R.C. Sproul: How to Study the Bible

and that's what I want to talk about tonight how we as individual Christians as private Believers come to the text of the Bible and interpret it are there any guidelines that we have to lead us away from error and into a sound interpretation of the Bible before I do that let me take a moment to look at the Roman Catholic church's response to the Lutheran principle of private interpretation one of the most important aspects of the church's Counter Reformation Rome's answer to Lutheran Calvin and the reformers was the calling of an acumenical Council that was held in trento in Italy and is known now historically as the Council of Trent in the six session of that Council the church set forth its doctrine of justification and set forth its anathemus against the various Protestant teaching on that subject of the Gospel but earlier than that in the fourth session of the Council of Trent the church addressed the issue of the source of Revelation and of the canonical scriptures in the midst of that for session listen please to the following statements carved out by the church in Council moreover it says the same holy Council considering that not a little Advantage will acred to the Church of God if it be made known which of all of the Latin editions of the Sacred books now in circulation is to be regarded as authentic ordains and declares that the old Latin vgate Edition from St Jerome which in use for so many hundreds of years has been approved by the church being public lectures disputations sermons and expositions held as authentic and that no one dare or presume under any preex any pretext whatsoever to reject it so here we have the authentication and canonization of the Latin in translation of the Bible but what I'm really interested into what comes next listen to this furthermore to check unbridled Spirits it that is the council decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine comma distorting the holy scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions comma presumed to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation has held and holds or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the fathers even though such interpretation should never at any time be published and those who act contrary to this shall be made known by the ordinaries and punished in accordance with the penalties prescribed by law here in the four session the church comes down heavily with both feet against the Protestant doctrine of the private interpretation of scripture but in in this particular uh decree that I've just read to you we see what happened frequently during Trent that is that when the guns of the Roman Church were aimed at the reformers in many of cases they flat out missed their target that what they attacked were caricatures and straw men that were never part of the affirmations or denials of the reformers other times the guns were trained accurately against Luther and Calvin and they hit their target but this one statement that I just read to you reflects that confusion let me read it again to you and see if you pick up on it it says it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of chrishan Dr Kama distorting the holy scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions let me stop right there and asked this question would Martin Luther or John Calvin agree with that oh yes they would because Luther and Calvin understood that the right of private interpretation of the Bible does not include within it the right to distort the Bible with the right and privilege of private interpretation always comes the sacred holy and awesome responsibility of correct interpretation rightly dividing the word of Truth private interpretation is never a license to distort the Bible so that part of the four session we agree in it what comes after that comma then that gets us into trouble because it says no one has the right to presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation has hold or even continues to hold see here what the law is not only do we not have the right to interpret the Bible by Distortion but we never have the right to interpret the Bible in a way that is different from how holy mother Church has interpreted because if the church has interpreted it the question of the meaning of scripture has been settled once and for all and private interpretation never gives you a license to interpret the Bible in any way that it would bring your Doctrine in conflict with what the Church of Rome teaches it was at that point that Lutheran Calvin's wingley basa Buller and all the rest got off the train and and they said no and the reason they said no is because the church is not infallible but the church IRS councils her and we all are subject to ER to error and none of us has the right to distort the scripture now let me give you some basic guidelines about this for now that along with this principle of private interpretation was set forth by Luther and the reformers the principle of interpreting the Bible literally now I hear from people all the time about this business of interpreting the Bible literally people ask me do you interpret the Bible literally in fact that's not usually how they ask the question they usually put it in the form of a statement followed by a question they say RC you don't interpret the Bible literally that's the statement followed by the question do you I mean like I can't imagine