All right, so today we're going to be going through biblical interpretation. And again, I know those of you who've taken hermeneutics who've been at our church for a while, again, a lot of this stuff is going to be reviewed, but I think it's important that we have everybody at the church who are members and growing in the church that we're on the same page.

You know, I think for me, one of the most frustrating conversations that I have, oftentimes, I don't think it happens much in the church, but it's oftentimes outside the church when I run into other pastors or other Christians or I'm speaking somewhere and we happen to have a disagreement on a particular doctrine, maybe a woman in ministry issue.

More and more it seems like the homosexuality, that issue, even inside the church, it's being debated. It's sad, but it's being debated. But when that subject comes up, it's the way that we argue or discuss, it's frustrating because we've strayed away from the authority of the word of God.

In fact, most churches I know will confess in their doctrinal statement that they believe that the word of God is inerrant, but it's not being used that way. The word of God is not the final authority. It almost kind of like, well, you come from a conservative church, that's what you believe.

You know, I'm not sure if that's what I believe. And so, well, do you believe in the word of God? I'd say, yes, of course I believe in the word of God. But do you believe what it says about that? I'd say, yes, but that's your opinion. I have this opinion.

But it's never really about interpretation of what the word of God says. It's just your opinion versus my opinion. It's extremely important for us that not only do we confess the word of God as having authority, we need to actually practice that it has authority. So the way we think, what we consider right or wrong, what we practice has to be based upon a careful study of the word of God.

Not your prejudice, not whatever's happening in our culture, not what other Christians are thinking, that it has to be based on God's word. So from the very beginning of our church, the reason why we chose the name Berean was because we want to be a church that actually tested the word of God to make sure that what we're standing for is His word, right?

Not just we're Baptist or we happen to be Reformed or we have, you know, whatever doctrines that we have. Today, we're going to be going over some interpretational issues. So again, this is not a hermeneutics class, so we're not going to be able to spend a lot of time, but just basic principles of how we ought to understand Scripture and how to apply it.

How do we come to truth? Okay? So, I'm not going to answer all your questions, but hopefully, at least fundamentally, we're on the same page when it comes to this. So perspective of interpretation, there's three things that you'll see. The first perspective of interpretation is in the third-person approach.

We call that exegesis, right? And in essence, it's discovering the truth. And I'm going to go a little bit more deeper into that. The second is in the first-person approach, which is for devotional purposes, which is personal application. So first approach is finding out what does it say? What is the truth?

Second, how does it apply to me? And then the second-person approach is homiletical, sharing the Word to others. Okay? So whenever we approach the Scripture, we have to approach the Scripture with all three. The temptation that I have as a pastor or a teacher, or maybe some of you guys who are Sunday school teachers or whatever, that we can get in the habit of just studying for number three.

You know, it's dangerous if we just come and say, "Oh, you know, are there materials in the Bible that I should teach?" And then it never makes a personal impact on you. These are the three steps that every time we open up the Scripture, one, what does it say?

Two, what does it say to you? How does it impact you? Third, how do I share this? Okay? In that order. So let's go visit that. First one is the third-person approach exegesis, which is discovering the truth. Right? The question that we need to answer is, what does this mean?

Right? Not, what does it mean to me? Oh, sorry, that's not it. Yeah, what does this passage mean? So careful attention to the laws of interpretation. Applying some of the hermeneutical principles that we're going to be talking about today. And hermeneutics basically means the guidelines of how to interpret Scripture.

What did the original audience understand? Before we get to anything. What did he mean, and how did they understand it? Two thousand years ago when the New Testament was written, what did they understand? And we need to really be careful that when we're studying, that we're really taking our time to figure that out.

There are certain things that, certain phrases that we say today that may not have made sense thirty years ago. Right? Even twenty years ago. We just had this conversation with Esther. One of our kids said the word "sick." And she's so square, she didn't know what it meant. Sick.

And I had to explain to her. Right? This is how cool people use the word "sick." It means good or cool. And she just didn't get it because she's from a different era. She's always making fun of me, so I'm up here. Alright. So, you know, certain phrases or certain words that we use.

I mean, this was used two thousand years ago. So when we interpret certain passages, that we don't go in there and say, "Oh, they're using the word 'heart.'" Like that's another one of those words that when you see the word "heart" in the Bible, the word "heart," the way they use it is very different than the way we use it.

Right? We use it as emotion. They use it more of a will or soul. Like it encompasses everything. So we have to be careful that we do our homework to find out what did they mean by it. Right? The other thing that I had a really hard time with is the term "slavery." Because there's so many negative connotations, obviously because of recent history in the last hundred, hundred and fifty years.

And so we project a lot of things that we know to be evil, which I'm not saying that slavery at that time was considered a good thing, but it culturally, it's very different the way they use slavery. It was almost part of their economy. So when we begin to project a lot of the criticisms that you will hear from the liberal media or from people who are trying to knock Christianity, it's because they're interpreting from their understanding of what these things mean.

