Jim Howard teaches how to understand and use the Bible as the authoritative reference in our daily lives.

<p>Jim Howard teaches how to understand and use the Bible as the authoritative reference in our daily lives.</p>

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Weimar University

Hermeneutics

Jim Howard

The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture - Part 1

Father in Heaven, we are grateful for the Sabbath, for these sacred hours when we can spend time just thinking about You and Your will and Your Word.

But Lord, without You we can do nothing and so we pray that you would please meet with us just now.

Do more than a superficial work on our hearts, Lord, but reach deep and help bring the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the encouragement of heaven to each 1 of us.

Now I kind of want to open this up by looking at our Bibles.

I hope you have your Bibles at least on your phone because we're going to be looking in the Bible.

Every 1 of these sessions I'm going to be looking in the Bible.

I didn't put a lot of texts on my PowerPoints.

I put a lot of quotes, Ellen White quotes, but not a lot of Bible verses because I want to look at the Bible.

Alright, well 4 of you is all I need So we're going to get started.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them.

So we're going to talk about that later, but keep in mind that to actually accept the Word will have some repercussions as it pertains to the culture and to the world.

Verse 15, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the Holy 1.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

As you have sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they all may be 1, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be 1 in us, that the world may believe that you sent me." Here is Jesus' prescription for unity.

And it clearly says, sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

In the context, he's talking about being different from the world.

So he's saying, set them apart from the world by your truth and then he says your word is truth.

So truth is found in the word and unity where he goes right after that is all based on the truth.

If you don't have the truth, you don't have genuine unity.

Now let's go to another verse, John chapter 16.

John chapter 16, since we're right there in John, and let's look together at verse 12.

Jesus says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into what?

For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will tell you things to come.

So the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.

How does the Holy Spirit guide us into truth?

Well, you know from Ephesians 6, verse 17 that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.

The weapon of the Holy Spirit is the Word.

I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but when you open the Bible to read, you aren't really the 1 holding it.

Like the whole concept of you opening the Bible to read the Bible is that you are placing this power and authority in the hands of the Holy Spirit so He can do something to you, so He can reach you, so He can change you, so He can bless you and create new things in you.

So the Holy Spirit uses the Bible to reveal truth.

Here's where the whole issue of the church is settled.

Everything that we're dealing with right now in the church and that we will deal with all the way to the end of time is all based on whether we will be united on the truth of the Word.

And somebody might be asking the question, if the scholars can't figure it out, what hope is there for me?

Because I was there with dear brother McIntosh listening to paper after paper being presented at the Theology of Ordination Study Committee.

1 scholar to another scholar And they were saying quite different things.

So it causes many of our lay people, I know I had 1 lay person in particular back when I was pastoring a local church who used to say that to me.

Pastor, if the scholars, if you guys can't figure it out, What hope is there for us?

1 Corinthians 2.14 says this, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

An honest heart, a genuine spiritual life, a genuine relationship with God is the most important ingredient to understanding the Bible.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned and being spiritual is not based on intelligence or scholarship even.

So right at the start here we need to remember that the Bible tells us that spiritual things can only come from the Spirit of God.

2 Timothy 4, verses 3-4 is 1 that we are going to turn to as well.

I am not going to look at each 1 here but I'm going to look at this 1.

Of course you go to Hebrews and just before that are the T books.

We're going to go to 2 Timothy 4 beginning with verse 3 where it says, 4 Timothy 4, where it says, 5 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.

The last days are characterized by those who will have itching ears and who will not, what's that word, endure the truth.

Hold on to that, We're going to talk about that again tomorrow.

But the idea here is that they will not, they cannot handle, they will not endure what the truth says.

And because of that, they turn their ears away from it by finding many teachers who will misinterpret the Bible.

By actually hiring, sustaining, supporting, encouraging teachers who will misinterpret the Bible.

They will heap up for themselves teachers because of itching ears because they will not endure the truth?

This is a characteristic of the last days.

Ellen White says in the Great Controversy, page 599, if men would but take the Bible as it reads, if there were no false teachers to mislead and confuse their minds, a work would be accomplished that would make angels glad and that would bring into the fold of Christ thousands upon thousands who are now wandering in error.

