How to Study Your Bible: Interpretation B

Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. The story is told of a young man who, trying to find God's will for his life, decided to open the Bible randomly and obey the very first words he read. He happened on a phrase in Matthew 27, verse 5, then Judas went out and hanged himself. Thinking, that can't be God's will, the young man tried again. This time he landed on Jesus' words in Luke 10, 37, "'Go thou and do likewise.'"

Well, that's a bit of humor that illustrates an important point. Every passage of Scripture has one specific meaning, and yet often multiple meanings are recklessly forced where they don't belong, with profound consequences. John MacArthur helps you avoid errors like that today as he continues a foundational study called How to Get the Most from God's Word. And now with a lesson, here's John. Well, we are continuing in our series on how to study the Bible, or how to get the most out of your Bible.

Now let's just talk about some basic things that are necessary. To understand the Scripture, the first thing you have to do is read the Bible. So to be a student of the Bible, first of all, is to grasp the sweep of Scripture by repetitious reading. Now let's go to a second feature, and that is to interpret the Bible.

And we'll have to spend a little time on this. Now you've read it, and hopefully as you've read it, you've kept a little bit of a log of the things that interest you, and you're going to spend some extra time each week going back to some of those issues that you wrote down because you didn't understand them. And this is what I've done through the years. Those things that I don't understand become the priority list for my own personal study in depth. Again, this has to go beyond devotions. And just sort of reading the Bible as a little bit of a daily exercise for 15 minutes and then reading another passage the next day and another one and never really understanding the depth of what you read is not life-changing.

It's sort of like popping one aspirin a day, you know. It may have a little bit of effect in the long run, but it's not going to change your life. The Ethiopian eunuch was asked the question, do you understand what you're reading? To which he replied to Philip's question, how can I except some man should what? Should guide me.

I have to have some help. I'm reading it, but I'm not sure I really understand. And that's going to be true as you study the Bible. That's why when you go back to Nehemiah, go back for a minute to Nehemiah chapter 8. In Nehemiah chapter 8, the Word of God had been found and Ezra, the scribe, read the Word of God to the people. Verse 1, they all gathered as one man at the square, which was in front of the Watergate. They asked Ezra, the scribe, to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel.

Ezra, the priest, brought the law before the assembly of men, women, and all who could listen with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it before the square, which was in front of the Watergate from early morning until midday. In the presence of men and women, those who could understand, and all the people were attended to the book of the law. Now, they were there for at least six hours, standing in the open square listening to six hours of Bible reading. That tells me they had an attention span that our culture doesn't know anything about.

And they were attentive the whole time. And Ezra, the scribe, stood at a wooden podium. That's where these came from, I guess, these pulpits, which they had made for the purpose. Beside him stood Mattathiah, Shema, Aniah, and the rest. Verse 5, And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up.

So they stood up for six hours in the open square and listened to him read. Then Ezra blessed the Lord the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, while lifting up their hands. That was the start, I guess, of what still goes on when the Word of God is proclaimed.

People say, Amen. They bowed low, worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. And those who were assisting Ezra are listed there in verse 7. Look at the end of the verse, explained the law to the people while the people remained in their place. And they read from the book, from the law of God, translating or interpreting or explaining to give the sense so that they understood the reading. That's the second aspect of Bible study.

You listen, you hear, you absorb what you can, and then you go beyond. What does the Bible say? First question, what does the Bible say? Second question, what does it mean by what it says?

What does it mean by what it says? This is dividing the truth rightly. This is cutting it straight. And this is absolutely necessary if it's going to fit together.

If you don't cut the pieces right, you can't put the whole thing together. We were having a discussion the other night in the elders' meeting, which I thought was a very helpful discussion, about theology. And there are many people who would say, I reject systematic theology and I accept biblical theology.

Well, I want to be known as a biblical theologian. In that sense, your theology unfolds from the text. Your theology is unleashed from the text. Your theology rises from the text of Scripture. You don't want to develop a system of theology and then impose it like a grid on the Bible. You want to be a biblical theologian. And that is to say that the theology arises out of the text.

It arises out of the very verses themselves. But, listen very carefully, that is not in conflict with systematic theology. It may be in conflict with the classic concept of dogmatic theology, which is an ecclesiastical theological system imposed upon the Bible and people. It may be in conflict with dogmatic theology, which is a technical term for that. But it is not in conflict with systematic theology.

I'll tell you what I mean. When you have gone through the Bible and it has yielded all of its truth and it has said everything God wants to say, when you're done, that will be a perfect, flawless, non-contradictory system of truth. It has to be systematic because God is a God of absolute order. It is simplistic to say you reject systematic theology.

