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Study To Show Yourself Approved. 4 of 11

Steven Findley
03/30/25 - Sunday AM Bible Study

Series: An Eleven Part Series Aimed At Developing And Increasing Bible "Study" Skills.

And if you don't keep this in your Bible,
you're going to be set back in your ability to study it.
So this is a super helpful thing.
So I just want to clarify what I'm giving to you,
so you can understand what I expect,
or what I would like for you to do with it,
is to keep that with your Bible,
so you can study the Bible passages that you're reading.
The middle page, how to study a Bible print out
that I gave you.
There's three pages staple together.
So the middle one is the one with the 17 questions
about how to study the Bible.
And the last page is the text that I handed out last week,
that the goal was to maybe get a head start
on studying this text, but if you haven't done it,
this week you need to start.
And then also, hey, Mike, Jason just came in.
Would you get him a hand out?
And JJ.
And then on the backside, I went through and did the work
that the questions were telling us to do.
And if you look on the side, I did.
You'll see my color coding for how I did answer
the each question, so I didn't follow his stuff
because I have a little bit more robust tool set.
And then also, you see on the top right-hand corner,
it says, 08, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, it didn't print,
but that's where it says, questions I didn't answer.
Because not every question is going to be relevant
for every study.
And then you see where it says, time, I started working
on this at 10.30 and I was done by noon.
And this is the product of all that.
So you probably would find different things that I find
or maybe see it slightly different.
That's OK.
But this is just an example of what we're going to get.
So we'll talk about that a little bit today.
So I'm just letting you know, because this
is going to be our project for the next week or two,
is to go through this text and really wrap our minds around it
so we can see how does this process work.
So here is first stage of review.
We have our circle of contexts.
And each circle, the context gets wider and wider.
So what do we call this middle circle
like from what we were talking about last week?
What's the middle circle?
Or if you can remember different parts of it,
just kind of say the different parts you remember.
But close enough, I would call it immediate.
But yeah, it's the context of the verse you're reading
or the passages that you're reading.
That is your immediate context.
So that is the part you're working with.
What's the part that follows it?
Well, make up your own words.
But say OK, if I'm in my mind thinking, OK,
here's the immediate context.
What would I call the part that comes just before it
and after it?
Just throw all words that they don't have
to be the right word, just like communicate the idea.
Less immediate is what Bruce says.
General context.
OK, what else?
I'm looking at Mason.
Yeah, chapter context.
Something like that, maybe broad is what I put.
But you are all on the right page, right?
It's the broad, OK, the verse falls in a teaching section.
What do we call that, teaching section?
And so now we've just taken a step out.
Now, what about the next one?
Ring number three here.
Yeah.
So the book.
So why are these three things pretty important?
Yeah, yeah.
So remember the goal of Bible study.
We talked about that on the first class.
What was the goal of studying the Bible?
It's more specific than that.
To understand the original intent of the inspired author.
Right?
And so when we say intent, what does that mean?
I'm looking at the teenagers because I'm
going to put you on the spot a little.
Because you guys are used to somebody really like pushing
you a little bit downstairs, right?
Bearcing you, making you read out loud.
I'm not going to make you read out loud, so that's good.
But I am going to ask, I'm going to direct questions to you
because I want you guys more than anyone else to know this
because it's going to serve you the longest.
So I want you guys to know.
So when I say intent or let's just say you said it, Trevor,
I didn't intend to slam you so hard.
All right, what does that mean?
You did it, but you didn't want to do it, right?
And so if I say, I intended to slam you so hard.
Trevor's a wrestler, if you don't know.
What does that mean?
I had a goal.
And my goal was to slam you hard to let you know.
This is my coach when I was a wrestler.
My coach would come up to me and he would grab me
behind the elbow and squeeze hard.
And like it's like a nerve point.
And he'd say, Finn, that's legal pain.
And so he'd always remind me, there's legal pain.
And so you're supposed to use that sort of thing
as an advantage.