If there were no false teachers to mislead and confuse their minds.

The fact that I'm giving this series over this weekend is in some ways kind of sad.

My parents were Seventh-day Adventists until I was 9, almost 10 years old and they left the church.

There's a guy by the name of Desmond Ford.

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of him.

He was teaching some things that were pretty opposite to what Seventh-day Adventists believe in our distinctive teachings.

And my father kind of got caught up in it.

He was always a bit of an independent thinking guy anyway.

But he kind of got caught up in it and maybe Dr.

Ford wouldn't have intended this, but he just kind of thought, well, you know what, I don't need to go to church.

My understanding of righteousness by faith is that I'm saved anyway.

And so when we moved from Ohio to Missouri, and my parents, I think they went to church 1 time, and they said, you know what, I don't need to do this, and he stopped.

Herman Who? An Introduction to Hermeneutics - Part 2

Father in heaven, we're so grateful that you have given us your mercies again this morning.

Thank you, Father, for the gift of life and breath and all else.

We know that without you, we would be able to do nothing and we certainly would not be able to understand your Word.

We're praying for rain, Father, for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

We're praying for hearts that are open to be teachable and humble.

And so please, Lord, we just ask this morning that you would do a work in us by your word that will help each of us to know that we've been in the presence of Jesus.

Alright this morning, last night we talked about the inspiration of the Bible and the fact that the Bible is fully inspired and therefore the Bible is fully authoritative.

And that is essential, It's the foundation to any right interpretation of the Bible.

And we're going to talk about that eight-cylinder word, hermeneutics, that scholars use to describe the process of studying the Bible to come to a proper conclusion.

And I think it's worth us just looking for a moment at why this is significant for us.

So take your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Timothy 2.

I said 1 Timothy and that's why I did it, because it's right there on my slide, Don, but I meant 2 Timothy.

2 Timothy 2, and we're going to look at v.

It says, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

This tells us that there is a right way and there is a wrong way to interpret the Bible if it tells us anything.

And so we want to be those who are approved of God and who are rightly dividing, rightly interpreting what the Bible says.

There's a danger that we would wrongly interpret.

2 Peter 3 is where I briefly referenced last night the Apostle Peter speaks of the Apostle Paul and how in his writings there are some things hard to understand.

And specifically, if you look at 2 Peter 3, he says in verse 16, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to what?

To their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the scriptures.

So you twist the scriptures at your own peril.

And that is clearly taught by the Apostle.

There's no way we can say I'm safe as long as I'm in the Bible.

No, we're only safe if we rightly interpret the Bible.

And then of course there's 2 Timothy that we referenced last night that says that the last days, and this is in chapter 4 verses 3 and 4, are characterized by those who have itching ears and will not, what?

So you have this picture given in the Bible that there is a right way and a wrong way to interpret the Bible.

The scriptures can be twisted and in fact at the end of time there are people who will heap up teachers who are twisting the scripture because they have itching ears and are not able to endure the truth.

You see Jesus said that the world would hate us, that we would be set apart from the world by the truth and that the word is truth.

So rightly interpreting the Bible requires integrity.

1 of your favorite verses in the Bible, I know, is Revelation 14, 12, at the end of the third angel's message where the new King James says, here is the what?

Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Of course the NASB says here is the perseverance of the saints.

And the NIV says this calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God.

These are the words used to describe those who must endure the frown of the culture at the end of time.

They must, in order to rightly interpret the Bible, have patient endurance.

They must be able to endure sound doctrine.

It's not something that comes wonderfully to us and makes us popular.

That's why there's so much distortion in terms of scripture is because it requires much endurance to accept what it says.

Now Ellen White endorsed a particular set of principles for interpreting the Bible and you can find this in Great Controversy page 320 where she talks about it, but she references William Miller and the way that he came to his conclusions in the Bible and she gave great approval to his method of interpretation.

Here from Review and Herald November 25, 1884 I'm showing you on the screen Father Miller's rules of interpreting the Bible.

He says, number 1, every word must have its proper bearing on the subject presented in the Bible.

