Latest / The Immutable Word / EP040 Context or Con? How Bible Verses Get Twisted

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EP040 Context or Con? How Bible Verses Get Twisted · The Immutable Word

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Drink a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine oft infirmities.
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And if I remove even more of it, I just said, hey, look, the Bible says it's
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okay to drink a little bit of wine every now and then.
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I mean, you get home from work, you're worn out, you just want to relax a little
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bit. Who says a little cup of wine won't hurt?
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I mean, the Bible says you could drink a little bit of wine,
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but they take it out of context.
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Look what he says in the very first part of that verse. He says, drink no longer water.
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So does that mean that I'm going to stop drinking water altogether?
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And then, of course, he says, for thy stomach's sake and thine oft infirmities. It's medicinal.
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It has nothing to do. That is not social drinking.
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Welcome to The Immutable Word. Thank you for joining us this evening for another
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episode. We've got a good one planned for you.
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Hopefully you enjoyed the previous episode, episode 39. Actually,
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this is interesting because this makes episode 40 for us, which just came to my mind right now.
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It's like 30 more than we originally thought we would actually be able to accomplish.
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Maybe even more than that, I would think. But just thinking about,
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wow, episode 40, That's crazy.
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And when did we start? Like six months ago or so ago? Well, way more than six months ago.
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I think it was the beginning of the year, right? Wasn't it? Around March or April.
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Sometime in the spring. Yeah, when we first dropped the episode,
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and it feels just like yesterday.
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So here we are, 40 episodes later. That's pretty crazy, man.
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So congratulations on that. Yeah, me too, man.
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We kept each other going when we wanted to give up time and time again.
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But no, it's, it's been a lot of fun.
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It's been a great journey. And we're just, it feels like we're just getting started.
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You know, I was just thinking, you know, so we've got so much going on with
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work, family, ministry.
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It's just like, it's crazy, you know, sticking this in, you know,
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because, you know, we don't have to do this. We're not getting paid to do this.
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We're just doing this. but for some reason there it's
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to me it's kind of therapeutic you know there's a
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little bit of a burden because you got a plan you know
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put your notes together things like that set up the call work around each other's
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schedule but i feel like when we do it it's kind of fulfilling you know what
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i mean i really enjoy what we're doing and so and lord willing to me the best
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thing is and i've gotten feedback i know you've gotten some feedback from individuals.
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That say they get something out of it.
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And at the end of the day, that's really all that matters to us is that people are growing,
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getting excited, growing in the Word of God, and wanting to dig and study and
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maybe consider some of the things that we talk about on these episodes. Yeah.
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Yeah, I agree with that. It just feels like, you know, day to day,
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you know, everybody's got jobs they have to do.
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And sometimes it feels like it's just meaningless work. And you're wondering,
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like, what's my purpose here?
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Of course, you got to pay your bills. And that's very important, I guess.
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But for me personally, this is something that I look forward to even after a really long day.
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And it's just uh definitely fulfilling and
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it's it's certainly worth especially if if we can
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play a small part in helping to
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encourage and edify and you know i learn from this you know i've said this before
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on our podcast and i'm also a student that while we do this that i'm also able
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to to pick up a lot of new things and it's it's also rewarding for me it's a
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blessing for me to be a part of it.
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Yeah, and I can tell you that putting this material together forces me to learn
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because I'm trying to put it in an organized structure.
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It's different when you have a lot of this information kind of floating around
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in the back of your mind and you've got bits and pieces, but when you put it
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in order and you've got to teach it in a way that's digestible,
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man, I tell you what, that's the best way to learn.
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I encourage anybody, if you really want to learn something, teach it.
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Yeah. Teach it. That is the best way to learn.
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And it makes you accountable too. It makes you double check things that you're
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learning. And if you're gonna teach something, you gotta know it's correct to
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the best of your ability.
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And especially things with these topics and what we're doing is like,
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we got the word of God that we're basing everything off of.
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We're putting the lens on this on everything that we look at.
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Got to be pretty accurate. It's got to be correct. So I'm sure you're wondering
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why my voice sounds like it's been...
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It feels like I swallowed a bunch of nails and sandpaper. Yeah,
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yelling at the kids again. Yeah, something like that.
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The show must go on, right? Regardless of how we feel.
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I've been sick for the last three or four days, so bear with me as we walk through it.
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And if I sound kind of weird and stressed out... You're going to make everybody
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want to drink a hot tea after this. Yeah. Hot honey water and tea.
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It's been the story of my life for the last three or four days. That NyQuil, DayQuil.
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Zyrtec, ibuprofen, you name it, the whole cocktail. So I might have brain fog too if I start fumbling.
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I'm just going to blame it on that. None of my poor speaking skills.
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So anyways, we're going to be talking about context and why context matters.
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So we were talking about angiology in our last episode.
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We're going to continue on that. There's a lot there to cover.
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Obviously, that's going to be a series.
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There's a lot more that we're both researching because
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again there's just a a mine you
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know a gold mine of of information we're pretty excited to
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to walk through that but today we're going
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to talk about why context matters and and specifically around we've we've heard
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single bible verses often quoted that seems to just unlock everything right
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you've seen a viral meme with a motivation a motivational message with a scripture
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on it to justify certain actions,
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and seemingly a perfect verse that's been lifted entirely out of its original setting.
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So, you might have heard, like, I can do all things through a Bible verse taken out of context.
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But when you understand, to
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understand scripture, you must look at the who, the when, and the where.
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And if you take the text out of context, you're
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left with a con right so we're
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gonna be diving deep diving deep diving deeply
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into one of the most critical skills for any any serious thinker or student
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of scripture which is interpreting through context you know wisdom tells us
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again you know got to think about this we take the text out of the context you're
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left with the con right so maybe robert you know start Start us off with maybe an example.
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We can start rolling into it. Yeah. So there's a.
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When we talk about taking a verse out of context, what you're basically saying
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is you're removing that passage from the broader view, the bigger picture.
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And when you do that, you can twist the meaning, the words.
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That's why the saying is I can do all things through a Bible verse taken out
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of context. You can literally teach anything you want.
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Let me put it this way because I think this will register with a lot of people.
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There's a lot of people that'll come up and maybe they're skeptics,
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maybe they're unbelievers, and they'll say they really struggle with Christianity
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because there's so many different interpretations.
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That's usually what they'll say. They go, well, you know, I mean,
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you've got Baptists, Presbyterians, you've got Pentecostals,
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you've got Evangelicals, you've got Oneness Pentecostals, you've got Church of Christ.
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You know, everybody's got their own version. And a lot of them sometimes will
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even use the same Bible version translation.
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So how do you take the same Bible translation and walk away with 900 different interpretations?
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And the truth of the matter is, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest
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reasons is they take the passage out of its context.
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And they want to teach, you know, or they want to try to emphasize something,
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a principle they believe in, whatever they're, you know, they're trying to make
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an argument or claim, and they'll take a Bible passage out of context.
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One of the episodes that we have planned is called Catholic Proof Texting,
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and that's exactly what they do. Catholics will do this a lot.
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Calvinists will do this a lot as well. They'll proof text. That means they'll
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take a verse. What you were saying others, it unlocks all this other stuff.
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That's called proof texting. It's where they use a single verse to try to prove
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an entire theology or an entire teaching. instead of, you know,
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there's, you know, we've mentioned Brother Nock before, but I like what Brother
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Nock said many, many years ago.
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He said, if you want to make sure that a Bible teaching or doctrine is true,
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then it's got to follow a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation.
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He says that if you teach, like, say, for example, the deity of Christ or the
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Trinity, then that's going to be a consistent teaching from Genesis to Revelation.