that anybody in the 21st century in their right mind who has gone beyond the third grade would be so ignorant and foolish as to interpret the Bible literally so that's the way it comes you don't inter interpret the Bible literally do you well when people say that to me I never say no nor do I ever say yes well what do I say well when someone says you don't interpret the Bible literally do you my answer is standard I always give the same answer it's this of course I interpret the Bible literally like duh what other way is there to interpret it now there's a lot of confusion about what literal interpretation means when luk Luther and the reformers set forth the principle of interpreting the Bible according to the census literales or the literal sense here's what they meant and what we mean that to interpret the Bible literally is to interpret the Bible the Way It Was Written voila so that when you come to the text of scripture you have to be able to discern that there are very many varieties of literary genre present in the text we have to discern that we see that the Bible's written sometimes in the form of letters sometimes in the form of historical narrative sometimes in the form of Parables sometimes in the form of Proverbs sometimes in the form form of poetry and there are different rules for interpreting poetry from interpreting historical narrative for example and we need to be aware of that so to interpret the Bible literally means to interpret it according to the Way It Was Written now let me tell you what that doesn't mean no one ever has the right to come to a historical narrative text of scripture and turn it into some kind of moral symbolism 19th century liberals were the Past Masters of this but I grew up in the church and I wasn't a Believer church was exceedingly liberal our teacher our pastor taught us about the miracles of Jesus and he taught us that at the uh wedding Feast of Canaan what had happened was those great water jars had mixed with some of the sediment that had had contained wine in it but they were basically water but the people had drunk so much wine that when they brought out this mixed up Virgin version people thought it was the best wine of all because they were already in a stuper or he said they were drinking water and the meaning of the text is this that after all water is the best wine he borrowed from the German uh liberals the idea of the feeding of the 5000 he gave two different interpretations one was very crash that Jesus and his disciples had stored a cash of food stuffs in a cave with a hidden opening and like a magician Jesus stood in this long flowing robe and you've seen magicians on the stage pulling scarves forever out of their sleeves or sausages so there was a a like a Bucket Brigade of Loaves and Fishes that the disciples had stored in the cave and they were passing it through this hidden opening through this back sleeve of Jesus and he's producing enough food to feed 5,000 people that was one interpretation we learned in church the other one was well the real story was about the little boy who stepped forward with his lunch and he was willing to share and the real meaning that Jesus of the text is this that some of the people came with their lunches others failed to provide for themselves and when the crisis came at noontime and everybody was hungry Jesus in his masterful style of moral education was able to get those who had brought their lunches to share with those who didn't so that it was a miracle of Ethics that's how I was instructed of the meaning of the Miracles like the death of God theologians van bun for example taught that what really the Bible was teaching was not that they're not trying to suggest that Jesus really came out of the Tomb but rather the disciples experienced what he calls a discernment situation that is prior to the cross the disciples didn't really understand what Jesus was about and when he died on the cross they went into this short period of disillusion M and grief and mourning and then on Sunday it dawned on them really what Jesus was about and so they said ah now we see it and so when the scriptures say that they saw Jesus it didn't mean that he came within the field of their Vision or that there were experiences with the optic ner rather was just simply a new insight Now ladies and gentlemen that's how not to inter interpret the Bible that is what we call dishonest ex aesus because those people knew very well that the literary form in which those texts come to us were not symbolic moralism but that was presented to us in a genre of historical narrative now you can reject it if you want but you have no right to twist it to say that it is saying something that it never was saying when I was in seminary we had a Hebrew exod Jesus paper as an assignment this was a higher critical school that I attended I wrote on the historical Narrative of the narrative genre of the book of Jonah with the exception of the prayer that is written in Poetic form in the middle my professor who had gone to college graduated with honors went on to Seminary graduated there got his PhD and Hebrew studies in Old Testament and had taught in the Seminary for 40 years or so got so excited with my paper he not only gave me an A on the paper but he said you must submit this for publication in some scholarly Journal I said why should I do that he says this is remarkably Innovative he said i' never ever seen anybody argue