You can't say that. You can say, I reject a non-biblical theological grid or dogmatic theology developed by some ecclesiastics or some people or some person and imposed upon the Scripture. But when you have done your...all your work on biblical theology, what it yields is a perfect, harmonious, ordered theology with no contradictions, which is what a perfect system is. Achieving and accomplishing everything that is perfectly reflective of the nature of God. So we're trying to come to such a clear and comprehensive and complete understanding of what the Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation that we can say, here it is in its perfect order and perfect harmony, perfect interrelation without contradiction. In that sense, we acknowledge systematic theology. It is not the interpreter of Scripture, but it is the result of a proper interpretation of Scripture. When you go to the Word of God with the exegetical tools, with an expositional approach, and it yields its truth, in the end, it will be perfectly harmonious. And that's part also of believing in what we call analogia scriptura, that is to say, the Scripture is consistent within itself, analogous to itself, and non-contradictory in any sense.

There are mysteries, yes, we don't understand. There are things that are apparently contradictory to us, but they are not in reality contradictory at all, because God is a God of order, not a God of confusion. So it is necessary then for us to carefully interpret Scripture so as to come up with what it says, and in the end, so that it perfectly comes together in order and harmony without contradiction.

Now, if you mess up the interpretation on the way, you can't have that ordered system at the end. It's absolutely crucial that we rightly divide the Word of God. That's why I've said through the years, the only person who really has a right to be a theologian is an exegete. Somebody who interprets Scripture has a right to say, I'm a theologian. Somebody who does not interpret the pages of Scripture can say he's a theologian, but he is a theologian by borrowing from somebody else. The purest theology rises out of the text itself. Now, misinterpretation of the Bible has created many, many, many problems.

Let me give you some illustrations. Some have said since the patriarchs in the time of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs practiced polygamy, so may we. Others have said since the Old Testament sanctioned the divine right of the King of Israel, all kings have divine rights. Europe had lots of kings that exercised what they thought was a divine right, somehow borrowed from Old Testament Israel. In America even, there were kings who had a divine right, and there was this interesting viewpoint back in Massachusetts.

Since the Old Testament sanctioned the death of witches, we should kill them all too. Because some Old Testament plagues were from God, we should avoid sanitation. Now there's an interesting view. If you start getting too sanitary, you're going to cripple God. Because God uses plagues to destroy ungodly people, we ought to avoid sanitation. Here's another interesting viewpoint that has arisen. Because the Old Testament teaches that women suffer in childbirth as a divine punishment, no anesthetic should ever be used. That's an interesting thought, isn't it? Since part of God's curse on humanity is that women have pain in childbearing, anything that mitigates that pain is against the will of God.

And I told you about the one that I ran into in Romania some years back, and it's also true in Russia. Since women are saved by childbearing, they should never do anything of a contraceptive nature, and if they ever do, they're liable to lose their salvation. Now some people look at the Bible and they see all of this and they just sort of scratch their head and say, I don't know what to do with all this. I remember talking to a very prominent man who was a pastor who was a former fellow student of mine, eventually went on to a ten seminary, graduated from seminary, was a pastor of a church. And I was talking to him one time at a conference at Hume Lake where both of us were speaking, and he was speaking on interpreting the Old Testament. And he just openly said to the people, he said, you know, I've just decided to take everything for everybody. Everything in the Old Testament for everybody?

That's a pretty amazing statement. And so when I saw him after some of the sessions, I said to him, I said, I want to ask you about that thing you said last night. You said that you decided to try to sort it all out in the Old Testament was pretty complicated. You just decided to take everything for everybody. I happened to catch him too at the time while he was eating a hot dog. And it was not an all-beef Frank. What do you mean you take everything for everybody? When did you slaughter your last lamb? And how come you cut your sideburns and have them wrapped around your ear?

I mean, why are you eating that hot dog? You can't say that. You have to interpret the Scriptures. You can't come up with a blanket concept. People often ask me, what is the key to interpreting the Old Testament in order to understand what was for the Jews in their time and what is for us? Answer, the context of every passage. There's no singular formula that you can just dump on the whole Old Testament. Now, in accurately handling the Word of God, three errors have to be avoided. Don't ever come to a conclusion at the price of a proper interpretation. Don't ever come to a conclusion or make a point at the price of a proper interpretation. Don't use the Scripture to support your viewpoint. You come up with a neat idea, you think it works, so you just push the Scripture into it.