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The Bible will never contradict itself.
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But if you find a verse that seems like it's a contradiction,
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then the problem is you're interpreting and teaching possibly a text out of context.
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And you're taking an obscure text and you're separating it from the rest of scripture.
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And believe it or not, I just wrote an article about it not too long ago about
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private interpretation.
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And when you take the word private, the word, you know, P-R-I-V-A-T-E and other
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like privately, other forms of it, it actually means to remove something from the whole.
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That's what private interpretation. It doesn't mean your own personal interpretation.
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That's what most people think private interpretation is. Oh,
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that's just your take on the text.
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But that's not it. Private interpretation is where you literally remove that
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particular text or that particular passage from the rest of Scripture.
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Now, remember, we just did 1 Corinthians 2, 13, when we did the revelatory epistemology,
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and we were talking about how the Bible interprets itself.
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And the best, the prescribed method is comparing Scripture to Scripture, right?
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Well, what you're doing is you're leaving the definition up to God.
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You're leaving the context to define what all that means.
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So when we say take something out of context, there's a formal term,
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and it's called contextomy.
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It's C-O-N-T-A-X-T-O-M-Y. And it just means quoting out of context.
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So it's, again, it's kind of the practice of removing a passage from the surrounding
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matter, the surrounding text in a way that it distorts the intended meaning of the source.
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And sometimes you'll hear it called quote mining or cherry picking verses.
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You'll hear people say that. That's probably the most common terminology we'll
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hear is cherry picking, which is all the same thing.
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But the formal word for it is context. It's context to me. It's actually a fallacy.
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So when people take a verse out of context, I mean, I'll sometimes I'll point
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that out and say, hey, you know, you're committing a quote mining fallacy.
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Because what you're doing is you're moving the text from its broader context.
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And so that means you can make that text teach it anything you want.
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And we'll look at a couple examples of that.
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The saying is any verse taken out of context becomes a pretext.
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So somebody will say, well, what's a pretext? And a pretext literally means
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it gives a false appearance.
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It's a misleading appearance or behavior intended to hide the truth.
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Somebody might say something and say, well, what's the pretext behind that message you just said?
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You know, like, you know, I've been in meetings where they're laying tons of
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people off and they go, oh, we're doing this because we want to be efficient.
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What's the pretext behind that? It's not about being efficient.
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It means you want to save money, right? Or it's about the bottom line. How do we cut costs?
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That's what we mean by pretext. There's actually, there's a false, you're giving,
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your statement actually has a pretext behind it out of context,
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and you're giving a false appearance or you're distorting the message because
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it's a pretext. That's what that means.
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So when a verse is taken out of context, it becomes a pretext.
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There's a couple of examples.
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There's one that we often read about, and you hear this, especially in,
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you know, like, I was going to say Thanksgiving, not Thanksgiving, July 4th, okay?
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So in 2 Chronicles, there is a passage.
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That's definitely meant for the United States, right? Right.
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I think we've talked about this one before. This one is, let's see if I got the verse here.
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But it's the one where it says, if my people shall humble themselves.
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Yeah, I'll heal this land.
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Right. That, you know, they'll humble themselves to come upon me and so forth
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and so on, I'll heal the land. And so, of course, that's talking about Israel.
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It's not talking about the United States.
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But they'll usually take that verse.
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You'll hear it in political speeches. You'll hear it in rhetoric and things
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like that when they're trying to convince people of, you know,
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supporting America or whatever.
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And they're trying to teach nationalism or Christian nationalism or that America
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was a Christian nation, something like that. And they use one verse out of context
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that has nothing to do with America.
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That's a pretext. But there's actually some really great examples.
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And again, all I'm going to do is these are verses in the Bible,
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and I'm going to rip it out of context.
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But I could show you, like for example, in Malachi chapter 2 and verse 17.
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Here's just to kind of give you again the context of the chapter of the book,
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is God is kind of accusing and criticizing and judging Israel for making their
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own statements against God.
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So like in this example, he says in verse 17, ye have wearied the Lord with
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your words. So basically you've worn him out.
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Yet ye say, wherein have we wearied him? And he says, when ye say,
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so notice the people that are talking here are Israel.
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These are the Israelites. And this is the backslidden Israelites that have gone to apostasy.
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It says, wherein have you wearied him when ye say, everyone that doeth evil
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is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them,
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or where is the God of judgment?
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So all I have to do is take that one passage or that phrase,
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everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord.
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What if I wanted to justify doing evil?
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And I say, well, you can't do evil. Well, the Bible says everyone that doeth
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evil is good in the sight of the Lord. I can teach an entire teaching that it's
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okay to sin and that sinning is really just based upon preference.
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But in God's eyes, doing evil is right.
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I could be an atheist and attack a Christian and say, well, your Bible says
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everyone that doeth evil is good inside the Lord. Hmm.
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Or he that, you know, and he delighteth in them. God delights in them that do evil.
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Or where's the God of judgment? The Bible even tells you where's the God of
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judgment. He's not even anywhere to be found.
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So I can take that. All I did was just twist.
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All I did was just take one part of the phrase of that entire verse.
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And what I did is I removed it from the context where he says,
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where when ye say, you Israelites, you backslidden, rebellious Israelites,
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You have wearied God when you say, everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight
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of the Lord. That's not a prescription.
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That's God describing what they've said. That's not God telling them and commending
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them for that. You see what I mean?
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Here's another one. Malachi chapter 3 and verse 14.
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The Bible says, ye have said, notice it again.
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It's them saying, watch, it is vain to serve God.
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And what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance? and that we have walked
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mournfully before the Lord of hosts.
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So I could just say, instead of ye said, it said, well, you know what the Bible
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says? It's vain to serve God.
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What profit is it that we've kept as an ordinance? There's no profit in keeping
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the ordinances and the law of God.
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It says it right there in Malachi chapter three. You don't even know what your Bible says, Christian.
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You see what I'm saying? It's easy to take a verse out of context and teach whatever I want.
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But the key words here in verse 14 says, ye, ye have said.
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God's using empirical evidence. evidence against the israelites who have been
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sinning this is what he's he's saying this is your testament here's here's what
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you're saying i don't say this you're the one that says it and a whole remember
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that the context is that they weary god with their own words.
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And God just gives them an example of it, right? Yeah, this is what you're saying.
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Here's another example, 1 Timothy 5. Let's just say, you know,
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you hear this all the time.
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It's a sin to drink alcohol, or no, it's not a sin.
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And they'll say this. This is the verse that they'll use in 1 Timothy 5.
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And in verse 23, it says, Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy
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stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
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See, there you go. It's okay to take a little wine.
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And what if I just remove some of the words there? It says, well,
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the Bible says, you're not supposed to, you know, it says drink, but drink a little wine.
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He goes, drink a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine oft infirmities.
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And if I were to remove even more of it, I just said, hey, look,
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the Bible says it's okay to drink a little bit of wine every now and then.
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You know, I mean, you get home from work, you know, you're worn out.
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You just want to relax a little bit.
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You know, who says a little bottle, you know, a little cup of wine won't hurt.
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I mean the bible says you can drink a little bit of wine But they take it out
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of context Look what he says in verse The very first part of that verse He says
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drink no longer water So does that mean that I'm going to stop drinking water altogether.
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And then, of course, he says, for thy stomach's sake and thine oft infirmities. It's medicinal.
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Yeah, it's medicinal. It has nothing to do. That is not social drinking. Right.
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Right? But if I ripped it out of its context, I could sit there and justify
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drinking. And a lot of people do.