So the first step is understanding what did they understand? How did they understand it? Right? So you have to do some homework. You have to go back, maybe read some commentary, some cultural stuff. And the more you do this, the easier it'll become. Because your knowledge will grow. And the more you understand about what was happening during that period, the more, less work you have to do to figure this out.

So this is the first and most important part of biblical interpretation. What did the author mean? How did they understand what he said? Okay? So a lot of the passages in the Bible where you say, "Oh, that seems to contradict." Right? "He said this over here, and he said that over there." But when you do a careful study, you realize that, again, it's not a contradiction at all when you understand the culture and what they meant by it.

The danger of not doing this, or to ignore this step, is the interpretation of scripture is no more than personal opinion and conjecture. That if you're in the habit of just opening up in scripture and saying, "Well, this is what I think this passage means," and you have an accumulation of knowledge that you've gained from a superficial reading of the scripture, you can come out with all kinds of doctrines and you think it's biblical, but when you actually carefully study it, you find out it has nothing to do with scripture.

Right? So we have to be very careful. So when we're saying that we want to be Berean, this is what we mean. We want to test every doctrine, every movement, right? Every doctrinal position to make sure that it's coming from scripture. Right? Not from our denomination, not from anywhere else, but from scripture.

Okay, sorry. Let me go back to that. So if we don't do that, the danger is it begins to lose authority. Right? If what we're preaching and saying is simply based upon my experience, well, my experience is no better than yours, and it's no better than the person down the street.

Right? The authority has to come from the Word of God. And so if we're going to speak with authority, it has to be based on truth. Not my opinion, not your experience. The second is the first-person approach is devotional. Right? So the first part is interpretation, and then the second part of it is application.

Right? What does this mean for me? Okay? Not what does it mean to me. Meaning not to get into the scripture and say, "Well, when you read this, what do you get out of it?" Right? First, do the homework of interpretation, and then, applicationally, what is God convicting you of?

So, if we miss this part, again, those of you who've been at our church for a while, I've said this so many times. Right? Interpretation without application is what? Is what? Abortion. Application without interpretation is what? Is a miscarriage. Right? Either way, you didn't take it to full term.

Right? Because the purpose of interpretation is for the purpose of application. Not simply so that we can read it and say, "Well, I know more than you." Right? So, the Word of God is what? It judges the thoughts and intentions of our heart. Right? So, the biggest part of understanding the will of God, a lot of times we say, "Well, does God want me to go here or there?

Does He want me to marry this person or that person?" And a lot of times we're searching for circumstantial of what does God want me to do? Does He want me to be a doctor? Does He want me to go to this school or that school? Oftentimes, the will of God has a lot to do with why you're doing that.

Right? Why do you want to marry this guy? Why do you want to go to this school? Why do you want to go into that field? Right? So, why do you want to do that? Oftentimes we'll determine if that, you're doing that to honor God or for your own purpose.

So, God doesn't have like, "Well, this person is supposed to be a doctor and that person is supposed to be a lawyer and this person is supposed to do that." Right? So, there's a reason why the Scripture says in Romans 12, 2, "Not to conform but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will be able to test and approve that which is good and perfect will of God." So, when your mind is renewed according to the Word of God and you're convicted and your sins are being exposed and you're being sanctified, then you're able to discern your own heart.

Right? What is right and wrong. So, the second part of the interpretation is application. How do we apply the things that we are learning? Right? We're not seeking personal opinions, but application of truth. Right? How does this affect my life? What is God saying to me through this passage?

And then again, the danger of not applying that is that there's no spiritual growth. If you are in the habit of constantly learning and not applying, what does that make you? It's just like eating, no exercise. Right? You keep eating without exercising and you're out of shape. Right? That's what happens to somebody who's constantly learning.

Especially if you happen to be going to a church where the Bible is taught on a regular basis, right, then you probably know more theology than an average person, an average Christian maybe, outside of a church that doesn't teach the Bible. And you get a false sense of security that you are more mature than you really are.

Right? Because what makes you mature is not because you heard the Word of God, but that you heard it and you applied the Word of God. So that's the danger. If all it is is interpretation and hearing, and you're not actively trying to practice what you're learning, it just makes you a better hypocrite.

So that's the danger of number two. And then third person, homiletical, spreading the Word to other people. And that question is, how do I share this with other people? Right? Because ultimately the word "gospel," "eugelion," means "good news." Right? And the gospel is not just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It's not just certain passages about Jesus. The whole Bible ultimately is the gospel. It's the good news. Because it is the story of redemption of mankind for His glory. So the very title of what the Bible means is to tell people. It's good news. Right? But if we're studying it, and we're trying to apply it, and all it is is that you're just kind of introspective about yourself, but you're not ultimately sharing it, then again you missed the mark.

So the failure to do this is to fail the mandate to share the good news, the gospel. The very meaning of what the Scripture is. Right? It is meant to be shared. We are the light in a dark world, so it was meant to be shared. So everything that we're learning ultimately is meant to be shared.

So these are the three perspectives that we have in interpretation. First, know what the meaning is. Second, how does that convict you? What are applications you need to make? And third, how do I share this with other people? So some of you guys may be sitting there thinking, "Well, I'm not a pastor.