You remember us, if you were here last night, talking about how all scripture is given by inspiration of God and how we are not to live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." So we have this emphasis.

On the road to Emmaus, they were foolish because they didn't believe in all that the prophets had spoken.

All scripture is necessary and may be understood by diligent application and study.

Number 3, nothing revealed in scripture can or will be hid from those who ask in faith, not wavering.

Number 4, to understand doctrine, bring all the scriptures together on the subject you wish to know, then let every word have its proper influence.

And if you can form your theory without a contradiction, you cannot be in error.

Number 5, Scripture must be its own expositor since it is a rule of itself.

If I depend on a teacher to expound it to me, and he should guess at its meaning, or desire to have it so on account of his sectarian creed, or to be thought wise, then his guessing, desire, creed, or wisdom is my rule, and not the Bible." So he's very clear.

We must let every word have its proper bearing.

All the scriptures must be brought together.

And this is the key to what he is saying.

When you bring all of the inspired evidence together, it narrows the possibilities of what the Bible is meaning.

You see, there are some people who they read, say, in the book of Revelation, and You know, they say, that beast, you know, represents such and such.

And they, you know, highlight something happening in the world today in modern news and what have you to try and identify the prophetic symbol.

But we as Seventh-day Adventists who take all scripture and have that in our heads as a hermeneutical principle, we will look to where it says that a beast represents a kingdom.

You know, we will not just take that verse by itself, but we will begin to look at other passages that help us to identify what it can or cannot be.

And the more texts that you have on any point, the more narrow your options of what the text meaning might be.

And that's the beauty of comparing Scripture with Scripture and that's the beauty for the Seventh-day Adventist Church of having identified and proven Ellen White as having prophetic authority is because we can now incorporate that into the inspired evidence and it makes it very helpful for us to come to a meaning and this is what Father Miller is describing in his Bible study method is bring everything together.

You can't let somebody else's view or opinion or your own ability to judge what's inspired or not inspired Determine the truth because if you do that, then the authority lies not with the Bible, but with you, that's his point.

So, let me just give you a few, 5 actually, simple steps to interpret the Bible.

And all I've done is written down the common sense that is in your head.

You know, we have these seminars and whatever, but this is just makes sense, okay?

Number 1, read the Bible for its plain or literal meaning.

And, oh yeah, I have a great controversy quote on this.

If men would take the Bible as it reads, if there were no false teachers to mislead and confuse their minds, a work would be accomplished that would make angels glad and would bring into the fold of Christ thousands upon thousands who are now wandering in error.

The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning unless what?

So as would make sense to any reasonable person, if it's speaking in obvious symbols, then there's going to be a symbolic meaning to the things in that passage.

If it's not symbolically written, then it's going to be taken literally.

And here's where the futurists fumble in their understanding of how to interpret the Bible.

You understand that Seventh-day Adventists, when we interpret prophecy, we take this principle that Ellen White just shared of if it's in a prophetic, clearly symbolic passage, then it should be looked at as a symbol.

But when it comes to interpreting these same passages, futurists interpret symbols that are in clearly prophetic passages to be literal.

And this causes all kinds of problems for them.

Such as has been recently spoken about taking the 1260 days literally even though it comes in a clearly symbolic passage.

Let me give you a reason why, for instance, you can't take the 2300 day prophecy literally.

The question was, how long is the vision in Daniel chapter 8?

The New Hermeneutics: Whatever It Takes - Part 3

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for your love and grace toward every 1 of us.

You have called us out of darkness and into your marvelous light.

We are united because the most important thing in our lives is the same and that is you.

Your converting power, your unconditional love that melted our hearts and made us want to serve You.

But it's important, Lord, that we understand the truth in a way that will keep us united.

Please help us during this time to have our eyes wide open to wherever you and your word will lead us.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but at the last General Conference session in 2015, there were changes made to the wording of a number of our fundamental beliefs.

And there were delegates from areas of the world church that have embraced perhaps a more progressive hermeneutic than what we have been talking about, who really pushed back against the specifics related to the timing of the creation account at that session.