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People do that all the time. But, you know, they don't read the context.
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The context is, well, does that mean that I'm no longer supposed to drink water?
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That I'm not supposed to drink water at all? Yeah. I'm supposed to cut off all
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water? And, of course, that's ridiculous.
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Right? That's not the same. And then, of course, they don't take this into consideration.
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The context also considers the historical context.
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In Timothy's day, when you're in first century Europe, guess what you don't
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do? You don't drink water from streams.
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You don't drink contaminated water because it carries bacteria and things like that.
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There was no purification process other than boiling water.
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So when he says drink no longer water if
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you've got a stomach ailment if you keep drinking bacteria
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virus fed water you're going to get even sicker you
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see what i mean and then of course he says for thy stomachs he goes like thy
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stomach sake and then oft infirmities again the context is medicinal use of
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alcohol not because they didn't have you know ibuprofen and you know what i
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mean and all these other, the medicines and drugs that we have today.
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I mean, up until fairly recently in the 1800s, 1900s, when they started really
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developing medicines for this kind of stuff, that's all they had.
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I mean, dental work, anything that can numb, it's just like snorting,
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you know, paint today. It's like, that's not what you use it for.
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Maybe that's a bad example. Never mind.
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But the point is, it's just, all I got to do is just take that little portion
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out and drink a little wine. It's okay to drink a little wine.
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The Bible says it's okay to drink a little wine.
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And then there you go. You can start an entire movement.
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And people do. And people justify drinking, especially people that claim to be saved.
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A lot of Christian groups out there say that.
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Here's another example, Mark 16, and you'll hear this a lot.
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And there have been religions that have established entire doctrines off of this particular verse.
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But Mark 16, this is where Jesus Christ is sending out, he's giving a commission
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to the apostles, and he gives them apostolic signs.
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But in verse 16, Mark 16, 16, the Bible says this, He that believeth and is
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baptized shall be saved.
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There you go. You need to be baptized to be saved.
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He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved right there in your Bible, plain as day.
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It's just like first, it's like Acts chapter two, verse 38, right?
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You know, believe every one of you repent and believe for the,
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you know, be baptized for the remission of sins.
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You want your sins remitted? Guess what? You need to be baptized.
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Or right there, the Bible says, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.
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What are you going to do with that?
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Well, if you read the rest of the context, it clarifies. He that believeth and
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is baptized shall be saved, semicolon, but he that believeth not shall be damned.
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So the criteria for being damned is not believing, not being baptized. It's believing.
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So it's, again, and this is what people do. People actually will just stop at
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the semicolon because the rest of the passage does not fit their theology.
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They would much rather twist the scriptures out of context. They'll quote mine a verse.
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They'll prove text a verse so that it backs up their theological system.
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That's all they're doing.
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And so when you see people do that, really the best defense is to stop and say, hey, wait a minute.
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Let's stop and read this entire passage in context.
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And you know i've done that so many times and there's
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dozens of passages that we can show you know
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but the purpose today what we want to do is kind of show hey what's
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the method how do i make sure that i'm
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paying attention to the context right because if i if you know sometimes and
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this has happened to me before where a guy gave me this verse mark 16 16 and
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he just threw it out there and then he went to first peter and he was jumping
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all over the place acts 2 38 he sort of show me all these baptism verses.
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And I walked away thinking, man, how in the world do I explain that?
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Because I don't know how to explain those verses.
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And what I should have done was stopped and say, wait, wait,
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wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you go to this other 10 verses,
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let's stop and look at this passage in context.
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And when I started doing that, and I started asking him like,
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hey, why does it say he that believeth not shall be damned, but it doesn't say
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anything about being baptized in order to be damned? Why does it leave out baptisms?
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Ask those questions, push back on them. Because they're making an assumption
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because they ripped a verse out of context in order to supplement whatever theological
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system that they want to push or, you know, shove down your throat.
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Read the verse. Read the verse.
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And hold them to it. And what do they call that again? When they're just sort
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of just dropping just a bunch of information on you.
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I think we were talking about it in one of the debate episodes.
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Yeah, it's up. I remember we mentioned it. Yeah. Yeah,
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it's just, I'm blanking on it, but it's like one of the, it's a good method,
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like, hey, let's stop, wait a second,
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let's look at the source, what it says here, it says, he that believeth and
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is baptized, but it says, believeth not, right, it has nothing about,
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doesn't say anything about being baptized.
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Realize and like well that doesn't matter let's move on to the next are
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you conceding this right then right no so
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malachi 2 17 3 14 first timothy
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5 23 mark 16 16 acts 238 i
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mean on and on on second chronicles 7 14 that's what it was so you could take
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any of those passages and teach whatever you want by just ripping it out of
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its entirety the context so the formula is and it's real simple is text plus
23:52
the context equals the truth. That's where you're going to get the intended meaning.
23:56
But if you do text minus the context, you remove the context,
24:00
you're going to get a pretext.
24:02
That's where you're going to fall in deception or false doctrine.
24:06
If I want to teach false doctrine, I'm going to remove the text from its context.
24:11
There's a group that I've dealt with quite a bit on the street.
24:16
Hebrew Israelites or black Hebrew Israelites. And what they teach is that,
24:19
that if your skin is dark color, if you're, if you're a black by race,
24:25
then you are, you are immediately connected with the, the, um,
24:29
the nation of Israel. You are true, a true Jew.
24:32
And, and of course, when you ask them to give you verses on it,
24:36
man, they will rip verses out of context left and right, and they won't stop.
24:41
And they will refuse to look at the verse in context and they'll completely twist the meaning.
24:46
And they do, they kind of jump from verse to verse to verse,
24:49
and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, wait, slow down.
24:51
Let's take a look at this. It's like you're backing up a dump truck and making
24:56
me drink from a fire hose, instead of just like, let's stop and look at the context.
25:01
So again, text, the text of the scripture plus the context will give you the
25:08
intended meaning. They'll give you the truth.
25:10
But text minus the context will give you a pretext, or it's going that be a
25:15
deception or a false appearance of the text.
25:18
So really, there's a simple method. The method is going to take some work because
25:24
you've got to work on this, right? You can't just sit there and ignore Scripture.
25:29
You can't ignore the context. But you've got to sit there and you've got to do a little bit of work.
25:34
So the context, again, it's always going to extend far beyond the immediately surrounding verses.
25:40
So to be a workman that rightly divides the word of truth, you need to interpret
25:45
a verse of Scripture through these widening layers.
25:50
And I call it the spectrum of context, but here's really the simple methodology
25:55
of the steps. One, you look at the passage.
25:57
What is the specific doctrinal argument of that section? And it's not going
26:01
to be just a single verse. It could be within a paragraph.
26:04
Okay well if it's in a paragraph read the entire
26:07
paragraph right read the verses before that
26:10
verse and read the verses after that verse
26:13
don't just read the verse and run with your your particular interpretation or
26:18
definition then there's so after you look at the passage look at the chapter
26:22
what's the broader theme or the entire narrative this could be part of a debate
26:28
that paul is having with the Sadducees.
26:31
It could be Jesus Christ having a debate with the Pharisees.
26:34
You know what I'm saying? It could be, you know, it could be a number of things.
26:38
You know, Jeremiah preaching to a king that's about to go into Babylonian captivity, well, guess what?
26:44
You've got to take that into consideration when you're trying to interpret that
26:49
particular or understand the meaning of that particular. It's a historical context, right?
26:53
Yep. You know, in some Bibles, not to go off track, but just really quickly,
26:58
some Bibles have summaries at the beginning of the chapter.