I'm not a small group leader, so that doesn't really apply to me." It applies to everybody. Right? When we're talking about sharing, we're not saying that you need to be teaching people. Right? Sharing simply means if you've been convicted about something and you share this with somebody else, right, you don't have to have the title "teacher" to be able to share.

You can share your testimony. You can share the blessings that you have in the Word of God, certain things that you learn, and we're able to sharpen each other as a result of it. Or share the gospel with people. Right? This makes a huge difference in if the Word of God, like if the Word of God has become stale to you, right, eventually it becomes stale.

If you're not in the habit of sharing the things that you are learning, I guarantee at some point it's going to become stale. Right? It's going to become stale. Even the gospel, no matter how much you tell yourself, "Jesus died for me, Jesus died for me, Jesus died for me," right, at some point, if you're not in the habit of sharing the good news with other people, even the gospel will become stale.

Because it was meant to be shared. Right? Our sanctification and our love for the Word of God is always in the context of not only learning, but convicting and sharing all three of these things. Okay. Now this part is extremely important. Again, this is probably a review for a lot of you, but again, I want to make sure that we understand.

The four different stages of interpretation, and how we interpret the scripture, and it has to be in this order. Okay? So memorize this. It has to be in this order. If you start interpretation and how you get doctrine by philosophical theology first, and you work out backwards, you're going to get all kinds of false doctrines.

And usually that's how false doctrines come about. Okay? And I'm going to explain what that means. It has to follow this order. So let me just quickly go over it, and then I'm going to dive into it one by one. Exegesis obviously is a verse by verse study of God's Word.

What does it mean? Right? By doing your homework, this is where you get into the Greek, the cultural background, what is the context, right? This is where you read the commentaries and figure out what does it mean. So you have this, you can't have systematic theology. Okay? And systematic theology is basically a compiling of information that you gained from exegesis.

Okay? Did I lose anybody? Okay, so you understand what I'm saying. Historical theology is basically theology that was handed down to us in church history. So the church fathers got together at the church councils, at church meetings, where they fought and argued based upon scripture, what does the Bible say about Jesus?

What does the Bible say about the Trinity? What does the Bible say about salvation, the end times? And so we compare our exegesis, systematic theology, with historical theology. Right? I'm going to get into it a little bit more, so if you're confused, I'll come back to it. Philosophical theology is trying to make sense of what we talked about.

Right? So I'll get into it a little bit. We get into trouble when we start with philosophical theology. Right? What makes sense? So let me give you an example. A philosophical theology may be embracing a theology because it makes the most sense to you. And I'll give you a perfect example.

If I try to explain the Trinity to you, okay? If we had two people up here, and we start debating, which doctrine makes more sense to you? A Jehovah Witnesses doctrine of the Trinity, or my doctrine of the Trinity? Three in one. Right? One times one times one equals one.

And they say, "That makes no sense. It's one plus one plus one equals three. Jesus is speaking to his Father, you know, it just makes more sense. And what you're saying doesn't make any sense." Right? "That doesn't fit my reality, so therefore, that's not what the Bible teaches." So if I argued this man without the scripture, which theology would you choose?

Don't say it, because I already know. Right? Common sense would tell you that you would probably choose the Jehovah Witness doctrine. Because that makes sense. They can explain that. The doctrine of the Trinity that I'm trying to explain to you, I can't explain it to you. It's not explainable.

It's a mystery. So if I came up here and told you, "Who is Jesus? He's God." Well, is he the Son? Yes. Is he the Creator? Yes. Is he distinct? Yes. Are they one? Yes. Was he man? Yes. Was he 100% God? Yes. 100% man? Yes. Ah, I reject that.

This guy's crazy. Right? So philosophical theology is trying to make sense of what the Bible says. So if you choose theology based upon what seems to make the most sense to you, before you do the homework, you're going to end up with all kinds of false doctrine. If the Word of God is God's Word, we have to first study what does it say.

Right? What does it say? Not what makes most sense to you, but what does it say. Right? I'm going to jump into it a little bit further. It's a careful analysis of the text, applying literal historical interpretation of the text, doing our best to understand the original author's intent of the passage, which we already talked about.

That's exegesis. And it always has to start here. Right? I had a discussion with somebody years and years ago, when I was a youth pastor. He graduated high school, and then he ended up going down to UCLA. And then he started attending this church, and was very anti-charismatic. And he knows that I'm not a charismatic.

I'm open but cautious, if you know what that means. But I'm not a, you know, I don't practice the charismatic, because obviously you're members at this church. He came back, and he was pounding. He said, "These charismatics, you know, they're not right with God, they don't know anything about God." And he was just going at it.

And he was going at it with not debating with me, but thinking that I would agree with him, because he knew I wasn't charismatic. But the concern I had with the way that he was going after the charismatics was, he heard certain things when he went down there. And they were very passionate about slamming the charismatics.

Right? So I asked him, "So why do you believe that?" And he said, "Well, because the Bible said so." So I asked him, "Where? Where in the Bible does it say that?" And he got kind of caught off guard, because he was like, "Are you charismatic? Why are you defending them?" He's like, "I'm not defending the charismatic.