And so if Trevor intends to slam you,
that means he set out to slam you and that was his goal.
And so if we say, what's the intent of the inspired author?
I wrote this to communicate something to you,
not to Mike or not to me, to the people
I'm writing the letter to.
And so there is a context to all this.
The book context might say to the Ephesians.
Well, the Ephesians are the ones who needed this.
Now that doesn't mean it's not useful for other people as well.
But we have to say, why would he say this to Ephesians?
To the people and Ephesists.
Why would he say this in this way to them?
So here's an example.
This is not to the Ephesians.
But when you read in Mark, I can't remember the exact chapter.
I'm not too 15, but I can't remember where it is in Mark.
Maybe 10 or something.
But in Mark, there's a section where it talks about the Pharisees
who are criticizing Jesus as disciples
for not washing their hands before they eat.
And if you read in Mark, Jesus says, well, don't you realize,
this is kind of summary, but don't you realize
it's not what goes into the body that corrupts it,
but that which comes out of the heart.
And then there's a little parenthesis at the end of that scripture
in Mark, like the author is adding in a piece of information
that Jesus didn't say.
And it says, thus, he declared all foods clean.
So he tells this story.
And he says, thus, he declares all foods clean.
What would be his intention to write
that little parenthetical statement in there?
Why would he?
Why did the author include that?
Does there a question?
What was the reason they're exchanging to?
Yeah.
Now, it's hard to think this way.
But Mark was not written.
The book of Mark was not written.
As a story, generally, it was actually written
and given to some group of people.
And those group of people had a question, can I eat any food?
And so as he wrote that, Mark clarified.
Before that, he clarifies other things,
saying that they had traditions about all sorts of washing.
And he put that in there because he was writing to likely
a Gentile audience who wouldn't understand ritual washing.
And so the author had an intent.
I want to clarify what was happening
to these people who may not understand it.
I want to clarify to the people who are concerned
about whether or not I can eat any food, that it's okay.
And here's Jesus' teaching on it.
Now, that's the intent of the author.
Now, if you go to Matthew at the end of the writing,
it doesn't have that parenthetical statement.
What it says is a conclusion.
Matthew says, but to eat with unwashed hands
is not a sin or is not a transgression?
Not a file.
Does not defile a man?
Yeah, so Bruce has it.
He's on it.
To eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.
Now, what did Matthew say at the point of my teaching was?
Yeah, he was clarifying that the Pharisees' traditions
does not equate to the law of God.
And so his disciples don't have to eat with unwashed hands
in order to be acceptable to God or wash hands.
As the Pharisees are saying, what kind of disciples are these?
They don't even wash their hands when they eat.
How righteous could you possibly be?
And so that Matthew clarifies, here's my point.
And so if someone decides to take those verses and say,
oh, well, Jesus was trying to change the law of Moses.
Or Jesus was trying to contradict Moses.
That's not really the intent of the author whatsoever.
He's just relaying a story to a group of people
and he intends to teach them something using this teaching.
And also, like Mark is particularly helpful,
because it helps us to understand, like, yeah,
I can take a principle out of what Jesus teaches
and apply it to a lot of situations where that principle applies.
Matthew doesn't do that.
He's very specific.
So the point is the intent of the author
makes a difference.
Our job as Bible students is to discern the intent of the author.
And one of the ways we have to do that
is by going through context.
So you have book context, which is where, OK, what did
all Mark say about this?
Because there's, like, teachings sections in Mark.
And then what we went through is, OK, here's Testament context.
If we compare what Mark said to what Matthew said,
we can see some contrast there and maybe understand
a bigger picture, see the specific things
Mark includes that Matthew doesn't include.
And say, why did Mark include that and Matthew didn't?
That helps us to have some broader context.
OK, here's the core of the teaching.
Here's kind of the application or the things that
reveal the intent of the author to us.
And so we get testamental things that
helps us understand the context.
Now, what about biblical context?