27:01
There's a lot of value in reading those summaries, like the Trinitarian Bibles,
27:05
right? They all have summaries. It has summaries of the chapter.
27:08
There's a lot of value in reading. What is this chapter about?
27:11
What is the author saying in this chapter? Why are they saying it?
27:14
But this follows along the same lines that you're... Yeah, and I can't remember
27:19
what it's called, but sometimes in some Bibles, you'll have headers.
27:22
Yeah. And the header will say, hey, these next seven or eight,
27:26
ten verses is about this, whatever it kind of... You know, like,
27:30
say, for example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is verses one through eight
27:35
of this particular chapter. type of thing.
27:37
So it's, it's, those are good. And, and I'm not saying that's Bible.
27:41
Always check the context, right? Read the passages. But the,
27:44
the, the point is, is you start with the passage.
27:47
What's the specific document, doctrinal argument of that section.
27:50
And then of course, what's the chapter? What's, you know, what's the broader
27:53
theme here or the narrative that's in question.
27:56
And then of course you look at the book and this is kind of,
27:59
to your point, a lot of, a lot of study Bibles or note Bibles or reference Bibles
28:04
will have an introduction into that book.
28:07
When was this book written? Who's the author?
28:09
What's the theme of this book? What are the key passages, right?
28:13
So that to whom the book is written and so forth and so on, what's the purpose
28:17
of that book? And then the canon.
28:19
And that is why did God even decide to put that book in the Bible in the first place?
28:24
Why does the book of John exist in the 66 books of the canon?
28:28
You know what I mean? Why did God inspire and preserve that specific book?
28:32
Again, by understanding those layers, peeling back that, you know,
28:37
what is the passage talking about?
28:39
What's the argument? What's, you know, what's the premise?
28:42
What's the, you know, what's the understanding? What's my takeaway from these
28:46
three or four or five verses?
28:48
Then what's the chapter context? Then what's the book context?
28:52
And then what's the canon context? So by doing that, you're going to,
28:56
you know, I'm not saying you're always going to understand the text all the
28:59
time, but what it's going to do, it's going to give you a much better understanding
29:03
of what's going on, even if you can't get the deeper meaning. That's okay.
29:08
But at least you understand, you know, what's going on? What's the passage talking
29:13
about? Who's talking? Who are they talking to?
29:16
What is this book about? Who wrote the book? And so forth and so on.
29:19
Those things all will help you in understanding that particular passage.
29:26
So I had actually put together, I mean, and there's several,
29:28
I just put together an acronym called S.W.O.R.D. S.W.O.R.D.
29:33
You know, for some people, if mnemonics and acronyms help you,
29:37
this is a great way to do it, right? But so S.W.O.R.D. S.
29:41
Means surrounding. That's going to be, you know, what's the immediate context of that passage?
29:46
So, you know, in 1 Timothy 5.23, well, the immediate context is he's talking
29:51
about for your stomach's infirmities, right? your stomach's ache and often infirmities.
29:56
So it's obviously medicinal.
29:58
Well, what's the entire chapter? So that's W's whole chapter.
30:01
So S is surrounding, and then W is the whole chapter, right?
30:06
And in that chapter, you may get, okay, well, here's the narrative,
30:09
or there's an argument being made here.
30:11
Or, you know, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, Paul has given Timothy instructions about
30:16
his testimony of being a pastor and being a bishop and an elder and so forth, right?
30:21
And then, of course, the O is the overall book. What's the theme or purpose of that entire book?
30:26
So if you're reading Philippians, for example, the theme might be joy.
30:31
There's joy in service, joy in putting others first.
30:34
Here's Paul in prison writing Philippians to the church at Philippi,
30:41
and he's talking about joy, having joy in the Lord.
30:44
Well, that's the overall book. So that means you're going to read passages or
30:48
narratives in that book that are going to pertain or connect to the overall theme of the book.
30:54
You read Amos, you read Hosea, this is like especially important when you read
30:58
the Minor Prophets, because you know what you're going to see in the Minor Prophets
31:01
is, you know, like maybe it's an entire diatribe against the Moabites, for example.
31:08
You know what I mean? Like, oh, this is talking about judgment against a particular
31:12
nation or country that was an enemy of Israel.
31:16
Okay. Jonah, for example, Jonah was against the Ninevites. Well,
31:20
guess who the Ninevites were? They were the Assyrians.
31:22
And this is prior to the Assyrian captivity of northern Israel.
31:29
Well, that's important to understand the context. Well, why was Jonah pleasantly,
31:34
he was waiting for the destruction of Nineveh because they were enemies of his people.
31:40
And he was a prophet of God. And he was supposed to say, hey,
31:43
look, in 40 days, God's going to destroy you.
31:46
So guess what? If a prophet, and the Bible talks about in Deuteronomy,
31:49
that if a prophet prophesies something and it doesn't come to pass,
31:53
then he's a false prophet.
31:54
So here's Jonah having to put his entire testimony in his reputation.
32:02
Why do you think he was upset? You see what I mean? Why do you think he ran the other way?
32:07
So people, you know, sometimes again, you'll come walk away from the book of
32:11
Jonah thinking that, oh, he just hates people.
32:14
He's just this cynic that doesn't want to see anybody saved.
32:17
No, that's not the case. These were people that he knew were going to torture
32:22
and murder and kill his people. And he didn't want to have anything to do with them.
32:27
And here's another thing. Jonah was a prophet of the area that was known as
32:32
Galilee in the New Testament.
32:34
So he was part of the northern tribes, the 10 northern tribes that would go
32:38
into Assyrian captivity.
32:40
You see what I mean? So it's important to understand that.
32:43
So overall book, what's the theme? So that's SWO, surrounding,
32:47
whole chapter, overall book. Then R are the recipients.
32:51
Well, who's being spoken to? Who's the audience, right? Is this the Jew,
32:56
the Gentile, the church?
32:57
And of course, the recipients win. Well, is this before, in a particular,
33:03
during a dispensation that God is giving?
33:06
Is this during a covenant, before or after the resurrection,
33:09
right? The messages before and after the resurrection are going to be very uniquely different.
33:14
So that recipient is R, S-W-O-R, recipients.
33:19
And then the last one is D, is the divine design. And this is,
33:23
how does this particular Bible, this book, fit into the entire canon,
33:28
the 66 books of the Bible, right?
33:30
If I'm reading, for example, the law, that's the first five books of Moses.
33:35
I know that that's the establishment of the law after Abraham.
33:39
And this is particularly specific revelation, the covenants and so forth to
33:45
the nation of Israel as a whole.
33:47
And so I know that that law in particular matters. But here's the thing.
33:53
Why is that important? Well, when you think of the books of Jeremiah,
33:56
for example, and the book of Daniel, you know that Jeremiah and Daniel are the
34:01
two prophets in the Bible that prophesied primarily to Gentile nations.
34:07
All the other ones prophesied that Jewish nations. Why is that important?
34:10
Because you see the events that's going on.
34:14
Like, for example, Daniel is under foreign rule. He's in Babylon.
34:17
That's right. Captivity.
34:18
Why does that matter? Because he starts to prophesy about the 70th week of Daniel, right?
34:23
The tribulation, which is where you go into where Israel goes under bondage
34:28
and captivity under spiritual Babylon.
34:31
There's a connection. So you can now connect the book of Daniel and why it's
34:35
so important to the rest of the Bible.
34:38
So sword, S, surrounding, that's the immediate context, W, your whole chapter, right?
34:45
O, the overall book, what's the theme or purpose of this book?
34:48
R, the recipients, who's the audience?
34:50
And when is this book written? And
34:52
then the divine design, how does this particular book fit into the canon?