I'm defending the Scripture. So you're a young guy, you're coming here passionate, you're just like bashing all these charismatics. I just want to make sure that you understand where your passion's coming from. That if it's coming from a conviction of Scripture, or you just happened to find a group that was passionate about this." And so I challenged him to look through the Scripture.

So he came up with a couple of verses, and I said, "Are you sure that's what it says?" Then I played the devil's advocate, and it took no more than a minute and a half to destroy his argument. And so I was trying to get to my point. My point was, if you come to a conclusion of a doctrine the way you came to a conclusion, this is what causes divisions in the Church.

This is what causes self-righteousness and pride. And you are absolutely convinced that you are right. And I'm not saying that you're wrong. But the way you came to that conclusion is wrong. You got passionate because you found somebody that you really respected, and he came out very strong. And so you said, "Oh, that sounds right." And so now you became this anti-charismatic.

So I was trying to caution him, "Don't come to conclusions that way. You're just kind of hysterical. You just have a mob mentality. And so any wind of doctrine that comes in that seems to be right, and certain people that you respect can cling to that, then you're going to end up just jumping onto the same boat." And that's a very dangerous way to come to convictions.

So first and foremost, you have to do your study. If you're going to say, "This is what I believe," make sure you're able to back it up by passages. Not by people, not by anything else, but where in the Bible did you get this conviction? Systematic theology, you can't have a systematic theology if you didn't do the exegesis.

So if I asked you, "What are your views about the end times?" And I run into people all the time that say, "Oh, I'm a dispensationist, or I'm a covenant theology, or I believe in pre-trib, post-trib, I'm a millennial." And they'll throw all these terms, and I'll ask them, "Where did you get that?" And they'll say, "Well, I learned it in catechism, I learned it in school, and I went to seminary, or…" They'll mention all these things, "I read this book, and this guy, the Anabaptists, believed this, or Zwingli believed that," and they'll throw all these terms around.

I say, "That's not what I asked you. I asked where in the Bible, what passage were you studying, and which passages were you studying that caused you to see that that made more sense to you?" So if you come to a conclusion on that subject just because, "You know what?

That makes more sense to me, that Jesus would come back once instead of several times, or that he would be pre-trib, because it just makes sense that the Church wouldn't go through the Tribulation, or the Church would go through Tribulation, that makes more sense to me." It's not just not wise, it's dangerous if you come to conclusions like that, because that's how false doctrine comes into the Church.

You can live your whole life thinking that you are doctrinally correct, without ever really being doctrinally correct, if that's the way you come to conclusions. So systematic theology is a collection, right? So if you're not diligently—and again, I say this with utmost caution—if you are not diligently studying the Bible, do not be strong in the doctrinal convictions that you have.

You can't be. Right? You can't be. How did you come to that conclusion? If you're not studying the Word of God carefully, it's just your prejudice. What sounded right to you, right? Or certain people that you trust. So that's not a wise way to come to a conclusion. So systematic theology.

So an example of systematic theology would be God's nature. So if you say, "Oh no, God is love, love, love." I say, "No, God's Bible also says that God is holy, holy, holy. He is omnipotent, omnipresent. He is immutable." So there's all kinds of things about God that the Bible teaches.

But if you say, "Oh, I grew up in a church where all I heard was, 'God is love, love, love.' Or maybe you went to a church where all you heard was, 'God is holy, holy, holy.'" And your doctrine of who God is, is not systematic theology, but just prejudice.

So there are certain things that you can't come to a conclusion by just one verse. Or even one book. Systematic theology is a collection of careful study of the Word of God, which collectively points to something. And that's where we get the doctrine of Trinity. Doctrine of Trinity was a doctrine that I had such a hard time with when I was a young Christian.

Every Bible study I had, I asked them, "Explain the Trinity to me." And they tried all these illustrations. And after they would give me their best illustration, they would always conclude by saying, "But it's not like that." Right? "It's kind of like the water." "It's like the ice. It's like vapor." You know?

What else did I miss? Did I say water? Water, ice, and vapor, right? So it's like three different elements. And then they would tell me, "It's kind of like that." I was like, "Oh, okay, I get it." And then they would say, "But it's not like that." I go, "What?" So I would say, "Okay, maybe he's not smart enough, or he doesn't know the Bible enough." So I would go ask my professors, because I was a Bible major at Biola.

And every professor I asked would always give me, "It's kind of like this, but it's not." And then I realized, like, how can I believe in a God that I can't even explain? How do I come to worship a God that I can't even comprehend in my head? It was so vague.

Right? Well, the way that I came to conclusion and conviction of the Doctrine of Trinity was not from reading books or from talking to people, because the more I talked to people, the more frustrated I got. I was firmly convinced that this was God's Word. And I'm not going to explain to you how I came to that conclusion.

But I was absolutely convinced that this was God's Word. Right? Apologetics, the internal evidence, the Word of God itself. But once I was convinced that that was God's Word, I began to study it systematically. So it wasn't something that just all of a sudden I got. The more I started to study systematically, the more I began to see that's exactly what the Bible teaches.