that the Book of Jonah was written largely in historical narrative form and I thought where have you been I said I can't do that I said I'd be sued for plagiarism all I've set forth in this paper is the classic Orthodox understanding of the book of of Jonah but this man in his entire education had never been exposed to Orthodoxy there is such a thing as liberal obscurantism but again it is not right to treat historical narrative as poetry or poetry as historical narrative I've listened to a debate on television once about prophecy fulfillment and one of The Advocates of Prophecy fulfillment was saying you have to to interpret the Bible literally and the Bible talks here about giant locuses that will come and ravage the land at the end times that can only refer he said to attack helicopters that's where you come to if you interpret the Bible literally I said no if you want to interpret it literally in the way you're talking about literal what you have to look for are not Apache Attack Helicopters but giant locusts I mean but this is how we turn the Bible into a waxed nose twisting it shaping it distorting it to make it say what we want it to say and that's what the reformers were trying to guard against at the same time they were trying to loose the scriptures from the chains of the of the LEC turns and let that roaring lion free they also were very careful to set forth principles of divine interpretation the most important of one has already been mentioned by John when he talked about the analogia of scripturum or the analogia FED that we call the analogy of Faith the Supreme principle of interpretation is Holy scripture is its own interpreter you interpret scripture by scripture now be careful in this day and age we have countless professors at Evangelical seminaries who have been trained in Hier critical approaches to scripture who if you ask them do you believe that the Bible is the word of God they say yes do you believe it's in spark yes do you believe it's an erant yes but the they have adopted a method called atomism a t m like atomic energy where you look at each little bit of scripture independent from the rest of scripture and they'll say to me don't tell me what Paul says about justification in Romans or in Ephesians all I'm dealing with it is what he says in Galatians and I said wait a minute there is not an immediate only an immediate context by which you understand scripture but there is the total context of the whole Bible and if we really believe that the Bible is the word of God and that God does not speak in a fork tongue then that means I never can take one portion of scripture and set it in opposition to another if I do a bell should go off in my head saying Sproul you've either misunderstood Galatians or you've misunderstood Ephesians or Romans because scripture is interpreted by scripture now I think one of the great crisis of our time in biblical interpretation is following the lines of which Junior spoke this this morning or this afternoon about modernism or postmodernism and in postmodernism we have seen a WID spread epidemic of people embracing relativism where there is no objective truth and we looked at the Three Ages the classical age where truth was defined by some kind of correspondence theory truth is defined by that which corresponds to reality it's objective even Rudolph bolman in interpreting Altha in the uh uh KD's wordbook grants that the meaning of the Greek word for truth includes among other things that which corresponds to reality well or describes real objective events so historically and classically we had this objective view of truth then came modernism the enlightenment even the postcon view of Truth being determined not simply by what is but the question is you look at things a little different from how he looks at it and our perspective tends to determine our perception of what truth is so now truth is determined by how we perceive it until finally modernism gives way to postmodernism where truth now is a matter of preference pure relativism pure subjectivism last week at John's Church during the shepherd's Conference during the Q&A this issue of postmodernism came up and Al Mohler who was there gave a wonderful illustration that described the differences among these three views by appealing to how umpires in baseball games call balls and Strikes if you're in the classical mode the pitcher throws the pitch the Umpire watches it catcher says what was it um and the Umpire says strike one it was a strike objective reality the pitch was in the strike zone it's a strike now the modernist view is that the perspective determines the reality and so the pitch is delivered yeah par standing a little bit off to the side kind of Catcher says what was it ump he says from where I'm standing looks like a strike cater says from where I'm sitting it looked like a ball the Y says I'm sorry but I calls them as I sees them that's modernism postmodernism the pitcher delivers the ball catcher catches the ball the Umpire silent for a moment the catcher finally turns the ire and says what was it a ball or a strike the emper says it's nothing until I say what it was now that may be funny when we're playing baseball we're not playing baseball when we come to the word of God and that just won't work for the word of God because let me tell you something you know how many meanings there are in the text of scripture how many correct meanings one there