34:56
So that sword, you know, hopefully might help somebody. Yeah,
35:00
that's something to keep on the, you know, just write down in your Bible on
35:04
one of the flaps just to remind yourself, you know, a way to approach Scripture
35:09
when you're reading it or studying it.
35:11
And, I mean, even if you're sitting under preaching, you know,
35:16
it's a good way to expound on the Scripture that is being preached at that time. Absolutely.
35:23
And the more you get accustomed to looking at passages like that,
35:29
it'll actually open up the Bible.
35:30
The right dividing is another very important key component of hermeneutics.
35:35
And hermeneutics just simply means how to study. It's the art of studying your Bible. Yeah.
35:40
Okay. So what I wanted to do was kind of explain or kind of do a little bit
35:44
more deep dive into the spectrum of context. Right.
35:48
In spectrum is just like you go from the immediate context all the way out to the whole Bible.
35:54
And so just to kind of show some examples of it.
35:58
So so we talk about immediate context. So if you look at the verses immediately
36:02
preceding and following the text.
36:05
A verse taken out of the immediate flow will often lose its doctrinal warning.
36:10
For example, Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things.
36:14
Well, if you look at the context, Paul is saying, if you supply the needs of
36:21
the ministry, if that's it, you go back there and look what Philippians 4 is talking about.
36:26
He's talking about supplying the needs of others and ministry needs,
36:31
basically like missions and stuff like that. And then he says,
36:34
if you do those things, you can do all things through Christ.
36:38
It's not an open, empty, you know, promise that, you know, I can lift a car.
36:43
I can do all things through Christ. You know what I mean? Or I can move a mountain.
36:47
Positive thinking. Yeah, I can heal AIDS or whatever. No, that's not what that is.
36:51
You can't take a verse out of context and then try to apply it to some personal
36:56
whatever, you know, anecdotes.
36:59
That verse, you go to Hobby Lobby and you see it plastered all over the place.
37:03
You know, and there's little cute wooden signs and, you know,
37:07
it's an uplifting, motivational scripture.
37:11
That's right. But most people, even Christians, don't really know it, you know.
37:15
Right. And because they base, you know, again, their Christianity is based a lot on emotionalism.
37:20
Yeah. Right? Anecdotal experience. Yeah, it's a focus.
37:22
So that's why, so immediate context is you need to look at the textual flow.
37:26
So what's the verses before it? What's the verses after it?
37:32
Again, what's the overall kind of narrative? What's the theme going on here?
37:37
And so Philippians 4.13 is not about you can do anything just because you feel like doing it.
37:43
It's all within the context of supporting missions and meeting the needs of ministry.
37:49
And also in the immediate context, you have to look at the grammar and punctuation.
37:53
So pay attention to connecting words like therefore, wherefore,
37:56
but, and for. These link the verse to the immediate argument.
38:00
So pay attention to grammar. Grammar matters.
38:02
People don't realize that. One of the things I remember whenever I was going to school was.
38:08
I was going to Bible school, one of the things, the first tests you had to take was a grammar test.
38:13
So just regular English grammar. And if you didn't know English grammar,
38:16
you actually had to take a remedial English class the first year of your Bible college.
38:21
Why? Because you have an English Bible.
38:23
When we read the Bible in English, you need to pay attention to when God puts a semicolon
38:29
or a pause or a parentheses, you know, you need to pay attention to that because
38:34
a lot of times reading things within its punctuation will clear up a passage.
38:40
I don't know how many times I've done that where I've read a verse,
38:44
I'm like, oh, I didn't even realize there's a comma there.
38:46
And that comma all of a sudden opened up the passage to me, right?
38:51
So the textual flow, the verses preceding,
38:57
following it, the grammar and punctuation, and then the paragraph.
39:00
Identify i mean is this is this within
39:03
a paragraph am i just ripping a paragraph
39:06
because sometimes those verse numbers can throw
39:09
people off because sometimes a paragraph is split it could
39:12
be split across three different verses an entire narrative could be you can
39:16
have one paragraph carry on to another chapter for example and if you're not
39:21
paying attention to that grammatical structure you may lose the context and
39:26
you may be reading half of a of a paragraph you don't mean half of a half of a,
39:30
or a paragraph cut in half or a quarter of a paragraph, and you may miss the context.
39:35
So immediate context, again, textual flow, grammar punctuation,
39:39
and the paragraph markings.
39:42
Okay. So that's the immediate context. That's the, that's the lowest level of context.
39:48
The second one, like we talked about, is chapter. So what's the thematic unity of the chapter, right?
39:55
What is this chapter covering a specific doctrinal argument,
39:59
an event that's going on?
40:01
Like if I go to Acts chapter 2, for example, and if I'm looking at Acts 2,
40:04
I realize that that's the Pentecost.
40:06
That's the Feast of Pentecost, and that God is opening the door to preach the
40:12
resurrection of Christ to the Jews, but he wanted to try to propagate the gospel
40:17
to the largest amount of people possible.
40:20
Well, guess what? 50 days after the Passover is Pentecost, and you had Jews
40:26
and proselytes that came from all over Europe to Jerusalem. That's the best place to preach.
40:32
Then you remember, you know, who's the audience in there?
40:35
You know, what's going on in that chapter is they're preaching to a bunch of
40:39
Jews, not Gentiles, at a Jewish feast.
40:43
It starts to put a lot of the preaching that you see in chapter two into context.
40:48
It's like, oh, okay, this isn't really targeted or aimed at Gentiles.
40:53
I'm not saying there's zero application to Gentiles, but you've got to understand
40:57
the primary application there is to a bunch of Jews at a Jewish feast.
41:02
And the message being preached there is they killed their Messiah.
41:06
And if you don't take that into consideration, you're going to take that entire,
41:11
those verses within that out of context.
41:13
So, the chapter context is the thematic unity. What's the theme?
41:18
And then, of course, the breaks in the chapter. You know, well,
41:21
obviously, you know, the text flows continuously.
41:24
Chapter divisions help locate the verse, like, within a broader narrative.
41:28
So, you know, like, if I'm reading Romans 9, 10, and 11, for example,
41:32
that's dealing specifically with Israel's past, present, and future.
41:36
Well, why is that so important? Because you know why? Romans 1, 2, 3, and 4.
41:41
1, 2, and 3 is about condemnation and judgment upon the world.
41:45
All, you know, for all sin and come short of the glory of God.
41:48
Chapter 4 is talking about faith without works. And guess what?
41:54
5 is justification in Christ. 6 is about our new life in Christ.
42:00
7 is about the struggle with the carnal nature and the spiritual nature.
42:04
And then 8 is about, therefore, basically being led by the Spirit.
42:08
Well, then there's an entire shift. You go from chapter eight to chapter nine.
42:13
Now he's talking about Israel.
42:14
So if you mix all that together and you don't rightly divide those chapter breaks,
42:20
guess what you're going to do? You're going to get something out of context.
42:23
And that happens a lot. Calvinists do that quite a bit. So that's the chapter context.
42:28
And of course you have the book context, right? The purpose of the writing,
42:31
you know, John is written to prove that Jesus is the son of God, right?
42:35
And so forth and so forth. Matthew is that he's written as the, as the king of the Jews.
42:41
So you, if you read Matthew, forgetting that the entire book is about the king
42:47
of the Jews, then you may make some wrong application to the church.
42:53
All right. And then, of course, the theme, whether it's historical,
42:57
doctrinal, corrective, so like the book of Acts is a historical narrative talking
43:03
about the birth of the early church.