Jesus Christ is very distinct, but He says He is one. Right? He says He is I Am, yet He is praise to the Father. So I realized the Doctrine of Trinity came from a careful study of what the Word of God says. And that's exactly what the Bible says.

They didn't try to package it. They didn't try to, in fact, in the early church, one of the first things that the early church debated was there was this guy named Arius who was saying that Jesus Christ was a created being and He wasn't eternal. And so he was so charismatic and influential, he almost had the whole church convinced.

Right? And this man named Athanasius who started, who was arguing, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says, again, if I lose you, I lose you. Council of Carthage where the church made an official stand in saying this is the final canon didn't happen until the Council of Carthage at 386.

He was arguing this in the early 300s, 315, 310. And so I was convinced that they had the authoritative Word of God and Athanasius was arguing from God's inerrant Word. And that was the only way that he was able to convince the church that the doctrine of Trinity was the right doctrine.

Does that make any sense? Because without the Word of God, if he didn't have the authority of the Word of God, there is no way that he could have argued against Arius and convinced the whole church that almost, almost universally went over to that doctrine. Because that makes more sense.

That Jesus Christ is the Son and not the Father. Right? See, they're all distinct, three different people, kind of like I'm the Father, Esther's the Mother, my son's the Son, you know, but we're all Kims. Right? Right? Which we call as a false doctrine of tritheism. Or I'm the Father, I'm also the Son for my mom, and I'm the pastor.

I forgot what the other one is, but I'm the same person. That's modalism. That's not what the Bible teaches. Right? So the only way the doctrine of Trinity that you and I have today was able to be argued authoritatively is because he had the canon. He had the authoritative Word of God that was passed down.

It just wasn't given the official stamp later on until the Council of Carthage. Okay? Not all of that. If it went over your head, just went over your head. But the point that I'm trying to make is systematic theology has to come from exegesis. Right? It cannot come from your prejudice.

It cannot come from what makes sense or what doesn't make sense. So when you do enough systematic exegesis and do careful study of the Word of God, it will cause you to have a better systematic theology. So whatever you believe, I believe in the Trinity, I believe in the End Times, I believe about the nature of God, what the Gospel, what the Bible says about the Gospel, it has to come from your diligent study of God's Word.

Right? The whole point of the Reformation was to get the Bible to you. Because the Church kept on saying, "You're not smart enough to interpret the Bible for yourself, so trust me." So you had these priests who went and they studied it and they taught the Word of God.

They wouldn't allow it to be interpreted into common man's language, so you had to speak Latin. And even if you did speak Latin, you had to have special permission even to touch it. And anybody who tried to interpret it ended up getting executed. So the whole Reformation was all of this corruption and bad doctrine came in because they wouldn't let us have the Word of God.

So the real point of the Reformation was to get the Bible to everybody. Right? So that more people can examine the Word of God collectively, so that whatever doctrines that we hold onto is coming from a collective study of the Word of God. That's systematic theology. Right? So again, I want to caution you.

If you're not in the habit of systematically studying the Bible, do not sit and argue with people about secondary doctrines. Okay? Does that make any sense? Right? Because if you do that, you're going to end up arguing your prejudice rather than Scripture. So I'm not saying that if you're not doing it now, right?

But if the conclusions that you came to is just because you happened to go to a certain church, or you read certain books, or you heard certain sermons, right? I would strongly encourage you to get in the habit of studying the Bible systematically first. Okay? Historical theology is once you've come to the conclusion of exegesis, systematic theology, historical theology is, the Bible is not new.

We've had it for 2,000 years. So the church fathers, these PhDs in theology, they've argued, struggled. People have given their lives to stand up for certain doctrines. So it's not wise for us to ignore church history. Right? So historical theology basically is, what are the theologies that were passed down to us?

Right? What did they argue? What are some of the doctrinal statements that we have? The Apostles' Creed, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Baptist Confession. All of these confessions are things that we compare with, right? In light of the study, doctrines, systematic theology, and then we compare it with what they say.

So there is no doctrine that I'm aware of that has not been at one point argued in church history. So, historical theology, right? Now the danger of starting at this point, if you grew up in a Presbyterian church, you're a Presbyterian the rest of your life. You know? Not because you know what you believe, because that's what you're told.

Right? In fact, I know people who go to a Presbyterian church who are taught that if you marry anybody but a Presbyterian, you're compromising. Right? And so they can't marry a Baptist, they can't marry anybody else, and you ask them why, because my pastor told me. Right? Same thing with Baptists.

I've met, you know, I was actually invited to a church in the Valley when they found out I'm a Baptist, the church said, "He can't come." Right? And I asked them why, and they couldn't give me an explanation other than the fact that I'm a Baptist. Right? Anyway, that's personal.

So historical theology is, we don't start there, but it's wise to compare. Right? Wise to see what doctrines were argued and how they argued it and what passages they used. Right? Different periods of church history emphasize certain doctrines over others. So if you happen to be reading a lot of stuff that was written during the Reformation, what do you think was the primary thing that they were concerned about during the Reformation?