may be 10,000 applications to your life of a single text in scripture that's why you can read the same text a hundred times and learn something new every time you read it in how it applies your life there's only one correct meaning that in a postmodern world there is no meaning it's like the art where the artist paints it and you ask him what did you mean he said I don't mean anything I paint it you interpret it it means whatever you say it means it means whatever you want it to mean you got to run for your life from that kind of biblical interpretation here's how it works out with me when I'm teaching and I'm giving my understanding a particular view of scripture and some it happens inevitably somebody will say to me well I see that's your interpretation of scripture I haven't done this yet but I want to say when somebody says well that's your interpretation I want to say you have a remarkable grasp of the obvious I'm the one who just gave the interpretation so why are you telling me that that's my interpretation we all know it's my interpretation I just gave it but when people say that to me that's not what they're trying to do is to acknowledge that I'm the source of that interpret that's not the point now maybe they're saying this that's your interpretation as a short-handed way to completely refute what I've said because the unspoken premise in the syllogism is this everything that RC Sproul interprets in the Bible he interprets wrong wrong this is his interpretation Argo it's a wrong interpretation I've written a book on this for the Ley and called knowing scripture it's been out for 20 years or so is an attempt to set forth the reformed principles of interpretation in a simple way that people who haven't gone to Seminary can understand it but yet can give them guidelines to to keep them from falling in to the traps of misinterpreting the Bible and in one section of the book I have a section called 10 practical rules for interpreting the Bible and what I'm going to do in the time I have left tonight is just go over those 10 so I have 10 more points don't never look at me for a three-point sermon you'll never find I have 10 more points but I'm not going to the wrong side I'm I'm not going to bore you with a lengthy explanation of each one of these points I'm just going to be able to list them for you and give you one or two examples quickly if you want to further exposition of them get the book uh you don't have to read the book just buy it here's the first rule you read the Bible like you would read any other book so what surely you don't mean that you don't mean that the Bible's just like any other well no it's the only one that comes to us from the inspiration of God himself in that sense the Bible is absolutely unique among books but there's no such thing as Holy Ghost Greek you know Luther talked about the spiritualist during the Reformation monster who was so convinced of his spiritual Supremacy that Luther says the man thinks he swallowed the Holy Ghost feathers and all in the Bible a verb is a verb and a noun is a noun the indicative is the indicative the interrogative is the interrogative the conjunctive is the conjunctive there there's nothing spiritual that changes the basic grammatical historical sense in which the Bible is written and that sense you read it like you would read any other book you don't open the Bible and lucky dip it you know what lucky dip is God I don't know what your will is for my life speak to me through the scripture Judas went out and hung himself I don't like that one go thou and do likewise there are people who do that all the time they think that they're getting messages from God with that utter irresponsible way of teach of reading the Bible it does violence to the text and insult to the the Holy Ghost who inspired it you read it soberly like you would any other written document second of all you read it existentially I want to be careful here I maybe chosen the wrong word because I don't mean that you read it through the prism of existential philosophy I don't mean that I mean it more this way like Edward ruro you are there when you're reading the history of the Bible don't look at it as some distantly removed mythology from an ancient period but try as much as possible to get in the sandals of Abraham when Abraham hears God call him to mount Mariah try to think what Abraham was thinking feel what Abraham was feeling that is you're not remaining aloof from scripture but you enter into the reality of the scripture as it is presented that's what I mean by reading it existentially not simply as a detached spectator but you become passionately involved in what it is you're reading somebody just asked me a question last week out in California I said we heard you say this somewhere on radio or something that when uh you were studying philosophy in the University that you said that one of the things that you learned from your study of philosophy was the principle of critical analysis where as you read things you subject the truth claims in whatever literature you're reading to certain critical tools before you just jump or rush to judgment and accept whatever it is you read and there's a great value in that in the study St of philosophy I said and I've learned that I said yet at the same time I find that when I come to the scriptures the dynamic changes that when I read the scriptures what I discover every time I read it is that the