43:05
The Acts of the Apostles is what it says, and it's also the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
43:09
It's the transition of the Holy Spirit, from Jesus Christ to the Holy Spirit,
43:13
from Peter to Paul, from the Jews to the church, and so forth and so on, right?
43:18
Well, that's a historical narrative. If you know what I've heard preachers say,
43:22
especially like oneness, Pentecostals, they say that they read the book of Acts
43:26
as prescriptive and not descriptive.
43:29
They go, you Baptists read it like a historical narrative.
43:33
But that is what it is. It's not a doctrinal treatise. The book of Romans is doctrinal.
43:39
That's for a New Testament Christian.
43:41
The book of Corinthians has doctrine in it, but it's also correcting a lot of
43:46
the carnal behavior of the church at Corinth.
43:50
So, you know what I'm saying? So if you ignore that, man, you can miss a ton
43:54
of very important context.
43:57
So that's why the theme of the book is important. And, of course,
44:00
key words, right, in the book.
44:02
So, like, you know, in the book of Hebrews, better.
44:05
Jesus Christ is better. That word better shows up multiple times in the book
44:10
of Hebrews, or the word joy, like we mentioned in Philippians.
44:14
So that helps you. Those key words help you identify the book context.
44:20
Okay, so you've got the immediate context, the chapter context,
44:24
the book context. Then you've got the testament.
44:26
Well, is it in the Old Testament or the New Testament?
44:29
Is it under the Old Covenant, the Law and the Prophets, or the New Covenant?
44:33
Is this after the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Or is this before the resurrection
44:37
of Christ? All that stuff matters.
44:40
The Bible says in Hebrews 9, 16, 17, that a testament is a force only after men are dead.
44:46
The new testament wasn't in effect until christ
44:49
shed his blood on the cross so don't try
44:52
to read the early part of matthew and try to
44:55
put it in the church age that's not the church age right
44:59
so if you're if you're preaching before matthew 26 and you're trying to make
45:04
that doctrinal application of the church then you're making a fundamental error
45:08
because again you're not taking the testament into context right and then the
45:14
cross references right how do the old testament prophecies relate to New Testament fulfillment?
45:19
Or how does New Testament revelation explain Old Testament shadows and so forth?
45:23
So the Testament context is important.
45:26
Then, of course, you have the dispensational context, which we call rightly dividing.
45:30
1 Corinthians 10.32, the Bible says, don't give offense to either the Jew,
45:34
the Gentile, the Church of God, identifying three categorical groups of people in your Bible.
45:40
That Bible is going to apply to one of those three groups.
45:44
It's either going to apply to a Jew, a Gentile, or the Church of God.
45:48
Somebody once said that all the scripture is written for you,
45:52
but not all the scripture is written to you.
45:54
Well, is it written to the church? Are you reading passages written to the church?
45:58
Again, that dispensational context is very important, you know,
46:01
because the nation of Israel is under the law and they were being preached a
46:05
kingdom program because their king was about to sit on a throne.
46:09
Well, that's not what the body of Christ teaches and preaches.
46:13
We don't preach Jesus Christ as the King of the Jews. We preach and teach that
46:17
he's the Savior, right? And so that's important.
46:20
That message matters. And that's going to help you understand passages that you read.
46:24
So the timeline, does this, again, does this occur before the cross,
46:28
during the Acts transition?
46:30
Is this after or before the completion of a canon?
46:33
Is this before the Old Testament, New Testament?
46:35
Is this before Israel left Egypt?
46:39
Is this during the time of Abraham? Is this during the time of Noah's Ark and
46:44
the flood? You see what I mean? All that stuff matters.
46:46
If you don't rightly divide the scripture by the dispensational context,
46:51
you're going to make some really bad doctrinal errors, right?
46:55
Then, of course, you have the whole Bible context, right? So how does this verse
46:58
align with the consistent character of God, for example, from Genesis to Revelation?
47:02
So maybe you read a passage in the Old Testament where God destroys the enemies
47:07
of Israel, And that has to do with the righteousness and the character of God.
47:12
And you know what a lot of people do? They'll come to the Bible and say,
47:15
oh, well, the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament.
47:19
Yeah, because you're taking the passages out of context. It's the same God,
47:23
but it's a different dispensation, a different application that God,
47:28
you know, when we say dispensation, we're talking about a dispensing of truth.
47:34
The way that he administers and reveals truth to a
47:37
group of people is different from from
47:40
time to time and so people the people right into different groups of people
47:44
and stuff but here's the the thing is is that it it shows you and demonstrates
47:49
that god's character is consistent so when you look at the entire bible context
47:53
and you're reading a passage you've got to make sure does this match the character
47:58
of god throughout scripture.
48:00
Right? So there's something we call the rule of first mention, for example.
48:03
How was the word or the concept of that word first used in scripture?
48:08
And a lot of times that'll set the definition for that particular word for the rest of the Bible.
48:13
Like the word love. The word love shows up in Genesis chapter 22 when Abraham
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is offering up his son Isaac.
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And God says, take thine son, thine only son, whom thou lovest.
48:25
So he uses that phrase love. That's the very first time.
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Well, guess what? The definition, the principle that's set there,
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the precedent is that love in scripture is about sacrifice, and it's about a
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father offering up his only begotten son.
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And guess what? That's a very sure connection there. Yeah. And that love is
48:44
not just a feeling or an emotion. It's an obligation. It's a responsibility.
48:49
You see what I mean? So that, again, that first mention, real first mention
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is found within the whole Bible context.
48:55
And of course, non-contradiction, right? The Bible's perfect scenario.
48:58
If an interpretation contradicts a clear doctrine elsewhere,
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then your interpretation is wrong. The scripture will never contradict itself.
49:05
And a lot of times, if you read a passage that seemingly contradicts another
49:09
passage, then you got to stop and say, wait a minute, am I reading this within
49:14
the whole Bible context?
49:15
Am I reading this in the proper narrative?
49:18
Am I reading this in the right dispensational boundaries? You know what I mean?
49:22
So, and of course, the last spectrum, the last level of spectrum there is the
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whom, the what, the, and the, you know, the who, the whom, the what, right?
49:29
The speaker is, is it God? Is it Satan?
49:32
Is it a prophet? Is it a false friend like Job's friends?
49:35
If you start reading passages and Job and it's Job's friends condemning him
49:41
and you take that as, you know, doctrinal application for you as a Christian.
49:45
And then later on at the end of Job, God says, what you have said,
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he's, he's accusing Job's friends.
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He says, what you guys have said about Job is wrong.
49:54
And you took that as gospel truth, then you would have just accepted,
49:58
you know, these words, these false friends of Job who were condemned by God
50:02
by the end of the chapter.
50:04
So you got to be careful. You can't just take a passage out of context.
50:08
Again, this is all about context, right? And of course, the audience is,
50:11
is this to the Jews under the law?
50:12
Is this the disciples expecting the kingdom?
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You know, are these New Testament Christians in the body of Christ?
50:18
Who is the audience? And of course, application versus interpretation.
50:23
So there's one interpretation that's always going to be doctrinal but there's
50:27
obviously going to be many applications I could take a passage like say for
50:33
example Noah go build an ark.
50:35
Well, that's not a direct application to me. Like, hey, I need to go build an
50:38
ark. But what I can do is say, you know what? Noah was obedient to God.
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Even in the worst conditions, he obeyed God when the entire world was literally against him.
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I can learn a very spiritual lesson there, right?
50:52
So that application, I can make that application, but it doesn't mean there's
50:56
a doctrinal application to me in the New Testament. So don't confuse spiritual
51:02
application with doctrinal application, essentially.
