Interpretation

Well now I want you to grab your message notes that look like this in the bulletins that you got when you came in. We're gonna plunge into the sermon part of the hour, and what I wanna do is continue our series "40 Days in the Word." And this is a series that we're part of as kind of an immersive event here at Twin Lakes Church. Small groups and Daily Devotions and video podcasts all about how to get back into the Bible as part of a daily habit.

And speaking of habits, I found something fascinating this week. Somebody wrote a fun little book called "The First Really Important Survey of American Habits." Anybody see this book? This is fascinating because they surveyed thousands of Americans about their habits. And I thought it would be fun to see how our church matches up with the rest of America when it comes to your habits. So let me ask you some of the questions they ask people in this book.

Here's a really important question. When preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, what goes on top? Peanut butter or jelly? How many put the peanut butter on top? How about the jelly on top? Well, you're with most of Americans because 99% say they put jelly on top. See how important these questions are?

Okay. Next question, do you store your socks rolled up or folded flat? How many rolled them up? How many fold them flat? How many just throw them in the drawer? Okay. All right, survey says 51% of Americans roll them up.

All right, just a quick question. Raise your hand if you have ever bitten your fingernails. Anybody here ever bitten your fingernails? All right, now raise your hand. Be honest here, this is church. Raise your hand if you've ever bitten your toenails. Can I see that? Check this out. 25% of Americans have bitten that. That is just kind of gross. So some of you are not admitting to this.

All right. If you are married, who spends more time in the bathroom? You or your spouse? How many of you would say it's you? How many would say it's my spouse? Okay, that matches. 67% of Americans say their spouse does. I love this because nobody admits it's them.

All right. When you eat corn, do you rotate it in a circle or do you eat it side to side like a typewriter? Some of you are going, let me see. How many of you rotate it? How many of you eat it side to side like a typewriter? All right, 80% of Americans rotate it. That's just wrong, isn't it? It's unnatural.

All right, when do you fill up your car? All right. How many of you would say when it's just a quarter tank empty it's still three quarters full, I fill it up. I don't take any chances. Anybody? All right, several of you. Wow. How many of you when it's about half empty, you fill it up? How many of you when it's three quarters empty, you fill it up? How many of you when the light comes on? How many of you when it comes to a stop? How many of you would say you're married to somebody who never fills it up, they just leave it for you to fill up? Okay, because my wife is raising her hand right now.

All right. Survey of Americans says, this is weird, most men say they fill up about half empty, most women at almost empty. I'm just reporting the results here, that's kind of strange.

All right, one more. In your home, does the toilet paper roll over or under? Now this is huge. Last night, this kind of created a conflict, nearly led to a church split. So remember, this is in love and charity here. This is church. How many, it's gotta go over. It's gotta go over. How many of you, it's gotta go under? How many of you just leave it kind of on the roll, you don't actually put it on, you wait for your spouse to put it on? How many of you would say that's you? My wife is raising her hands and pointing to me.

All right. 54% of Americans say they put it over. Isn't that interesting? So let's see that again. How many of you put it over? Wow. I'm interested to see how this compares with the 10:45 service because we've got, in the nine o'clock, we've got all these people putting it over. Well, you see how important that is, right? The book is called, The First Really Important Survey of American Habits.

But what I wanna talk about you this morning, to you and about this morning, is a really important habit. Because habits shape our lives, right? Habits really shape our personalities. And I am going to teach you this morning, in my opinion, the single best habit that any human being could ever develop. And that is how to read the word of God in such a way that it jumps off the page and into your life.

This morning, let's look at interpretation. How do I understand the Bible when I read it? Show of hands, how many of you have ever read anything in the Bible that you have not understood? Anybody here? Okay, all of us, right? The problem is that for a lot of people, that kind of scares them off from ever reading the Bible by themselves again. Because they figure, I'm not an expert. I don't understand it.