This is where Psalm 111, 16, comes in.
The sum of your word is truth.
In every one of your righteous ordinances is everlasting.
So the sum of I word is truth.
That's biblical context.
And the big picture of God's teaching, how does this fit in?
What over arcing principle does it apply to?
And so we can ask that.
And so the more of these things we can grasp
on any particular Bible study we're doing,
the more you're going to see God's broader teaching.
And so what ends up happening is, as you link things together,
your teaching doesn't just become isolated little pockets
of what the Bible says is here and this here and this here.
But what if all three of those things
are contradicting each other?
See, as you learn and study and learn to study,
you're going to be able to harmonize all three
of these things and say, here's this was a wrong conclusion
because it contrasts with this.
But if I change it to be in line with all these other things,
then I can understand the true meaning.
And so you just have to work through it.
But that's where understanding these contexts.
Now, immediate, broad, and book, you're generally
going to get through a normal kind of Bible study.
Test them in Bible context.
You're only going to get if you actually
read your Bible on a regular basis.
So if you're not doing that, don't ever
expect to see in color, just expect
to see the Bible in black and white.
That's really what it comes down to.
So you neglect that.
And you're neglecting a part of knowing who God is,
understanding him personally, and a clear understanding
of the truth, and the ability to speak
with any kind of authority about scripture.
You can somewhat.
But if you don't know the testament and the Bible context
of what you're reading, you're not
going to really be able to teach with authority
because you won't really know.
And so that's where what regular Bible reading
adds to all of this.
Secondly, I'm emphasizing these things.
We're going to get to just observation
and working through the text.
But I really want to emphasize the importance of some
of the things we're talking about are not like,
it's just here's fodder to put in a class about studying
the Bible, like we're just throwing it.
That's not why I'm putting it in.
I've been really working hard to not add things
that don't need to be here.
This has to be here.
So this is really important.
The thing we studied last week, rules
for understanding the scripture, these are super important
rules.
If you don't know about your Bible study,
we'll be limited.
So I didn't just throw these in on a whim, like, oh,
here's something interesting.
Here's something interesting.
These are actually, like, super critical things.
So the rule of faith doesn't agree with the apostolic teaching.
That is the standard by which we stand or fall.
If it agrees with the teaching of the apostles,
if it does not, you are not justified.
If it does, you are justified.
And so to say, OK, does this agree with the apostolic teaching?
Sounds pretty standard.
And we take it for advantage, but just remove yourself
from your normal experience.
There's, of course, we know it needs to agree with the apostles.
But what does it mean if it doesn't?
It means you need to put a guy who has a chance
if not a scripture, if not the answer of the teaching
is whoever has come up with the idea that if it exists
or they don't agree, it's on them, not on the street.
Yeah, and really, it is not doctrinal, right?
And so if it does not agree with the apostles,
it is not doctrinal.
It is not sound.
It's false, or maybe ignorance, or maybe,
because false teaching, just to clarify,
I'm just going to take a quick little tangent.
When the Bible says false teacher, what it means is people
who put themselves in the position of teacher
in order to take advantage and benefit the flesh.
That is a false teacher.
Somebody who doesn't teach precisely right
is not a false teacher.
They could just be someone who's uninformed
or hasn't matured to their full level yet.
And here's the question you ask is, if you don't think
you will change in the next 10 years, which means right now
there's something you believe that is wrong.
If you don't think you will change in the next 10 years,
you are locked into tradition, and you are a false.
You are teaching falsely.
And if you think you probably will change your mind
in the next 10 years in your Bible study and in maturing,
you are also teaching something false right now.
One of them is willful ignorance.
And one of them is the product of growth, right?
Neither one of them make you a false teacher, right?
You might be kind of locked in on something,
but you're saying what you think is true.
You just don't know otherwise.
So you're willfully ignorant.
You may be choosing not to grow, but that
doesn't mean what you're saying is true or false base
just on that is you're just under-informed.
