. So that's failure to appropriate. Okay? Alright, let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for what you make clear. We thank you as we go through this, that as we move into this interpretation part of things, we also see where it's headed. That in the end, you intend that we understand the application and that it be lived out in our lives. So we thank you. We just pray as we recognize here this is your work in this appropriation part here. And so we look for you to work in our hearts and lives through your work. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.