But listen, I'm here to tell you that there is one simple concept. One simple habit that you can learn so that when this becomes a habit, you can read the Bible and understand it almost every single time. I'm really passionate about teaching you this. So jot this down. The big key to reading and understanding the Bible, it's all wrapped up in one word. Here's the big idea for today. And it's the word context. C-O-N-T-E-X-T, context. Always ask, what's this all about?

Always come to the Bible with that question. Why is this important? Well, there's a great old story about a guy who says, "God, lead me through your word." And so he opens his Bible up at random and the verse he puts his finger on is, "Judas went out and hanged himself," Matthew 27:5. And he thinks, whoa. And so he puts his finger down on another verse. Go and do likewise, Luke 10:37. And he thinks, this is creepy. He puts his finger down on another verse and gets, "And what you are about to do, do it quickly," John 13:27. Now instinctively, you know, he is ripping those verses out of context. But you and I do this all the time.

You say, why do I need to do this? Well, let me ask you a question. You're reading the Bible and you see a verse in the Bible that says, "If a woman goes to church, she must have her hair covered." I see nobody here today actually obeying that verse. And so women, what do you do with that verse? Or there's a verse in the Bible that says, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off." So again, just a quick show of hands. Raise your hands if you still have both of your hands. So do I assume that you're all sin free? Or in another verse, Jesus says to a guy, sell all you have and leave it. Give it to the poor and come and follow me and then you'll have eternal life. Raise your hand if you still own something, anything.

All right, so why aren't you applying that verse? What do you do with those verses and a hundred other like them? Almost every single Bible difficulty is explained by reading in context. And there's three levels of context that you need to remember to approach any scripture verse with in any order. And the first is this, ask yourself, what's the historical context of the verse that I'm reading right now? What's the historical context? Why is this so important?

Imagine that you saw this sentence somewhere written down and you weren't sure if this was in the newspaper or in an ancient document. You saw the sentence, lions devour saints. Now, what could the following story be about? It could be about what? The football, right, the National Football League, the lions and the saints playing each other. Or it could be about what? About Christians getting persecuted by Nero being thrown to the lions, right? How do you know what that sentence is about? You have no way of knowing unless you understand the historical context that that sentence was written in.

And once you know when it was written in 2014, it's likely to be about what? Football. If it was written in AD 60, it's likely to be about what? Christians being persecuted, right? So you've gotta know the historical context. Let me just give you a quick example from the Bible. There's tons of these. But I mentioned this earlier, 1 Corinthians 11:6, the apostle Paul is talking about church services. And he's saying, when a woman prays or prophesies in church, he says, "If a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off. But if it's a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head."

I want you to just look around and try to find at least one woman here who does not have her head covered. Anybody sitting next to a woman who doesn't have her head covered, right? I mean, you are right there, right? Ma'am, I want you to come up, and I actually am going to give you a trim right now because here at Twin Lakes Church, we believe in following the word of God, literally, right? No, instinctively, you know that that can't be the application for this verse, right? Instinctively, you know there's some contextual information that we need to gain about this passage.

About 10 days ago, I was with a group from TLC at Corinth, the ancient city that this letter is being written to. You see the road that my son David is walking on? That is the actual first century road, the Roman road that the Apostle Paul walked on to get from the harbor at Corinth up into this area, which was the center of the city. But in this picture, there was a clue to understanding this passage. Because do you see the hill behind my son? On that hill stood the biggest temple in town, the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. And by the time that Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians, Aphrodite worship had degenerated into prostitution. And this helps explain this verse.

One scholar that I read a lot, Warren Wiersby, says this about that verse. "The most likely explanation here is simply this. Except for the temple prostitutes, women wore long hair in Corinthian society. And in public, they wore a covering over their heads. The prostitutes wore their hair very short and they did not wear a head covering in public. Their hairstyle and their manner announced to others just what they were and what they were offering." So do you see what Paul's saying? Dress appropriately for the gospel.