The other guy is under-informed too,
but he knows he's going to grow.
And so we're all going to teach something that's not true
and have to change it later.
That's just comes with the territory of growth.
But I'm never going to purposefully mislead
and be careless in mislead, or even worse, mislead
for the sake of profit.
And misleading for the sake of profit
is what a false teacher is.
It's the defining characteristic of false teachers
and false prophets is for a purpose other than God's purpose.
So just to be clear with that is we need to be careful.
To be accurate, but also realize just
because someone makes a mistake or doesn't understand
what you understand right now, doesn't make them a false teacher.
It just means that they are at a different maturity level.
And it may be higher because you're not understanding
or maybe lower because you know something more than they do.
So that's just the way it is.
So just to clarify, biblical, there's a saying,
use the Bible to interpret the Bible or use biblical turn
for biblical ideas or biblical definitions
for biblical ideas.
And a biblical definition to a false teacher
is intent to gain, like that's a major part of it.
So back onto the rule of faith,
your conclusions must a line agree
with the Apostle's teaching.
The criteria for canonicity, I brought that up
because this is how the early church decided
which books were inspired.
Now if that's the process they used to decide on entire books
which one we're going to keep
and which one we're not going to keep.
And here's the criteria.
It's also probably a pretty good criteria to decide
whether or not a teaching we should keep
or we should reject, right?
So it has to be inspired, has to agree with the Apostles,
has to come from, you know,
historical background, like there are some ideas
that have no history behind it,
like the 80, 70 doctrine or pre-millennialism
or things like that, like kind of robust doctrines
but they actually have no historical acceptance
or teaching.
Even Calvinism, it didn't exist in the church
until Augustine started talking about it
and he had a mannequin bent
which was a kind of philosophy that said
the body is totally corrupt and the spirit is totally good
and so as long as you have,
as long as you maintain your spirit
doesn't matter what you do with your body.
That's mannequin, mannequinism.
And so somebody who came out of that philosophy
with a narcissism in the background too
and they say, okay, well, there's nothing you can do.
You're totally depraved.
A total of gravity didn't even enter into the church
for like 400 years.
Does that mean for 400 years,
a church didn't understand the doctrine of Paul and Christ
or maybe for 400 years, it was fine
until something got corrupted, you know?
So that's when you talk about antiquity
or apostolicity, if something didn't come out,
if we, and that doesn't prove it one way or the other
but it's at least a test you can use.
Antiquity, conform to come, so anyway,
that we're not gonna go through all this
but the point is, is going back through
and testing what you say with some methods
that create true answers is important
and that's what this is all about.
Accurately handling the text.
This is where we left off last week.
Discutting the scripture in such a way
that we can understand the intended meaning
of the inspired author and keep it in the context
of the whole teaching in the scripture.
So those are, that's, that, when Paul says to Timothy,
show yourself a workman who does not need to be ashamed,
handling accurately the word of God,
second to Timothy 2.15 I believe,
when he says you need to handle accurately the word of God,
that is the goal.
It's to understand the intended meaning
of the inspired author and keep it in context
of the whole teaching in the scripture.
So those two things, that's handling accurately.
You could take it out of context and use it
for whatever you want, but that's not accurate.
And you could take it out of the context of the Bible
and apply it to other things.
I was just, I listened to a podcast this last week
and it was a woman who, in her younger years,
kind of got into cultic practices in witchcraft.
And she was told she was a Christian early on
and she's like, she kept doing all these cultic practices
in witchcraft, but, but I'm also a Christian.
Like she had that kind of conflict going into her mind.
And part of this cultic practice was reading the Bible.
And like using chance and using say ounces
and things like that, but they were
from Biblical language.
And she's like, so obviously we're using the Bible.
We're just understanding the Bible
in a deeper, more powerful way.
Like that's what her understanding of that.
Well, this woman became a Christian
and she just denounced it all.
And this woman had Bible meant everything she said
she threw out a quoted Bible verse.