What is a doctrine that they were arguing a lot about during the Reformation? Huh? >> Scripture, faith, and salvation. >> Right. That's basically what the Reformation was. They were arguing against the Catholic Church that they were wrong. Right? Right doctrine of salvation, you know, Scripture, right view of Scripture, justification by faith, right?

Not by works. And so that was the predominant thing that they were concerned about. If you go back in earlier church history, the first 700 years of church history, what do you think was the greatest doctrine that they wrestled over and discussed? Every time they had a church council, they discussed this one subject.

And almost for 700 years they did this. Take a guess. I think you can guess. No? You can't guess? What do you think would have been the most important argument and discussion that they had for the first 700 years of church history? Christology. Right? Doctrine of Christ. Because the Bible taught and Jesus said certain things that they couldn't comprehend.

And so they were constantly arguing and discussing and wrestling over Scripture. So if there's any one doctrine that has been just pounded and searched, every word dissected, it was Christology, the nature of who Jesus is. Right? So if you go back to church history, and you'll see divisions between the Catholic Church, the Nestorian, the Coptic Church, and you'll see all these divisions in the church.

And if you go back into church history and find out what doctrine separated them, it usually was the doctrine of Christ. That they were either one group was a modalist or a tritheist or Jesus was an eternal or he was kind of a gnostic figure. So the first 700 years, they combed through every part of Scripture to debate this doctrine.

So it's beneficial for us. So the doctrine that we have of Christ came from hundreds, even thousands of years of combing through every word, every verse. So for us to come and think like, "Oh, I found something new that they didn't find for 2000 years," is probably, you know, a little bit prideful.

They probably argued it. Right? In fact, when I was in Seminary, I was amazed. I went and did a paper on, I don't know if you guys know, in Genesis chapter 6, they had the Nephilim. Okay, so you guys know, you know who the Nephilims are, right? Okay, some of you know who the Nephilims are.

So I did just an obscure group of people that are mentioned in the book of Genesis. And so I decided to do a paper on this. And as soon as I decided to do this paper, I regretted it. Because I thought, "How am I going to get material on this subject?

Who cares?" You know, that's what I, I just picked it because that just seemed like, you know, I'm just curious, who are these people? So once I started doing the paper, I had to go to Fuller Seminary, and I have to go to Cal State Fullerton, all these major book libraries, even the secular libraries, to see if there's any material on the subject.

So the first school that I went to was Cal State Fullerton. Because they have a storage of a lot of ancient theological, like, materials in that library. Which is surprising to me, because it's a secular university, but they have it. So I went there thinking, like, "Okay, maybe I'll find a couple chapters." So I went and looked up the Nephilims, and I found a whole wall.

Like, a whole wall of people writing about this subject, right? And the conclusion was, they didn't know. That was the end conclusion, right? So I spent two months researching on the Nephilims, but you know what I learned from that was, for 2,000 years, there were people like me, who were much smarter, and had much more anal than me, who actually spent and did PhDs and doctoral papers on this subject, and they will give you 15 different views of how this was argued for 2,000 years, and the end conclusion was nobody knows for sure.

They're making an educated guess. So what I learned from that was, every part of scripture has been dissected and argued and studied. So there's nothing that we're studying that's just uniquely us. So the point that I'm getting at is that for 2,000 years, the Word of God has been tested and dissected and argued.

And so the doctrines that you and I have today didn't just come to us. It wasn't just some guy 40 years ago who all of a sudden discovers something new. So whenever somebody says, "I have something new that they didn't know for 2,000 years," run. You know what I mean?

Because that's probably not true. That's usually how bad doctrines come from. So that's where we get historical theology. Philosophical theology is what I mentioned is, how do you make sense? Philosophical theology is when we apply philosophical reasoning to help us to better apply what we've learned from exegesis, systematic theology and historical theology.

So I'll just give you an example of, because the way I wrestled with the doctrine of Trinity, it came from my study of the Word of God. And then when I started to get a broader understanding of the scripture, I began to realize it does teach the doctrine of Trinity.

So I used to shake in my boots every time a Jehovah Witness would come because their doctrine made more sense to me, until I knew what the Word of God says. And then now I go to the Word of God and it just, they hit a wall. Right? If we're talking philosophically, they make more sense.

But as soon as we open up the Bible, they hit a wall because there's a bunch of passages that they can't explain. The way I came to this conclusion is, the Bible clearly teaches this. When you collectively see it systematically, it teaches the doctrine of Trinity. When you look at the doctrine of Trinity in church history, it was universally accepted, right?

As far as the mainstream is concerned. And so how do I make sense of this? Which is what I was struggling with. How can I embrace a doctrine that I can't even explain, my professors can't explain to me? So philosophically, so I've already concluded that that's what the Bible teaches.

And that's what the church historians have told me already, confirmed for me. So how do I make sense of this doctrine of Trinity? And this is, again, this is the way I wrestled with it. If God created me, it would make sense that God will always remain a mystery to a certain degree.