Bible's criticizing me rather than my criticizing the Bible in fact I said if you want to shortcut the sanctification I've told people this before many times you want to get there in a hurry do this read through the whole Bible every time you find something in the Bible you don't like put a big Mark there and then go back and just concentrate on those passages of scripture that you read that you don't like because you'll find out one of two things either you didn't understand them the first time around and by studying them more deeply you'll come to an understanding and you'll be comfortable with it or even better you find out that even though you looked at it more carefully this time using all the commentaries you find out way I did understand what that text said and I still don't like it now you have a real springboard for sanctification because now you've isolated those places in the word of God where what you like and what God likes are two different things and you know that here is where you have to change but what higher criticism does is every time they find something in the Bible they don't like they want to change the Bible that is the bankruptcy of Hier critical scholarship you read it existentially you put yourself not God under the microscope and you find yourself being judged by God rather than you being his judge thirdly basic principle is that you interpret the narrative by the D actic the Bible will explain something by telling you the story they tell you what happens and then later on in the dactic literature like the Epistles for example the apostles will set forth the teaching by explaining the significance or the meaning of the narrative you read the gospel accounts of the Cross and of all you know is what happened that day outside of Jerusalem if you're there watching the crucifixion it's not immediately obvious to you to the naked eye that what's taking place here is a cosmic Act of atonement you need the didactic portions of of the scriptures to explain the meaning of those events for you now what happens if you interpret the dactic by The Narrative my complaint with Pentecostal theology is that it interprets Pentecost in a way that is an completely opposed to the new testament's interpretation of Pentecost my complaint with Pentecostalism is that its view of Pentecost is way too low because they submerge the dactic portions of scripture to inferences that they draw from the narratives even worse the scourge of evangelicalism today is open theism it's now trying to persuade you that the Lord God omniscient is not the Lord God omniscient he does not know all things he doesn't know what you're going to do before you do it he doesn't know what you're going to say before you say it because there's no way he can possibly know the future of free events done by moral AG and the Bible proves it because in the narratives we see Abraham offering Isaac and the angel coming and say now I know that you are going to obey me and so they they Heap up these verses where it talks about God's relenting God's repenting and they say see the Bible teaches that God changes his mind he's not immutable that God learns things he's not omniscient and justifies our Gastly theology never mind the dactic portions of scripture that warn you that God is not a man that he should repent and teaches you didactically that in fact God does know what you're going to say before you say it even though in the narrative it may be told as if from a human perspective as if God were learning things you are corrected from coming to that conclusion by the dactic portions that's again another application of the analogy of faith that you interpret scripture by scripture the fourth one is like unto the third one you interpret the implicit by the explicit not the explicit by the implicit if just this one rule of biblical interpretation were followed consistently I'm convinced it would be the death blow to arminianism because this is how it happens I don't know how many times I've talked about the doctrine of election how many times I've talked about these things in the first verse I get thrown up to me is well what about John 3:16 so what about John 3:16 John 3:16 Says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever and that whosoever is underlined five times whosoever believeth shall not perish but have everlasting life I said and well that means that everybody has the moral power to choose Jesus and that anybody who chooses Jesus out of that moral power will be saved just you know I looked that in John 3:16 I can't find that in John 3:16 where is that in that text and I said well it's obvious I said no you're drawing an implication you're drawing an inference from the text all the text says explicitly is that all who do a will not receive B and will receive C all who believe will not perish all who are in the category of Believers will not be included in the categories of those who perish but will be included in the categories of those who participate and inherit eternal life and that's what the text teaches explicitly it tells us about what happens to those who believe as opposed to those who don't believe now what does it say to the question of who who has the moral power to believe do I need to translate that nothing what does the Bible say explicitly about natural man's ability to Incline himself to Christ or to the things of God what does our Lord say explicitly when he says no man