I mean, this gets real bizarre. This rather frantic writer was preaching against women putting their hair up on top of their head because he thought that since a woman's hair was covering in her glory, it ought to be all over the place all the time. So putting it up on the head was a breach of Scripture. And supposedly the verse used was found in Matthew 24, top not come down. Now you know the verse, don't you? It's talking about the time of tribulation and it says, let those on the housetop not come down. It's like the preacher who went visiting one day and knocked on the door of his parishioner's home wanting to give them some spiritual counsel and he banged and banged. He could see the television running, the lights were on, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, no one came so he wrote out, Behold, I stood at the door and knocked.

If any man had heard my voice and opened, I would have come in and supped with him, stuck it in the doorknob. Sunday a lady came by and handed him a note, said, Genesis 3.10, I was naked and hid myself. Well, I suppose there are such bizarre uses of Scripture that that's a bizarre way to illustrate the point. Scripture gets clumsily used, that's one thing. Scripture gets inappropriately used. Scripture gets manipulated.

I remember reading about interpretation, Jewish, this is not just germane to us, but Jewish interpreters of Scripture long ago when writing about the Tower of Babel wrote some pretty bizarre things, rabbis who wanted to stress concern for people. There were some rabbis who were very concerned that the folks in Israel didn't care and show love toward people and so they took the story of the Tower of Babel and they said that the reason God changed all the languages and scattered the nations all over the earth was because you remember about them building this tower and they were building it higher and higher and higher and the rabbis concocted this amazing story about guys who were the hod carriers, you know, who had to carry the mortar and the bricks clear to the top and as the thing got higher, they had to go higher and walk up and walk up the scaffolding higher and higher and higher. And according to this rabbinical insight, many of them fell off the scaffolding and died. It took many, many hours for a man to carry a load of bricks to the bricklayers at the top and, of course, if a man fell off the tower on the way down, no one paid attention, but if he fell off on the way up, they lost their bricks. And so they were mourning because the bricks were dropped and that's why God confounded their language because they were more concerned about bricks than they were about the death of people and that's how the rabbis interpreted that passage to get their point across.

Good point, you should care more about people than bricks, but it's not there. Don't take Scriptures out of context. Don't make a point at the price of an interpretation that is accurate and true. This requires diligence, careful study, thoughtful study so that we rightly divide the word of truth and therefore do not need to be ashamed, 2 Timothy 2.15. Second, avoid superficial interpretation of it. Avoid superficial interpretation. One of the common problems in interpreting the Bible is this little phrase, this verse means to me so forth and so forth and so forth.

Let me tell you something. It doesn't matter what it means to you. The question is what would it mean if you didn't live?

What would it mean if you didn't exist? What does it mean, period, is the issue, not what does it mean to you? Sometimes you'll hear people get together and supposedly have a Bible study, which is a little more than a pooling of ignorance. People say, well, I look at this verse and I feel this verse is saying, it doesn't matter what you feel.

That has nothing to do with it. It's not a matter of how you feel about the verse. It's not a matter of what you think it means to you. Avoid ad libbing in Bible interpretation. Avoid freewheeling in Bible interpretation, haphazard handling of God's Word. We all want to acknowledge the priesthood of the believer, yes. We all want to acknowledge that we have anointing from God, the Spirit of God who dwells within us and the Spirit of God who dwells within us is the teacher who teaches us.

We all want to acknowledge that. But that is not justification for flippancy dealing with Scripture. That's why in 1 Timothy 5 17 it says, the elders who work hard in the Scripture are worthy of double honor.

It is hard work. Avoid superficial interpretation. Avoid this means to me.

That is not a statement that should preface any interpretation of Scripture. The question is what does it mean if you don't exist? What did it mean before you were born and what will it mean after you're dead? What does it mean to people who will never meet you?

What does it mean period is the issue. And then thirdly, another thing just to mention by way of avoidance, avoid spiritualizing or allegorizing the Bible...spiritualizing or allegorizing the Bible. This is that which gives to the Bible some kind of mystical meaning. In other words, what is on the surface is not the meaning, but what is hidden becomes the meaning. Now this is very popular. We could talk about allegorizing.

It's not quite as popular today as it used to be, although it's finding a resurgence. Allegorizing means to say that the historical meaning is not the real meaning and in fact may be nothing but a fabrication. The historical meaning is not the real meaning. The real meaning is the spiritual meaning hidden beneath the surface.