Like, but she understood the power of using it
in the intended context.
See, they were just taking it out of context
and using it as a tool to serve Satan.
Bible can be used that way.
Bible can be used by abusers to convince the person
they're trying to abuse that what they're doing is
blessed by God.
That's not the intended context.
That's just an abuse of what God intended.
And so there's all sorts of ways you can use.
There were preachers in before the Civil War
that used the Bible to confirm that type of slavery
they had where they're kidnapping people,
forcing them to work and so,
but they were using the Bible to justify that sort of thing
even though the Bible does not justify that sort of thing.
So, understanding it in the context of the context
of the whole teaching of the Bible is important.
So how do we do that?
So here's some important tools that are gonna be,
this is like every Bible study
when you make conclusions.
So this is not stuff that you just would,
not other stuff, it's good to know and it's helpful.
And if you ever really wanna have robust right Bible study
you're gonna have to have a grasp of some of that stuff
because that's how you anchor your conclusions in scripture.
So that's the previous page.
This is how you work through drawing conclusions.
So this is super critical.
First tool for what is a doctrine?
Like so let's just start there.
What is doctrine?
Now the Greek word is the didasticalo
and the meaning is teaching.
What is sound teaching or teaching that is actually true
and conforms to the mind of God
and the intent of the apostles or the inspired writers?
Like how do we discern that?
The first way to discern it is
by the mouth of two or three witnesses
every fact is to be confirmed.
Now you've heard this before,
this is how you discern if someone needs to be executed
or not, like if someone needs to be put out of the church
or not, how do we do it?
By the mouth of two or three witnesses.
One witness cannot condemn a person.
In the same way, one witness is not enough
to determine the nature and the truth of God.
So here is, I'm gonna bring up the biblical standard now.
And Hebrews chapter two, verse two.
If the word spoken through angels proved unalterable
and every transgression and disobedience
received a just penalty, how will we escape
if we neglect so great a salvation
after it was first spoken through the Lord?
So when it was spoken through the Lord,
how many witnesses were there?
Jesus spoke and so in John, you're right,
but when Jesus spoke like from the perspective,
if I'm standing in front of him
and God gives him something to say
and he just repeats it to me,
how many people, how many witnesses am I seeing?
Just one.
And in John chapter five, we'll get to this in a minute,
but 531 and 32, Jesus says,
if I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.
So, testified by Jesus, was that enough
to convince people you should rather die
than disobey this law?
They God think it was enough.
No, because it says middle of verse three
after it was at first spoken through the Lord,
it was confirmed to us by those who heard.
So Jesus said it, a witness testifies to it.
God also testifying with them by both signs
and wonders in various miracles and gifts
of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.
So you have God testifying now, confirming miracles.
So three witnesses, Jesus said it,
witness repeated it and miracles testified to it.
What would one of the miracles that confirmed Jesus
is being accurate was the resurrection, right?
Jesus claimed a bunch of stuff.
Now, are Jesus's claims legitimate
or are they not legitimate, how do we know?
Jesus said, predicted he was gonna rise from the dead
and then he did rise from the dead.
So if Jesus predicted he was gonna rise from the dead
and made all these claims about the kingdom of God
and then he did not rise from the dead,
is Jesus a true prophet?
Because his prophecy didn't come true, right?
That's how we know.
So, but if his prophecy does come true,
then the other things he said has been confirmed by God.
So God is giving him what carte blanche approval
in doing that.
And then you have the second witnesses,
here's what Jesus said and then now that I taught you something,
here, let me heal your lame foot
and let me give you back your sight.
Let me go ahead and in some cases,
I'm a strike you blind like on Cyprus,
Paul did that to a magician.
And so you have all these miracles going along.
Well, how do I know if someone's saying something
that's approved by God?
Something only God can do is being done by them
at the same time that they're teaching this.
That confirms that God's approvals there.
That's what this is saying.