51:06
All right. So, but yeah, anyway, that's, so that's, that, that spectrum is immediate
51:11
context, chapter context, book context, the Testament context, right?
51:16
The dispensational context, the whole Bible, and then kind of determining after
51:20
all that, who's speaking to whom are they speaking to and what are they talking
51:25
about? What's the, what's the application?
51:28
So I wanted to kind of take a verse of scripture here.
51:31
This is often taken out of context, but I want to use this example and try to
51:36
run it through that framework. Okay.
51:39
So Matthew 24, 13, the Bible says, but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
51:45
Now I can run this many ways, but a lot of times this verse is used to try to
51:50
prove that a man can lose their salvation if they don't endure until the end.
51:54
That's what it says, right? But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
51:59
It's also in Matthew, so it's the New Testament, right? Right,
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it's Matthew. Some people just take that for... So let's use the framework.
52:06
What's the immediate context? Well, if you look at verses 9 through 12,
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the verses that precede it, they describe a very specific time of persecution
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that's called the Great Tribulation.
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Okay? And he says, it's going to be a time such as never was before.
52:25
So they're being delivered up, they're being afflicted, they're killed,
52:29
they're hated of all nations, betrayed, iniquities abounding, so forth and so on. So...
52:35
That lends itself to the fact that salvation here is conditional on enduring, not just believing.
52:44
Because that's what it says, but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
52:49
So this means that whoever's going through this persecution during this particular
52:53
time frame, that they have to endure.
52:57
Otherwise, they're not going to be saved. So the chapter, so that's the immediate context.
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The chapter context, this is the Olivet Discourse.
53:05
This is where he's on the Mount of Olives, and the Lord is answering the disciples'
53:11
questions where they say specifically in verse 3, what shall be the sign of
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thy coming and of the end of the world?
53:20
Not the time of the church age, the end of the world.
53:24
This is talking about the end of the age. It's not the present church age.
53:28
This is talking about when they move into this time of great tribulation.
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And matter of fact, he even says in verse 21, he describes it as the beginning
53:37
of sorrows and the great tribulation.
53:40
It has nothing to do with the church age. The chapter context tells us,
53:43
hey, this is talking about something that is outside the boundaries of this
53:48
particular dispensation that we're in, the dispensation of the church and the grace of God.
53:54
Because we can't lose our salvation. We don't have to endure.
53:58
So if you take this as New Testament doctrine, then you're basically creating a contradiction.
54:05
So what's the book context? Well, we just said it's the book of Matthew.
54:09
Matthew represents Jesus as the
54:11
king of the Jews. Well, what's the entire focus of the book of Matthew?
54:15
It's emphasizing the kingdom of heaven, which is a physical earthly kingdom,
54:19
and it's distinct from the kingdom of God, which is spiritual.
54:23
So it's written primarily to a Jewish audience to prove that Jesus is the Messiah,
54:29
not that he's the head of the church.
54:32
He's not, the message in the book of Matthew is not, oh, you guys are going
54:36
to be the bride of Christ. You're going to be the bride of Christ.
54:38
You're going to be the bride of Christ.
54:39
You're going to be sealed with the spirit as soon as you believe,
54:42
right? None of that is in the book of Matthew.
54:45
The entire book of Matthew is presenting Jesus Christ as the King of the Jews.
54:49
Now, there's a lot of preaching that happens in Matthew in churches today,
54:54
but there's a lot of times I've seen people use Matthew and leverage a particular
55:00
agenda or a teaching or a topic.
55:04
And a lot of times they'll rip the passages out in Matthew out of context.
55:09
And what you're doing is you're forcing people to lose sight of the bigger picture in Matthew.
55:14
And so that's why a lot of these times you read something like that verse,
55:17
you know, he that shall endure to the end shall be saved.
55:20
And that's going to throw Christians off.
55:23
I got to endure to the end. Right? And so people will take advantage of that.
55:27
Okay. Well, and then the Testament context. Well, obviously the New Testament,
55:31
we know the New Testament context. We have a New Testament canon.
55:34
But the problem is, is that the cross hasn't happened yet.
55:38
Right? The Bible says in Hebrews 9, 16 through 17, that a covenant,
55:42
a New Testament is not enforced until the death of the testator.
55:45
Well, Jesus Christ doesn't offer his blood, his shed blood until Matthew 26 at the Lord's Supper.
55:52
He says, this is the blood of the New Testament, which I will shed for you, right?
55:58
Well, he doesn't shed his blood until he gets to the cross, which means the
56:02
Testament is not yet in force.
56:06
There is no New Testament.
56:08
So when you're reading Matthew chapter 24, you are not talking about a New Testament church age context.
56:16
That's why the Testament context matters. And when you read Jeremiah 30 verse
56:21
7, this teaching aligns with the Old Testament prophecy regarding the time of Jacob's trouble.
56:26
And that's what the great tribulation is. It's the time of Jacob's trouble. Well, who's Jacob?
56:32
Jacob's name was changed to Israel. Israel.
56:36
Then, of course, this is all leading up to the dispensational context,
56:39
but obviously this is a tribulation doctrine, not church age doctrine.
56:42
The contrast, the church age, we're saved by grace through faith,
56:46
not of works, Ephesians 2.8 and 9.
56:48
We're sealed until the day of redemption, Ephesians 4.30.
56:53
And so we don't endure to keep our salvation. We are kept by Jesus Christ.
56:58
We don't earn our salvation. We can't keep our salvation. Our redemption has
57:03
nothing to do with our effort or will whatsoever.
57:06
But in the tribulation, faith has to be evidenced by not taking the mark of the beast.
57:13
That's an actual work, whether people like that or not.
57:16
If you profess to be saved and you take the mark, what do you think is going to happen?
57:21
According to Revelation 20, anybody that took the mark is going to be cast into a lake of fire.
57:27
So that means there must be some kind of effort in the tribulation to endure.
57:33
That element of enduring Is there right in Matthew Chapter 24 it's described
57:39
but it's obviously Not talking about the age that we live in So.
57:43
What's the whole Bible context? Well, God always requires faith, right?
57:46
But the content of that faith and the command associated with it is based on
57:52
whatever dispensation God has revealed.
57:55
Adam, it's different. Don't take of a fruit, right? Noah built a boat.
58:01
Moses, here's 613 laws. Paul, all you got to do is have faith and believe on
58:06
Christ. that the revealed truth, the content of that faith varies from dispensation
58:12
to dispensation. That's why you've got to make sure.
58:16
The verse that we're reading about in Matthew 24 about enduring,
58:20
that harmonizes with Revelation and Daniel, but it contradicts Romans and Galatians
58:25
if you try to force it on the church today.
58:27
You create a contradiction if you don't consider where that the book of Matthew
58:32
fits within the entire Bible.
58:34
And of course, the last part of the spectrum analysis, I guess you want to call
58:38
it, is the speaker is Jesus Christ.
58:42
He's that prophet that was prophesied in Deuteronomy 18. He is the king of the Jews.
58:48
Who's the audience? The Jewish disciples. These are the apostles that are asking
58:52
him specifically, right?
58:54
They represent the Jewish remnant in the future tribulation.
58:58
And then what's the message? The message is about warning physical survival,
59:02
you know, and spiritual fidelity during the great tribulation.
59:05
So by applying the context, you see that this verse teaches tribulation survival,
59:11
not church age insecurity.
59:12
You cannot take Matthew chapter 24, you know, verse 13 and say,
59:17
but he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved and try to apply that to the church.
59:22
So by using that spectrum analysis, I love using spectrum analysis.
59:26
I just thought about that because I'm in wireless.
59:29
So anyway, but we've used that spectrum analysis.