no man Universal negative can come to me unless it is given to him of the father now does the bible teach that we in our fallen condition have the natural ability in our own power to Incline ourselves to Christ to choose Jesus when we hear the go no the Lord Jesus Christ said that's an ability none of us have unless God meets the necessary condition for us to be able to respond to the gospel that's what the Bible tells us explicitly about our moral ability but that explicit teaching that Jesus gives in John 6 is trumped by an implication drawn from John 3 from the same author just three chapters earlier and sets John in contradiction to himself don't interpret the explicit by the you're implicit but you interpret the implications and test them by what's explicitly taught the Luther said you interpret the Obscure by the clear not the clear by the Obscure fifth we're almost there pay close attention to the meaning of words individual words this is one of the reasons why we push so hard for as much as possible to get verbal agreement in English translations and away from this Dynamic equivalency thing where you lose sight of the words because you know so many times in the Bible debates even debates that Jesus has with Satan or with the Pharisees are settled on the basis of the meaning of a single word and so we have to be word Merchants we have to be Craftsman of learning the biblical words one of the things I love about drar every time he gives an exposition of scripture it's sprinkled not only with a bunch of scriptures but is one Greek term after another where he's explaining for us what those particular Greek words mean and we have to pay attention to the words because one of the problems we have in scripture is that words are used in many cases the same word may have three or four or five or six nuances to it how many times do the Bible talk about the will of God well there are at least eight ways in which the Bible talks about the will of God which one is in view in a particular passage how about this one God is not willing that any should perish I'm bloodied and bruised from being hit with that verse God is not willing that any should perish I said willing in what sense in The Sovereign efficacious will by which whatever God ordains to come to pass must necessarily come to pass or is this will God's will of disposition and what pleases him he takes no the light and the death of the wicked what is it but even more importantly what's the meaning of the word any here God is not willing that any should perish any what giraffes platty pusses Greeks what's the what what do people read into that text God is not willing that any human human being will ever perish well if God is not willing that any person should ever perish and he's speaking here of God's Sovereign efficacious will then now the text Preach teaches way too much for The Armenian because now it teaches that everybody will be saved but if we look at the text we say the any what's the anticon of the any contextually it's the word us so what what is Peter saying God is not willing that any of us should perish okay now who the US it's obviously the people he's talking to who are they we have to go and look and see to whom the letters of Peter are addressed and who are they addressed to yes you guessed it the elect and so what Peter is clearly teaching in the text is God is not willing that any of the elect should perish so far from being an Armenian text this text is as calvinistic as you can get if you pay attention to the meaning of the words what else do you have a woman is saved in childbearing right and we know what to be saved means to be reconciled with God to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness the Kingdom of Light never mind that the Bible's meaning of the term save so so SOI is is used to be any kind of rescue from any kind of peril or Calamity so that if you're saved from illness you you've been saved if you're rescued from defeat in battle you've been saved there are all kinds of ways in which you're saved that there must be distinguished from the ultimate sense of Salvation where you're rescued from the wrath of God that is to come so when the Apostle says that women are saved by childbearing they're not saying that there are two ways to Salvation one is justification by faith for the men or justification by having babies for the women we have to be careful of our understanding of the meaning of the words of the Bible next we have to be careful to observe the presence of certain literary forms particularly in the poetic portions of scripture of which there are many and one thing that we need to learn really are the basic I spell it out in here basic types of parallelisms that are found in Hebrew literature and I'll give you one example if I can open this book where I quote from the old King James version Isaiah 456 to7 reads as follows I am the Lord there is none else I form the light and I create Darkness I make peace and create evil I the Lord do all these things I don't know how many students have come to me with this and say here right here in the Bible it teaches that God creates evil that's what it says that's what it said in the King James it's a bad translation again there at least eight different kinds of evil that the Bible speaks about and here in more in laud translations you see that what is set apart here is that God brings peace or Prosperity he also brings calamity