Can I Really Trust My Interpretation of the Bible?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, each of us are Bible interpreters. Each of us are trying to interpret and understand the meaning of God's Word accurately.
00:00:12.000 | So, how do I know if my Bible interpretation is accurate or if it is false?
00:00:16.000 | It's another great question from a listener to the podcast.
00:00:19.000 | This listener does not give us their name, but here is their email.
00:00:24.000 | Pastor John, hello. Paul tells us the law is good if one uses it lawfully.
00:00:30.000 | That's 1 Timothy 1.8.
00:00:32.000 | So, the Bible is good if one uses the Bible biblically.
00:00:36.000 | So, how can I know if I'm using my Bible biblically or using the law rightly?
00:00:42.000 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:00:44.000 | I would say that there are two ways to go about answering this question.
00:00:48.000 | And one is you could gather together, and I will, I'll gather together some biblical pointers that give guidance to how the law or biblical teaching in general is to be handled.
00:01:02.000 | That may be what they're asking.
00:01:04.000 | Show me some biblical pointers for how to handle the Bible or the law.
00:01:08.000 | Secondly, the other way to answer this question is to realize that there are people who insist that even the pointers that I give could be questioned, and then we'd have to deal with that problem.
00:01:28.000 | I could give, for example, five biblical pointers to how the Bible says we should handle the law, and a certain kind of person could say to me, "But how do I know that I'm reading those pointers correctly?"
00:01:42.000 | And I could give an explanation of the pointers and how they work, and they could say, "But how do I know that I'm interpreting your explanation correctly?"
00:01:52.000 | And then a Roman Catholic might chime in and say, "You can't. You can't be sure of any of those things, which is why Protestants are so divided. So you should let the church, the pope, ultimately decide what everything means and let him instruct you."
00:02:11.000 | To which the person could consistently say, "But then how do I know when I'm reading what the pope wrote in his encyclical that I'm interpreting the pope correctly?"
00:02:21.000 | And so on, ad infinitum.
00:02:24.000 | There is a kind of person that is like that.
00:02:26.000 | You can see that those are two very different kinds of problems.
00:02:31.000 | The first person is simply asking, "Could you give me some biblical guidance for how to understand the law in the Bible and to help me know I'm interpreting it correctly?"
00:02:45.000 | The second person has a much deeper problem and is basically calling into question whether a human being can know anything.
00:02:55.000 | And there are skeptics like that.
00:02:57.000 | They're wired to be so suspicious and so skeptical about their own interpretations that they never come to a knowledge of the truth.
00:03:06.000 | So let me take these one at a time.
00:03:08.000 | So here's the first one.
00:03:09.000 | What are some biblical pointers for how to handle the law?
00:03:14.000 | I'm thinking Mosaic law first and then Old Testament more generally, say, to handle it correctly.
00:03:21.000 | Let's start with the context of the text they're asking about, 1 Timothy 1.8, where it says this.
00:03:28.000 | "Certain persons, by swerving from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they're saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
00:03:47.000 | Now, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless."
00:03:58.000 | I'm skipping a few verses here.
00:04:00.000 | "To indict," verse 10, "to indict whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted."
00:04:12.000 | So here are some pointers for how to handle the law in that context.
00:04:17.000 | One, don't swerve from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith because there are spiritual and moral preconditions for true handling of God's Word.
00:04:29.000 | Two, the prohibitions of the law are not mainly for people whose hearts are right with God and are led by the Spirit under the law of love.
00:04:42.000 | Three, the law is mainly for the lawless who need to be shown that there is an authority outside of them to which they will give an account.
00:04:52.000 | Four, a right use of the law accords with healthy doctrine, which Paul says in verse 11 is in accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.
00:05:07.000 | So make the gospel of Christ crucified the touchstone for the right use of the law.
00:05:15.000 | So here's a second cluster of pointers from Romans 3, 19 and 20.
00:05:20.000 | Paul says, "We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world be accountable to God.
00:05:31.000 | For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin."
00:05:41.000 | So here we get pointers like, one, though the law is given to Israel, it stopped the mouth of the whole world.
00:05:48.000 | Two, it will never be the instrument of justification. No one gets right with God by law-keeping.
00:05:54.000 | Three, through law comes the knowledge of sin. That is, the law confronts us with our sin.
00:06:02.000 | It's not the solution to the sin problem. It points away from itself to Christ.
00:06:08.000 | If we read the law rightly, we will see that the law points away from the law to Christ.
00:06:16.000 | Here's a third cluster of pointers from Jesus.
00:06:21.000 | He says, for example, in Matthew 5, that the law is misused by the Pharisees because they don't take it deep enough.