Right? And it would only make sense to me that I can't explain to you perfectly who He is. Just like my children can't explain perfectly who I am. Right? I know a lot more about them than they know about me. Right? Because I raised them. Right? And they know a lot about me that they don't know.

Because they showed up in my life when I was 30. So there's 30 years of my life they haven't seen. And then they weren't conscious until they were, what, 15? So that's like, so 45. Right? So 45 years they don't know. Right? They only know the last 4 or 5 years.

So it made sense to me. So if God created me, if God created me, it makes sense that there's an aspect of God that I can't fully comprehend. I'm already convinced that's God's Word. And so here's the way I reconcile that in my head. Again, this isn't, this is just philosophical.

Right? If I told you, and let's say we don't have the word beautiful. And we don't have anything even close to that. Right? You know how there are certain things that, you know, a lot of you guys who are, or a lot of you guys at least bilingual enough, where you know that there are certain words that you cannot translate.

Right? You can't translate. So I'm bilingual in Korean and English, so there's a word in Korean that I can't translate, and this word is "hankehae." Okay? Anybody know what that word means? Okay, maybe one person, okay? That word is uniquely Korean. And you kind of have to grow up in the culture, and some of you guys, I'm guessing most of you guys probably don't know either.

Right? Because it took me a while to figure that out as well. That's a word that if you don't know the culture, you don't know how it's being used, you don't know in what context it's being used, that there is not a word, there's no phrase that I can use in English to convey to you the meaning of that word.

Right? So the only way that I can convey this to you is to use something like it. It's kind of like, it's something good. It's not bad, it's good. It's kind of nostalgic. It's kind of like spring. Like after the rain, or you eat something tasty, and you get this warm, fuzzy feeling.

So that's the best way I can explain to you what that word means, because it's a very cultural word. So you're going to have to go by how I explained it to you, because you're limited by what you're able to understand based upon your culture and your language and your limitation.

So when I'm trying to explain to you something that I know because of that culture, I have to, I have, I am limited by your limitation of how I can explain this to you. Does that make sense? So when we talk about the things of God, there's things where we say, well God is sovereign, yet God says we're responsible.

God created us, and yet when Adam and Eve sinned, even though He's omniscient, they were punished. So there's aspects of what the Word of God teaches that doesn't completely make sense to me, right? But the fact that it doesn't make sense to me, makes sense to me, to a certain degree, because I'm trying to comprehend the things of God.

So my conclusion was, obviously the philosophical theology is doing my best to try to understand something that can't be completely understood. But is that okay? Is that tension okay? And I, my conclusion was, not only was it okay, it makes sense that there's tension. If there wasn't tension, I would be suspect, right?

I would be suspect. Now again, that may, that may seem like a lot of, you know, circular reasoning, but it makes perfect sense to me, right? But at the end of the day, God, the doctrines of the scripture are not written for the purpose of your knowledge of everything about God.

The doctrine, the scripture was written for the purpose of our salvation, to reveal to us. So you see, exactly, when I tell my children about myself, I'm trying to tell them for a particular reason. Let's say I'm in the context of instructing them why you should choose this major over that major, and I'm explaining to them about my experience, what I went through, and why I'm giving you this advice.

I'm not explaining to him everything about who I am. I'm explaining who I'm revealing myself to him, because I have a specific purpose of why I need him to understand that, so that he can go a certain direction. Scripture was given to us for the purpose of salvation, to reveal to us who he is, and to draw sinners to himself.

So when he talks about the doctrine of sovereignty, he's not telling us how it works. He's not telling us God's predestination, so let me tell you how it works. So get out your calculator, you know, and we're going to make a graph, and you're going to figure out how this works.

When he talks about the doctrine of sovereignty and predestination, all he is saying is, "Trust me." That's what he's saying. I am sovereign God. Nothing happens outside of my knowledge and my power. There's, "Have I not said it?" "Shall I not do it?" So basically he's telling his people, "When I tell you to jump, you jump, because I'm a sovereign God.

I predestined this." So there's a purpose of why he's saying it. He's not saying it so that we can understand the intricacies of how predestination works, which we get caught up in. Right? And so I'm not saying that we shouldn't be curious or ask questions. But philosophical theology is basically us trying to comprehend what was revealed in Scripture.

So certain things are going to make sense, certain things may not make sense. But if you start, if you study the Board of God and you come to a doctrinal position based upon this, you will be a Jehovah Witness if you have the courage enough to be one. Because it makes more sense, philosophically.

But if you are a Biblicist, where you are studying the doctrine carefully, there are certain things that you're not going to be able to comprehend. Right? So certain positions that I take, whether it is about women in ministry or homosexuality, that these are positions not based upon what I think makes the most sense, or what is going to make the most sense to the world, but what does the Bible say.

Which will always make us unpopular. Because if they don't acknowledge the Word of God as with authority, and we're saying the only reason why I believe that is because the Word of God says so, then they're going to reject us. Right? Because they don't give the same authority that it has.

So it doesn't make sense that our doctrines are always going to be acceptable to the world. They won't be. There are certain things that God says because He's pointing out sin to the world, so they will repent and come back to them. Right? Alright, so again, I'm not going to—I went through most of my time talking about this.