If you read above the text, it says,
by the mouth of the two or three witnesses,
I have confirmed everything Jesus taught,
everything that cut Apostle's taught.
That's how we know it's true.
And if angels saying it counts,
what about the Son of God?
So, that's the standard.
Look with me here again, second Timothy 2.2.
Things which you have heard from me
in the presence of many witnesses
and trust these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also.
It says, the things which you have heard from me
in the presence of many witnesses.
Why is that important?
The presence of many witnesses.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
Did Paul expect us to take his word for it?
No, he expected us to take his word along with witnesses.
He doesn't name the witnesses,
but it could be miracles.
It could be other people who were there in 1 Corinthians 15.
Paul says, okay, Jesus rose from the dead.
And there were 500 people who saw it.
And then also the Apostle saw it.
And then James saw it.
And this guy saw it.
And that guy saw it.
And they were all,
and they're all still alive.
You can go ask them.
Right, presence of many witnesses.
Paul's claims were not on the basis
of take my word for it.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm a professional.
Anything like that.
It was through witness.
And even me.
Right?
I could say I'm a professional.
I make my living teaching the word.
You should just take my word for it.
What should you say?
Kids, if I say take my word for it,
I'm a professional.
Here's what God wants you to do.
What should you say to me?
What's the right answer?
You know the answer.
What?
Show me in the Bible.
Show me in the Bible.
Right?
And I'm like,
well, let me tell you what the Bible says.
What should you say?
Show me.
Give me the book chapter verse.
Open it up.
Let's read it together.
Right?
And that's your responsibility.
Before you make a major life decision,
that someone convinced you
is a biblical decision.
What should you say?
Show me in the Bible.
If you're watching TikTok or
Reels on Facebook or YouTube
and you listen to something that has
Bible teaching in it,
and they say,
here's a verse, here's what it means.
What should you do?
Before you start repeating it to other people
or make decisions based on it.
Read the Bible first.
Like, look at it.
I've seen all sorts of those things
that are just flat out wrong.
And so, you just have to test that stuff.
So, mouth of two or three witnesses,
every fact is to be confirmed.
So, what are some applications of this?
First mark,
unclear passage does not take the authority of doctrine.
What's that mean?
One unclear passage does not have the authority of doctrine.
Do you agree with that?
Maybe you can find a point.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you can find a scripture that says,
why are we baptized for the dead?
Right?
What does that mean?
The assumption is that we baptized for the dead
for the dead.
That's the assumption.
Yeah, but does that mean since my,
you know, whatever my granny died
and she was a wonderful woman,
but she was never baptized
that I can go get baptized for her
since she was dead,
and she can't do it for herself.
Is that what that means?
Is there anyone who...
What was that?
I told you it's used in some place.
Yeah, yeah.
There are people who try to practice something like that.
Is that what that means?
How do we know?
Is it...
Hold on.
Let me count our argument.
You guys said no.
And you're going down the road with me,
so let me count our argument.
Man should not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
That word came out of them,
those few words came out of the mouth of God.
Are you rejecting the words of God?
I'm taking the black tongue
in the middle of the description
you're taking here because of the standing,
your pregnancy.
Yeah, so it's interesting, huh?
But now let me add to my devil's advocate argument.
When Jesus was trying to prove
that there is life after death,
there is a resurrection.
He said,
God didn't tell Moses,
God told Moses,
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
One word, I am.
Is that one word enough to confirm doctrine?
The Jesus thing, so.
Is there more context to that?
Yeah.
Do you have to know more than that?
Here's the thing.
If you're teaching children,
how much do you have to say to children
to get them to understand something?
You've got to give them a lot, right?
You're teaching teens maybe the same way
because they're learning and they're going to say,
show me in the Bible, right?
Is that what the teens are going to do?
I tell you something.
You're going to say, show me in the Bible.
I've got to say a lot about that to show you in the Bible.
If I'm teaching teachers,
I just have to allude to a concept
and they understand the rest, right?