59:33
Guess what you're doing? You are dissecting that passage and keeping that passage
59:38
faithful to the entirety of the Bible.
59:42
Because if you rip that passage out of context, then what you're doing is you're
59:46
privately interpreting Scripture.
59:49
Somebody wants to say you can teach anything with the Bible. I mean, anything. Yep.
59:54
And if you don't take it within the context, but this framework here,
1:00:00
as you're going through it, sorry, you were going to say something.
1:00:03
Oh, no, I was just going to say, I could take a verse, I could do all things with a verse.
1:00:07
Yeah, that's exactly it. You can teach anything with it. And that's why a lot
1:00:11
of people get in the mess.
1:00:13
But that's why JWs... And all these doctrines, yeah, false doctrines.
1:00:16
JWs use the King James Bible.
1:00:18
The Mormons use the King James Bible, right? There's a lot of false cults out there.
1:00:22
That use king james bible and all they're doing is just taking verses out of
1:00:25
context to teach their particular doctrine and with joe's witnesses too i mean
1:00:30
we talked to talk about this way back in the cult series that they'll use the
1:00:35
king james bible to convert you know other baptists because.
1:00:40
They're not using this type of framework. Well, JWs will use whatever translation
1:00:43
you use. If you tell them, hey, I use NIV, they'll whip out a NIV, right?
1:00:47
Yeah. I mean, they're trained in this stuff. But yeah, this framework,
1:00:51
as you're going through it, I mean, we covered eternal security.
1:00:54
We covered the doctrine of the kingdoms.
1:00:55
We covered the doctrines in here.
1:00:58
Tribulation doctrine. I mean— The Jew, the Gentile, the church.
1:01:02
Yeah, the church of God. Yep, the New Testament versus the Old Testament.
1:01:06
And I mean, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Just doing this analysis,
1:01:08
right? Right. Just going through this exercise.
1:01:11
That's what you're getting out of it. And if you learn how to study your Bible
1:01:14
using this framework, always making sure, hey, am I keeping this passage in its context?
1:01:21
Yeah. Do I understand the context of this passage?
1:01:25
A lot of times, just going through this exercise will tremendously help you
1:01:30
understand the passage.
1:01:32
Now, there may be other things you have to do because there are other principles
1:01:35
in hermeneutics when you study scripture.
1:01:38
One of them we mentioned here was the first mention principle.
1:01:41
When's the first time that word was mentioned? There's obviously the right dividing,
1:01:45
taking the passage literally instead of figuratively, unless you can't.
1:01:50
You know, there is allegory and there are examples of that in scripture.
1:01:57
And there's types. Typology is a very important hermeneutic.
1:02:01
So, but the most important and I think the most basic hermeneutic is context. Context, context.
1:02:10
Make sure you understand where does this particular passage fit within the immediate
1:02:16
context. What's the immediate context?
1:02:18
What's the chapter context? What's the book context?
1:02:21
What's the testament? What's the dispensational context, right?
1:02:24
What's the whole Bible context?
1:02:26
And then being sure that I know who is speaking, who the audience is,
1:02:31
and what's the message? What's the narrative or the theme being applied here?
1:02:35
So if you can learn to do that, not only in your regular Bible study,
1:02:39
your regular Bible reading, but even when you're sitting in church, listen to a preacher.
1:02:45
I mean, there's nothing wrong with examining everything that's preached from behind a pulpit.
1:02:50
We are obligated as Christians to do that, right?
1:02:53
We always talk about 1 Thessalonians 5.21, prove all things,
1:02:57
hold fast, that which is true.
1:02:58
Well, Paul, Acts 17.11, the Bible says the Bereans were more noble than those
1:03:03
in Thessalonica in that they searched the scriptures daily to see whether those things are so.
1:03:08
Jesus said, John 5.39, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have
1:03:12
eternal life. they are they which testify of me.
1:03:14
The Bible says, Paul tells Timothy, study to show thyself approved unto God,
1:03:20
a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly divine, the word truth.
1:03:23
I mean, over and over again, the Christian is obligated to be a student of the word.
1:03:31
You're not supposed to be there. It's like somebody once said,
1:03:33
you know, you can't go through life with, you know, two catchers mitts just catching everything.
1:03:38
You need to have a bat and try to hit something back, you know?
1:03:42
But the, you know what I mean? The point is like people sit there and they'll just.
1:03:46
They'll just suck in everything that they believe without ever questioning it,
1:03:50
without ever examining it, without ever making sure, is this actually the context
1:03:56
of the passage we're reading?
1:03:58
So this actually lends itself out to me. We did the episode on expository preaching,
1:04:02
and this is why I think this is obviously a perfect example of why expository
1:04:08
preaching is so important.
1:04:09
If you get a preacher that just gets up there and preaches an agenda,
1:04:13
preaches his favorite topic, you know, preaches a behavioral sermon,
1:04:17
and he doesn't really exposit the passage,
1:04:21
then he's in danger of taking a verse out of context just to preach whatever agenda he has.
1:04:28
And so— And then you have the pretext. Yep. So that's context,
1:04:32
man. That's why context matters.
1:04:35
It definitely does. No, I'm glad you brought that up, the expository preaching
1:04:39
episode, because I think this goes hand in hand.
1:04:41
And if you haven't listened to that episode, you go way back in time.
1:04:44
And listen to them, I think it does a good job of diving even deeper.
1:04:49
Like, I think this goes a level deeper than what we talked about in the episode.
1:04:54
I really like this framework.
1:04:56
So S.W.O.R.D. is the acronym. That's a great way to remember the framework,
1:05:00
which is, you know, S is surrounding.
1:05:03
What is the immediate context? The whole chapter, which is the W,
1:05:07
the whole chapter. What is the event or argument being made?
1:05:11
And then the O, overall book. What is the theme?
1:05:14
Purpose of the book itself and then who the r
1:05:18
which is the recipient who is it who's being who's being
1:05:20
talked to who's it to the jew gentile church and when
1:05:24
which is the dispensate where the covenants where dispensations and then finally
1:05:28
the d is divine design the whole bible how's the how does this fit in the entire
1:05:34
canon so it's basically everything we just went through right or what you went
1:05:38
through basically yeah that so that if you and you write that in your bible.
1:05:42
Surrounding, S, W, whole chapter, O, overall book, R, recipients,
1:05:47
and D, divine design. Just put that in your Bible.
1:05:50
And then that way, when you're reading, studying, listen to a sermon,
1:05:53
I mean, you know, and how many, how many Christians, how many,
1:05:56
you know, people listening to us right now, maybe watch something online where
1:06:01
somebody's expounding a passage, or maybe it's a skeptic challenging a verse of scripture.
1:06:07
Well, then let's stop because nine times out of 10, they're probably taking it out of context. Yep.
1:06:12
That's a good exercise. Yep. Great. We'll wrap it up right there.
1:06:16
And anybody has any questions, I've said this a million times,
1:06:19
you know where to find us.
1:06:21
And if anybody's interested in the show notes, you know, again,
1:06:24
you know where to find us.
1:06:25
Yeah, just let us know. I mean, I know we haven't had a chance to put too much
1:06:29
of it out there, but eventually we do have the show notes available.
1:06:32
So if you do want the notes or if you want some a little bit deeper dive into
1:06:37
it, just let us know and we'll send you whatever we can. It's just upon request right now.
1:06:42
So we're still, again, working on that part. We'll wait until episode 100 before
1:06:47
we finalize the website. We want to make sure we're going to make it up to 100
1:06:50
first. Make sure we're still around.
1:06:52
So anyways, until next time. Yep. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one.