You see, once you answer the question, what's the historical context, then you can ask the question, all right, what principle here transcends culture? And in this passage, a powerful point for our culture today, and I think it applies not just to women, but also to men, Paul is saying, dress appropriately. Dress modestly. You know, ask yourself, okay, if shaved hair or haircut short and uncovered heads were the trigger in Corinthian culture that said, this person is immoral, are there any trigger points in our culture that say it's probably not appropriate to dress that way for the sake of the gospel? And an understanding of the historical context really opens this up.

Okay, next level of context. Ask what's the literary context? In other words, what's the flow of thought? What's the argument? What's the point the author is making? Or what's the plot of the story? Now, I would contend that we all naturally understand how important literary context is. In fact, I wanna show you something to help prove it. There are some people on the internet who do what they call bad lip reading. Has anybody ever seen any of the bad lip reading videos? A few of you. Well, what they do is they put words in people's mouths from TV shows, football games, and also popular movies.

For example, watch these clips on the screen right now. Every night, I want you to hold Marvin the Cat. He's not a real cat. Will you text me? I don't want you to text me. You're stupid. I got a purse. You don't even like it. I do, everyone thinks I do. Well, I'm buying you a new one, an extra milk. But I have milk. You're the one that chokes on water. Scooby-Doo. Gross, how can you be that stupid? No, you're a dark. You're psychotic. And you wanna do that interview? I don't wanna talk. Wednesday, Tuesday? Dude. You slapped a fish. You punched it, why would you hit it? I'm eating some seafood. That's so loserly.

Doesn't you love this? And it looks like the words just fit perfectly, right? But you know, instinctively, that can't be what it means because generally speaking, most people in our culture know the general plot line for stories like "Twilight" and the "Hunger Games." You know the context, and so you know, this can't be what they're saying. Same thing with the Bible. People are gonna try to put all kinds of words in Jesus' mouth. They will say, "Oh, he means this, he means that." But if you know the thrust of the story, the overall plot of the narrative or the argument of an epistle, then you can make better sense of it.

Let me just give you one example that I'm really passionate about. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Watch out for false prophets. They will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly, they are ferocious wolves." Jesus here loves you and me, and everybody who's ever gone to church, anybody in the world, so much that he is warning you that there are going to be bad pastors. Bad Christian leaders are gonna make people drink poison Kool-Aid and all kinds of other bad stuff. And he says, "Let me just give you a little tip for how to recognize them by their fruit. You will know them, stay away from them because they're ferocious."

Now sadly, despite this warning, Christians have been devoured by false teachers again and again and again and again and again. Why? It's not that they don't know this warning, it's because they read it out of context and they don't understand what Jesus is saying. I have heard so many Christians read this verse and interpret it this way. "By their fruit, you will recognize them." Well that means by the results, the results of their ministry, by their success, and they say, "That person's having, he has a big church. He's on TV, he's on the radio, he's on books, he's very charismatic, he does miracles in tent campaigns or whatever. His results are spectacular, and so he's having great fruit, so I'm gonna follow him."

However, if you read just a little bit more in context, you can see very plainly that that is absolutely not what Jesus meant, in fact, it's the opposite of what he meant. Because about four or five verses later, Jesus says that in that day on Judgment Day, he says, "Many will come to me and say, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, in your name, cast out demons in your name, perform many miracles?'" In other words, didn't we have a big ministry, didn't we have success, didn't we have lots of results? And Jesus says, "I will say to them plainly, 'I never knew you, away from me, you evil doers.'" There's nobody who comes under harsher condemnation in the Bible, by the way, than bad religious people who abuse other people. And Jesus is very, very forthright about how he feels about that.