And once you say that something in the Bible is an allegory, that is, it is only a symbol of the reality, you have just made it impossible to know what that reality is because if that reality cannot be discerned through the normal understanding of language, how can it be discerned? Chris and I were at a Bible conference back in Lake Geneva and I was there with another speaker, another preacher. I'll never forget the occasion because he was preaching and then I was preaching and we were alternating, having a good time doing that. And I said to him, we were having some lunch or a snack in this little cafe place there at this conference center, George Williams College on Lake Geneva, and I said, what are you going to preach on tonight? And he said, I'm going to preach on the rapture of the church. I said, oh, that's great. That'll be wonderful.

I'm sure the folks will be encouraged. I said, what's going to be your text? He said, John 11. And I said to myself, John 11, the rapture is John 14, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, what is John 11? I said, John 11 is the resurrection of Lazarus.

It's all about Lazarus being raised from the dead, Mary and Martha. I said, how is it that you're going to preach on the rapture from John 11? He says, John 11. I said, oh, you'll have to come tonight.

Well, I said, I guess I will. So he preached on the rapture from John 11. Now, I can't remember. It was really clever and people were saying deep, deep, wow, you know. They don't know, you know, it just... And Lazarus was the church and him coming forth was the dead saints being raised and I think Martha was the Old Testament saints and Mary was the living New Testament saints. And the thing went on for an hour and it was very cleverly done.

It just wasn't there. And when it was over, we met again and he said to me, he said, had you ever seen that in John 11? And I said, no one has ever seen that in John 11.

And the next day when he got up to speak, he said, you know, I got a wonderful compliment yesterday. John MacArthur said, no one before me had ever seen that in John 11. Now, I believe in the rapture of the church. It's not in John 11. There are things in John 11 that ought to be preached. But once you tell me what it says is not what it means, then you can tell me it means anything. Because if I can't get the meaning out of the normal use of the language, how in the world can I get the meaning? If you're going to do that with the Bible, you can't get that from the text.

It's pure fantasy. But it goes on all the time. And I've often said, sometimes I say to our pastors, you don't need the Bible for that. If you're going to do that, you can use anything. You can use anything. You could preach little Bo Peep.

You could. You could start out by saying little Bo Peep. Oh, she was only little, but God can use the little. And her name was Bo Peep. What a name of insignificance.

What a name of ridicule, but God uses those who have been ridiculed. Little Bo Peep, she lost her sheep. All over this world, sheep are lost. Doesn't know where to find them.

The only part I couldn't figure out was what you do with wagging their tails behind them. It's a very dangerous thing to allegorize or spiritualize Scripture. What it means is what it says, when rightly understood in its historic context. It's grace to you with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of his current study, How to Get the Most from God's Word. John, the idea of getting the most from God's Word, growing spiritually as you study it, let me throw out a question. When you talk about Scripture transforming the life of a Christian, what specifically is going on there?

What are the mechanics? What is it about studying the Word that actually transforms us? Well, behavior and conduct is a product of thinking. As a man thinks in his heart, the Bible says, so is he. Out of the heart flow the issues of life.

So guard your heart. And that's referring to your mind, your capacity to think and reason. So if you want to transform a life, you have to change how the person thinks. People without God think through the prism of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

And that filter, that sort of default filter is in every human being. We're all sinners. We're all incapable of overpowering our sin, of living righteously. There's none righteous.

No, not one, says Scripture. So because of sin dominating someone's life, their thinking is wrong. That's why the New Testament says, be renewed in the spirit of your mind. So the answer to the question is this.

You can only change behavior. You can only see transformed lives when you see transformed minds. And the mind has to then hear truth and receive that truth. And that is what happens with the teaching of the Word of God. Grace to you is doing exactly that, unleashing God's truth one verse at a time through every possible avenue, books, television, internet, and of course, right here on radio.

And we're trying to change how people think. And this is consistent with what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians. The warfare that we are engaged in is crushing every idea raised up against the knowledge of God. Any ungodly idea has to be destroyed by the truth and replaced by the truth. That's what ministry is. And that's the key to sanctification. It all starts in your mind, thinking biblically.

That's right. And friend, just one of the ways Grace to You helps people like you have the mind of Christ is through our website, gty.org. You'll find thousands of resources there that you can use free of charge.

So contact us today at gty.org. You can read helpful blog articles on trends affecting the church, or you can read daily devotionals. You'll find more than 3,500 sermons from John MacArthur's Bible teaching ministry, all of it free to download in MP3 and transcript format.

Whatever your spiritual need, you're sure to find something that will strengthen and encourage you. Our website again, gty.org. And as we approach the last two months of the year, just a reminder that much of our annual budget is met by gifts we receive during November and December. Your year-end support helps keep Verse by Verse teaching on the radio in your community and in communities around the world.

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