They felt that we needed to leave our wording a little bit more open to different interpretations because they believe that the Scripture leaves it open.

I'd like to share with you a little of the wording that was put in that creation fundamental belief.

It now reads, I still haven't given in to bifocals, but I kind of try to fake it in front of people.

So I'm going to take this off for a second.

God has revealed in scripture the authentic and historical account of his creative activity.

He created the universe and in a recent 6 day creation, they don't like that the word recent was added, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

Thus he established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of the work he performed and completed during 6 literal days that together with the Sabbath constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today." They didn't like the same unit of time.

It just expresses that we believe in the obvious, clear, plain reading of Scripture.

Now to me the issue of creation is about as clear as anything in the Bible.

So I don't know why someone wouldn't just believe what it says.

The only reason I can give is the pressure to harmonize with popular science and culture.

When culture becomes convinced of something, when everyone begins to speak essentially 1 opinion with 1 voice, it can be pretty hard to hold on to the Bible.

They'll tell you that to believe in creation is to ignore the overwhelming evidence.

Or to believe in complementary roles for men and women is just a smooth talking form of misogyny and oppression of women.

Or to believe that homosexual practice is sinful behavior is to selfishly deny others the opportunity to love someone and has pushed innocent people to want to end their own lives.

I don't know about you, but I don't like being considered ignorant or discriminatory or hateful, but that's the pressure of culture.

It has slain the faithfulness of many a Christian and the influence of many a denomination.

And nothing leads to a wrong method of biblical interpretation like the pressures of culture.

Whether historical, critical, or allegorical, or proof texting, all wrong methods of hermeneutics are the same to me.

I call it the whatever it takes hermeneutic.

Whatever it takes to come to the conclusion that I want.

Now the Seventh-day Adventist Church does not believe in creeds.

So if sound Bible study leads us to a fuller or even deeper understanding than we have historically held on any point, we should be willing to go wherever the Lord is leading us.

When it comes to controversial issues such as women's ordination, for example, it's not that we shouldn't be willing to see things differently.

But we should not make a change in practice unless and Until we have an interpretation that follows the same method of interpretation as the rest of our biblical beliefs.

It can't be based on speculation or suggestion or questionable reconstructions of history.

All of our beliefs and practices must use the same sound hermeneutical principles and be supported by the weight of inspired evidence.

That's who we are as Seventh-day Adventists.

Never the weight of popular opinion or cultural bias no matter how strong it is, even of seemingly good things like justice or equality.

Now you'll recall that we already looked at how to interpret the Bible.

We said we need to read the Bible for its plain or literal meaning, unless it's an obvious prophetic symbols or metaphoric language.

We should consider the immediate scriptural context, the fuller inspired context, the historical context and let the scriptures interpret themselves.

Review and Herald, November 25, 1884 says, Genuine faith is founded on the Scriptures, but Satan uses so many devices to wrest the Scriptures and bring in error that great care is needed if 1 would know what they really do teach.

It is 1 of the great delusions of this time to dwell much upon feeling and to claim honesty while ignoring the plain utterances of the Word of God because that Word does not coincide with feeling.

Many have no foundation for their faith but emotion.

She also says in Desire of Ages, page 258, The leaders of Israel professed to be expositors of God's word, but they had studied it only to sustain their traditions and enforce their man-made observances.

By their interpretation they made it express sentiments that God had never given.

Their mystical construction made indistinct that which He had made plain.

They disputed over insignificant technicalities and practically denied the most essential truths." It is very possible for people to share an honest view, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we are always being faithful to the plain meaning of Scripture.

Now I've talked about 4 different areas that we've applied hermeneutic principles to and now I want to talk about women's ordination because I personally believe that 1 of the things that will bring us together more than any other is to just talk about the text.

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Series

Hermeneutics

The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture - Part 1

Transcript

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Parts

The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture - Part 1

1h 10m

Herman Who? An Introduction to Hermeneutics - Part 2

58m

The New Hermeneutics: Whatever It Takes - Part 3

1h 4m

Sharing the Bible Truth is Not a Spiritual Gift - Part 4

36m

Sound Doctrine