But you see here in context, these people had great ministries, they had great results, and so that can't be what Jesus means in context when he says, "By their fruit, you will know them." So what can he mean? Well, after you look at the immediate literary context, you look at the whole council of Scripture. What's the whole Bible say about the kind of fruit that good Christian leaders should have? Well, in several passages like Galatians 5:22 and 23, it says this, "But the fruit of the Spirit is what?" Let's read the rest of this verse together, read it with me. "Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." And so what Jesus is saying is this, when you see a pastor or another Christian leader, and they might be very magnetic, they might have a great ministry, but if they are not growing in these areas, if they're not loving, if they're not gentle, if they're not patient, gracious, Jesus is saying, "I don't care how many demons they drive out or how many miracles they do or what they say in my name, stay away from them because they are wolves in sheep's clothing." And we need to take that seriously.

This is the kind of benefit you can get out of reading something in the broader literary context. So many more examples of this, but I wanna get to the third kind of context. You ask, what's the genre context? Genre. You know what a genre is? Movies have genres, right? What are some of the genres of movies? Shout it out. Drama, what else? Horror, what else? Western, sci-fi, right? Chick-flicks, right? There's all kinds of different genres in movies. Well, the Bible is genres too. There's poetry, there's songs, there's parables, there's prophecy, there's apocalyptic literature, there's narratives.

Why is this important? Establishing the genre helps you answer a couple of crucial questions. Questions like, is this figurative or literal? A poem is going to be very figurative by its nature. A letter to a church is going to be much more literal. For example, look at this verse, Psalm 91:4, talking about God, it says, "He will cover you with his," what? Feathers, "and under his," what? Wings, "you will find refuge." So I see here in this verse, God's got feathers. God's got wings. I believe the Bible, literally, I do, and so literally that's what it says, he's got feathers and he's got wings. No, of course not. This is a poem. And poems are, when we take poems the way they are intended to be taken, it's saying that God is everywhere, God never leaves you or forsakes you.

In verses like Hebrews 13:5, it states that point literally, "God will never leave you nor forsake you." But that same point is made here in this poem, and it's so comforting to hear it expressed in these poetic images, right? God's going to comfort you like a mother bird comforts its little flock, he'll enfold you with his feathers. It's beautiful.

Now let me give you another question to always ask of Scripture. And this may be the single most helpful question you can ever ask about a Bible verse. In fact, I would say that this one question clears up 99% of the problems people have with the Bible. And here's the question. Ask, "Is this descriptive or prescriptive?" Is this descriptive or is it prescriptive? In other words, does this merely describe something that someone did? It's a narrative like in the Old Testament, 1 and 2 Kings or 1 and 2 Samuel or Chronicles or in the New Testament Acts, does it merely describe something or does it prescribe something that everybody should do? Like in an epistle.

For example, 1 Kings 11:3 says that Solomon had many wives, in fact, he had a thousand. And I've heard people say, in fact, just yesterday, I was on the internet and I read yet another cult that's rising up and one of their planks is men should have multiple wives just like people did in the Bible. I kid you not, this is not like something in the past, this is today. The Bible says all these great men of God like Solomon had many wives and so we should all do the same thing, guys. Now how do I know that that's not what the Bible teaches? The Bible never says thou shalt have many wives. The Bible merely accurately describes what these characters did, that's descriptive.

What's prescriptive? Well, many verses like 1 Timothy 3:2 says, be the husband of one wife. You see the difference? One describes, one prescribes. Couple of other examples. Acts 2:4 says, everyone spoke in tongues, talks about the day of Pentecost in the early church. And this verse has been used to teach every believer must speak in tongues. It says, everyone spoke in tongues. But this just accurately describes what really happened on that day. That's a description. What's a prescription for how to use speaking in tongues in church? Well, the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 14 is all about it. And in that chapter Paul says things like, in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. And he says, everything must be done in a fitting and orderly way. And by the way, he also says, do not forbid speaking in tongues, but he says, if anybody speaks in tongues, it should be two or at the most three, and followed by an interpretation every single time. It's a prescription for how that gift is to be used in church.