he brings wheel he brings woe there's a contrast there and if you understand that this is a parallelism you'll see you can interpret the second half of the verse by the first verse to see the way these things are said in contrast and you won't get fooled by that sort of thing even the Lord's Prayer has parallelism lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil bad translation right John because it's not the neuter evil it's Pony Ross the masculine which is the title given in the New Testament for Satan but Jesus is saying when you pray there's a parallelism here lead us not into temptation that is don't put us into the place where we're exposed and vulnerable to the assault of Satan but instead of exposing us to the attack of Satan you know lead us not attention but Deliver Us from the evil one that's what we're asking in the Lord's Prayer so if we learn to recognize simple forms of parallelism it'll really help us from falling into traps of of misunderstanding the Bible also need to understand the difference between Proverbs and law law has to do with moral absolutes that are given to us unless they case laws casually istic law that you find in the Old Testament but in addition to the two kinds of law absolute law and case law that you find in the Old Testament you also have Proverbs and here's what happens when you turn Proverbs into law you get hopelessly lost let's look at Proverbs chap 26 verses 4 and 5 verse four of Proverbs 26 reads this do not answer a fool according to his folly lest you also be like him now there's a good proverb for you where's Paul you like these Proverbs don't answer a fool according to his folly you'd be just like him that's the proverb what's the next verse answer a fool according to a Folly lest he be wise in his own eyes now some people say the Bible's filled with contradiction and here's one from one verse to the next first one says don't answer full according to his fall next one says do answer full according to his fall make up your mind Solomon what are you talking about here we have the same thing in English Proverbs let me give you two classic Proverbs he who hesitates is lost look before you leap now can you apply both of those Proverbs totally consistently at all times I remember when I was a teenager I was prowling around the neighborhood at 3:00 in the morning up to no good saw a light coming up the street oh no was police soon as I saw that light I took off running boy they hit the the siren guys two cops jumped out of the car and started chasing me through the backyards of our town in Pleasant Hills I was running for all I was worth they were yelling stop stop stop you know and I came to this great big wall of trees and bushes I had no idea it was on the other side could have been Niagara Falls as far as I know but this thought came into my mind he who hesitates is lost and I didn't had the luxury of looking before I was sleeping so I just Dove through the hedges and landed in some kid sandbox on the other side picked myself up and took off running into the night and they never caught me because I applied the wisdom of not I knew that if I hesitated I was lost but you see the Proverbs give us general principles of wisdom that in some circumstances show us what is the wise thing to do and sometimes it's wise not to answer a fool according to his F fing at other times it is the better part of wisdom to use that honm arguments reduce them to absurdity by showing the fool the Folly of his folly all right 8 n and 10 got 60 seconds Spirit and the letter of the law boy this is a dangerous thing because I hear it all the time in Christendom the Pharisees were guilty of keeping keeping the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit of the law and really what God wants from his people is to keep the spirit of the law not the letter of the law no what God wants from his people is to keep the spirit of the law and the letter of the law but we excuse our violations of the law of God by saying well I'm keeping the spirit while I'm trampling all over what God actually says so we pay attention both to the spirit and the letter number nine take very special care with Parables remembering that The Parables for the most part are not to be interpreted as allegories one is at least but most of them aren't most Parables have only one Central meaning and if you try to turn each part of a parable into some kind of hidden meaning you're going to find yourself in all kinds of trouble so there's special rules that apply to interpreting Parables be careful with them finally be careful with predictive prophecy be responsible interpreters of sacred scripture let's pray father we thank you for your word for its power for its Clarity for its beauty most of all for its truth amen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

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Keywords: sproul, rc sproul, bible study, biblical interpretation, hermeneutics, ligonier, ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, how to interpret the bible, how to study the bible, how to interpret scripture, how to study scripture, what are hermeneutics?, understanding the bible, understanding scripture, basic christianity, how to read the bible, literal interpretation, quiet time, bible reading plan, private interpretation, sola scriptura

Id: cRmWSB1c6L8

Length: 52min 21sec (3141 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2015