00:06:29.000 | The law says, "Don't kill, don't commit adultery, but I say to you," and I'm getting at the real purpose of the law, "Don't get angry and don't lust."
00:06:38.000 | So there are clues for how you handle the law in Matthew 5.
00:06:42.000 | Or another example is when the Pharisees condemned Jesus and his disciples for eating with the tax collectors and sinners,
00:06:49.000 | and when they condemned them for plucking some grain on the Sabbath and eating it as they walked along.
00:06:55.000 | And in both of these cases, amazingly, in Matthew, Jesus said the problem was that the Pharisees don't know how to read.
00:07:05.000 | They don't know how to read their Bibles. And he quoted Hosea 6, verse 6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice."
00:07:17.000 | And then he said, "If you knew what this means, you would not have condemned the guilty."
00:07:24.000 | You wouldn't have used the Old Testament that way.
00:07:27.000 | If you knew what Hosea 6, 6 meant, you wouldn't have used the Old Testament to condemn us.
00:07:32.000 | In other words, there are key interpretive passages in the Old Testament that give guidance for how to rightly handle the law.
00:07:42.000 | And there are many, many more pointers in the Bible to the right handling of the law.
00:07:50.000 | Just one example would be the book of Hebrews.
00:07:53.000 | Oh my, almost every page of the book of Hebrews is written to help us understand the limits of the law and the right use of it.
00:08:02.000 | But let me close by saying a brief word about this other kind of person who responds to virtually every effort you make to explain the Bible or help them understand the Bible by saying,
00:08:17.000 | "But I can't really know if I'm interpreting you or the Bible rightly. How can they know? How can they know?"
00:08:25.000 | Now, Jesus has something to say about that person and to that person.
00:08:32.000 | His claim was blunt and unsympathetic.
00:08:39.000 | He said, "You don't live that way."
00:08:43.000 | That was his answer to people like that.
00:08:45.000 | "You don't live that way. Your life shows that you really do live on the basis of your confidence in your interpretation of things. Yes, it does.
00:08:56.000 | When you talk that way, you're a hypocrite."
00:08:59.000 | Now, here's where I'm getting that.
00:09:01.000 | Listen to Matthew 16, 1-3.
00:09:04.000 | The Pharisees and the Sadducees came to test him.
00:09:07.000 | They asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
00:09:10.000 | They needed more signs.
00:09:12.000 | "We can't understand what you're doing.
00:09:13.000 | We don't know where your authority comes from.
00:09:15.000 | We don't get it. We need signs."
00:09:18.000 | Here's what he said.
00:09:20.000 | He answered them, "When it's evening, you say, 'It'll be fair weather, for the sky is red.'
00:09:29.000 | And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.'"
00:09:37.000 | To which Jesus says, "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."
00:09:49.000 | In other words, they were saying they could not know how to interpret Jesus and his words and ways.
00:10:00.000 | It's all so uncertain.
00:10:02.000 | Who can know?
00:10:03.000 | We need more signs, more explanation.
00:10:07.000 | But when it comes to their livelihood, they trusted their powers of interpretation just fine.
00:10:17.000 | Red in the morning, sailors warning.
00:10:20.000 | Red at night, sailors delight.
00:10:24.000 | And we can tell the one from the other and we'll stake our lives on it.
00:10:27.000 | We're not going fishing today.
00:10:30.000 | There's going to be a storm.
00:10:32.000 | They were hypocrites.
00:10:33.000 | They were just plain outright hypocrites.
00:10:36.000 | So I would say to the person who is claiming not to be able to know how to read anything with confidence,
00:10:45.000 | you are probably inconsistent.
00:10:49.000 | And you may be a hypocrite who is just using feigned helplessness to avoid the clarity and conviction of Scripture.
00:11:00.000 | Pointed words. Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:02.000 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:11:04.000 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast, all at AskPastorJohn.com.
00:11:10.000 | Speaking of proper interpretation, we will talk about sound preaching next time.
00:11:17.000 | Sound preaching and the happiness of God.
00:11:20.000 | Those two themes are tied together in Paul's mind, sound preaching and God's happiness.
00:11:25.000 | They're inseparable themes, actually.
00:11:28.000 | And while Monday's episode is for preachers, I hope everyone listens to it.
00:11:32.000 | It's relevant for all of us, as we all focus our interpretive powers on 1 Timothy 1, verses 10 and 11 to see this beautiful connection.
00:11:42.000 | Sound preaching, happy God.
00:11:45.000 | I'm your host Tony Reik.
00:11:46.000 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:11:48.000 | Have a great weekend.
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