Now, you made me thinking, this all sounds so sophisticated, I don't have a doctrine, I don't know about Bible history. I can't do this, René, I'm relying on you, I can't do it. There are so many great tools to help you these days. At the end of your notes, I list some great Bible study resources, and it starts with a book I love called How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. I read this probably every couple of years. It is so good, it tells you everything you need to know about reading the Bible in context. Honestly, I recommend it to every single believer.

And then I think every Christian needs a good study Bible. This is mine, the NIV study Bible, and what I love about this is that it is filled with things on every page to help you understand the historical context. It's filled with commentary on all the difficult verses, and it's got maps, it's got timelines, it's got all kinds of things to help you understand what's going on historically. There's lots of good study Bibles. This is my personal favorite, but you oughta look at a good Christian bookstore for a study Bible that kind of rings your bell.

You can also go online for free at BibleGateway.com. They have dozens of translations and commentaries, absolutely for free. You can download the app YouVersion, again for free, all kinds of commentaries, Bible versions. What I'm saying is, we live in an amazing day when there is all kinds of help for you to read and understand the Bible in context. And when you learn how to do this, it just kind of opens up the Bible for you and makes it so interesting because you know how to do the detective work.

It's sort of like, anybody ever watch any of the CSI shows on TV, right, it's sort of like CSI the Bible. You're able to investigate and use the clues to understand what it means. Now let me just say briefly, what about hard to understand verses? First of all, there's really not that many of them. Most of the Bible is actually very clear, but once in a while there's a head scratcher that just kind of makes you go, what? Like this example, Jesus said in Luke 14:26, "If anyone comes to me and does not," what? Hate. Father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, he cannot be my disciple. What? This sounds like it's giving permission, not only permission, but instructing you to hate your spouse.

Now how do you figure out what in the world this verse means? Again, context is key, the context of the whole Bible. Let me just give you the best advice I ever got on this. Read hard verses in light of easy verses on the same subject. Does that make sense? And so you go like that, verses about relationships. And so you look at other verses about the relationship between a husband and a wife or parents to children, and you find verses like this, Colossians 3:19, "Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them." And this theme of loving your spouse is consistent all through the Bible. It's in Ephesians 5, it's in Proverbs, it's in Ecclesiastes. Jesus himself says, "Let nothing separate a husband and wife." So this one verse cannot mean, "Hate your spouse." Jesus must be using an exaggeration, a hyperbole to make a point.

And I think it's this, in the Middle Eastern honor and shame culture that he was speaking to, family honor is everything. And he was saying, "You have to be prepared if need be to choose between your family's approval and God's approval." Don't let family loyalties keep you from following God. And again, this is about context. When you read a verse that seems weird to you, you look at all the other verses on the same subject, and if that one hard verse disagrees with all the other clear verses, then you have to say whatever this hard-to-understand verse means, it cannot mean this.

Okay, three warnings, three things to remember here when you study the Bible. First, remember to apply it. As I like to say, it's only deep if it changes you, right? It's only deep if it changes you. You might be tempted to think, this weekend we got deep, right? We talked about study Bibles, and we talked about context and genres. You know, that's deep stuff. No, it's not deep unless it changes you.

For example, I'm stoked that our November project, as it is every year, is raising food for Second Harvest Food Bank. Now this week I went back, and I actually looked up on Bible Gateway all the verses that I have to do with feeding the poor, with helping the hungry, there's about 300 of them. And I copied and pasted them all into a document and studied them all, and it's pretty clear that over 300 verses, feeding the poor is really close to God's heart. It is a major theme of the Bible. But it's not enough for me to just know that.

There's 300 verses about feeding the poor. The reason those are in the Bible is because God wants me to do it, and God wants us to do it. And so what we're doing is this, on the other side of that green handout in your bulletins, you see some details about our food drive for Second Harvest. It's gonna end the last weekend in November when Lincoln Brewster is here in concert, and there's a little chart there, one dollar equals four meals. We're gonna let God set the goal this year. We're just gonna ask the whole church to pray about what you can bring.