I'm going to go through the other one real quick. So absolutely essential. It needs to be in this order. Exegesis, systematic theology, historical theology, philosophical theology. I would encourage you to memorize this, so that whenever you get into this discussion with people who are not basing it on Scripture, you remember.

Okay, I'm not arguing exegesis, I'm just arguing philosophically. Okay? The other part I'm just going to skim through. Okay? If you're studying the Bible, you have to—these are all different contexts. You have the passage you're looking at, what is the immediate context? This is kind of like the paragraph, right?

And then the next section is the larger section, kind of like we're studying the Book of Romans, right? And as an example, Romans chapter 7, verse 13 to 25, that's the passage. What does it mean? Well, when you compare it with the immediate context, which is earlier chapter 7, chapter 6, and chapter 8, so you have to view this passage in light of the larger context.

And then this larger context, well, what is Paul saying in the larger, major section? So in chapters 1 through 7, Paul is arguing, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." He's trying to reveal sin in order to bring chapter 8, "Oh, what a wretched man that I am, but thanks be to God, what the law could not do, weakened by the sinful flesh, God did by sending His Son in the Spirit." So he gives deliverance in chapter 8.

So the larger section, right? So Romans chapter 7, in the immediate section of chapters 6 and 8, larger section of chapter 1 through 7, and then the book in Romans where the gospel is being taught, first 11 chapters of doctrine of the gospel, and then chapter 12 through 16, talking about, "Therefore, present your body in view of the mercy of God, in view of everything that you've been taught, how you ought to apply all of this." Chapter 12 through 16.

So that's the book, the gospel message in totality, right? So whenever I study that passage, I have to have that in mind. But it goes even further than that, right? So when we look at the things that Paul said in Romans, how does Paul use the word "law" in his other books?

When he says the word "love," what does he mean by that? How does he use that word, right? So there are certain things that I may say, if you know who I am, may mean something different, right? I never use the word "bomb." I'm not from that generation. So if I say "bomb," I probably mean, "Get out of this sanctuary." That's what I mean, right?

So if somebody much younger said it, it may mean, "It's cool." So you have to understand how that person uses that word. So that's the larger context of the writer, right? Who is he? What kind of language does he use? So that's the larger context. And then the context outside of that is the New Testament.

So you have the Old Testament and New Testament. You have the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So depending on what passage or what book you're looking at, you're going to have different covenants. So how the Bible talks about the people of God sounds very different in the Old Testament versus the New Testament, right?

How we understand the law, at least in view, where the law came to bring you to sin, and then law brought you to sin, and then now we have the law of Christ. So we have a New Testament context and an Old Testament context. And then the larger part of that in the Bible, right, the context of the Bible is, what is the whole theme of the Bible?

Redemptive history. What we call the meta-narrative, the larger narrative, right? So the whole narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a holy God seeking His glory by redeeming sinful man. That's the whole theme, right? So there is not a single book that's going to be written that is going to be contradicting that theme.

Because God doesn't lie. He doesn't contradict Himself. So whatever study you're doing, you have to see it in the context of the larger picture. So let me give you an example of that. The book of Jonah, right? What is the purpose of the book of Jonah? Don't mess with God or you get swallowed up by a whale.

Right? Is that the message? You can say, yeah, don't mess with God. God's a sovereign God. I mean, you can get, you know, small lessons from that. But what's the point? Why does He put that in this random story, right? And it's not even about Israel. It's about, you know, a Jewish prophet who doesn't want to go to these Ninevites who in the long scheme of things, they're going to be judged and disappear.

Why is that in the Bible? Right? Well, if you look at the, if you study that book with the context of understanding in God's redemptive history, God called the nation of Israel to be what? A royal priesthood. A holy nation. To declare His glory. Right? He calls Jonah, and He tells him to go, and Jonah doesn't want to go.

And why is he protesting? Because he doesn't want them to be saved. He gets angry when they get saved. And then how does the book end? Why do you care? These people who can't tell from the left or to the right that I show mercy to them. The end.

That's how it ends. Right? So, what was the point? The nation of Israel forgot their calling. They were there enjoying themselves and going to temple worship, but He said, "No, I want you to go and declare My glory to them." And He didn't want to go. So the whole point about the book of Jonah was in God's redemptive history, the nation of Israel was called to declare His glory, and Israel forgot their calling.

Right? So, if you don't see that in the light of the larger picture of redemptive history, the meta-narrative, it just becomes about the whale. Right? Don't mess with the whale or you get eaten up. Right? It's the end. And you get a nice moral story for Sunday school, but you kind of miss the larger picture.

So again, every passage has to be within the context of the larger genre. I'm not going to talk about it because Pastor Mark's going to talk about it next week. Okay? So, those of you guys who are anal have to fill this out. You can fill this out right now.

Okay. Do it quick. Don't worry about penmanship because I'm not going to give you time. Clear yet? Unique theology. Book. Purpose of the book. Major section. Sections by theme. Pastor Mark, maybe you should start coming up. Pastor mark, we should start coming up. OK. OK.