I know a lot of us are really committed already to the 2020 Vision Project and other things, but just ask the Lord. And you'll see there if our average attendance, if we each gave this much money, how many meals that that would amount to. And I also put there in one big paragraph, some of the Christian ministries that Second Harvest helps provide food for, this is really encouraging, and I think this will really blow your mind.

So what I wanna ask you to do is just take this handout with you, stick it up somewhere where you will see it throughout the month, and be praying about how you can apply all those 300 verses that have to do with feeding the poor. It is not deep unless it changes you. Another point, when you study the Bible, remember the big picture. The Bible is the story of God pursuing a relationship with us. The story of God pursuing a relationship. Do not miss this.

In fact, look up here for just a second. I wanna show you something I saw the other day. This is a TV guide description of the Wizard of Oz. Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again. Now, the TV guide guy must've been having a bad day, I don't know, but. Now, is this a description of things that happen in the Wizard of Oz? Yeah, it is, all these things happen in the Wizard of Oz. But is this an accurate reflection of the plot, the flavor, the point of the Wizard of Oz? Is it? No, not at all.

And do you understand that there are people who do the exact same thing with the Bible? They take the Bible and they say, look at all the brutal wars, the Bible's just bloodthirsty. Or look at that verse in 1 Corinthians 11:6, the Bible is misogynist, it's anti-woman. Or they'll take little things that are in the Bible, well, those are in the Bible, but irregardless of the overall plot line of the Bible, they'll make it seem like the Bible is about brutality and bloodthirstiness and misogyny and so on, just like this does to the Wizard of Oz.

That's why you've gotta remember to see what the Bible is really all about. What's the point? What's the plot of the Bible so the people don't, again, rip things out of context? The Bible is a love story about how we mess up and get hurt again and again, but God is going to restore what is broken on this planet and He's going to heal all your hurts and He did this by coming to this planet and paying for our sins with His death on the cross and by His resurrection showing our destiny.

We too will live in resurrected bodies on a redeemed earth and be with Him forever as we trust in Him, as Savior. That's the plot. And that's why I don't want you to miss this. Ultimately, the goal of Bible study is not to know the Bible, but to know the author. The Bible exists to lead you to a relationship with God, and that's why we're doing this whole series.

I'll close with this. I told you that when my dad died of cancer in the hospital, people have told me how he loved to sing the song, "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus." Do you remember that song? "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and His grace." And after singing just that song for a couple of days, he spoke his last sentence. He said, "It's like a dream. God is all around me." And he took two more deep breaths and dad died.

Wouldn't you love when you go through the valley of the shadow of death to have that kind of relationship with God? But I'll tell you something. It did not happen in his moment of need. My dad developed that relationship over many years. How? Well, my mom tells me. She was not a believer when she married my father. And she said, "I thought he was crazy." Every single night, he read the Bible, and then he kneeled by the bed, he knelt, and out loud he would pray to God. And she said, "I thought, what have I married? He's insane at first." But she said, "He would invite me to join him." And at first I would just kneel next to him, just kind of as a show of unity.

And she said, "Eventually I began to believe too." She said, "I don't know when it happened, but at the beginning of one year, I was definitely not a believer. And at the end of the year, seeing the relationship that Fred had with the Lord Jesus, I became a believer too. And my mom got into the habit of reading the Word every day, not for the sake of the Word, but because it led her to the living Word."

So listen, all of us are going to go through valleys like that in our lives. My question is, are you laying the foundation for that? Do you know the author of the book? Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

With our heads bowed right now, let me just ask you directly, is today the day you meet the author? This may be your first time at church, it may be your thousandth time, but have you surrendered to him, yielded your life to him? Simply pray in your heart, "Lord, thank you for bringing us your Word. Help it lead me to a deeper relationship with the living Word, Jesus Christ. Thank you for loving me so much that you sent your Son to pay for my sins on the cross." And as we remember the price paid now in communion, we give you thanks, amen.