The Pharisees knew the Scripture.
The Sadducees knew the Scripture.
They knew what the Bible said about this.
And I'm showing them a chink in their armor.
I don't have to make the,
by the mouth of two or three witnesses kind of thing
because if I point out,
here's what God said,
then they can take that and start measuring
against other things they already know, right?
So Jesus' expectation was,
take this and harmonize it
with these other things that you're accepting
and other things the Bible says.
He gave them a tool.
He didn't approve doctrine in that word
but he gave them a tool by which they could
and they were skilled teachers
so they were at the capability.
And so you just have to realize, you know,
okay, there's some context here, right?
That Jesus wasn't saying this word
and that means you can go out and find one word
and make your doctrines on it.
In fact, if you were going to say,
what does the Bible say about using one word
of the doctrines on?
And if you can argue the meaning of the word
and get right,
then you can prove your point.
What does Paul say about that?
He says,
don't wrangle about words
over and over and over.
Don't wrangle about words.
And so maybe our next one here
is,
so one unclear passage doesn't have
the authority of doctrine,
meaning God's approved teaching.
Multiple scriptures
with different contexts
don't add up to a doctrinal position.
So,
if I, like,
here's how I envision that.
Let's talk about
something like premillennialism.
It's like a quilt.
You take all these little chunks
that were intended to go together
and you organize them
and you sew them together
and you look at the finished product of a quilt
and isn't it beautiful
or doesn't it make sense to look at a quilt?
Can't you say that?
That's artwork.
But the question is,
were all those pieces
if fabric intended to be knitted together that way?
No.
They're taking a bunch of things
that don't belong together
and putting it together to make something else.
That's what a quilt is.
And it will never be
or multiple scriptures
with different contexts
don't add up to a doctrinal position.
Let me give you an example.
In the beginning of the book of Revelation,
it says,
we're going to show you the things which must soon take place.
Over and over again,
at the end of the book,
these things are going to take place quickly.
It's going to happen soon.
That's what it's going to happen soon.
2000 years later,
people are reading the book of Revelation
as if it hasn't taken place yet.
All right.
How do people demonstrate
that it doesn't have to have taken place?
And it's still happening shortly.
Mike?
Okay.
Does that make sense?
He says it's quick.
It's only been like two days for God.
That's pretty quick.
The third day maybe.
So we've got three days,
three thousand years.
Let me predict the end of the world for you.
Okay.
So here's my question.
Prove to me
that that applies to the context of Revelation.
Does a thousand years
is the day and a day is a thousand years to the Lord?
Does that apply to the context of Revelation?
And how do you know?
What is the use of these twice?
Yeah, but the phrase in both cases
is basically God telling
who's talking to you at that time.
I do need so much time.
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe three times.
Maybe in second Peter.
And maybe Jude or something like that.
I feel like it's used twice in the New Testament
and it's an Old Testament
from a Psalm.
So maybe three times.
The point is, okay, that is a true statement.
But that doesn't mean it applies to revelation.
And if you want to apply a scripture to revelation,
you have to link them together.
You have to say, here's why.
Here's how I know.
And if you can't say that, they're unrelated.
That's the thing.
Multiple scriptures with different contexts.
Don't add dad up to a doctrinal position.
And so that's important is we've got to make sure we
things are talking about the same thing
when we have these conversations.
Next, doctrine will never be determined
by the definition of a single word or concept.
Whatever it is, if you come down to a word
and if this word means this, we're going this way
and if this word means this, we're going this way.
That's trash.
That's not two or three witnesses for sure.
And that is my interpretation of word.
Now here's an addition to that.
Where do I have this?
Oh, this is going down.
We're out of time already.
All right.
Read the rest of this section.
I'll talk about this next section quickly next week.
But this just has this concept is, all right,
by the mouth of two or three witnesses.
Notice what Jesus says about himself.
This is the next section.
John 531 through 32.
If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.
Even in verse 8, John 814, even if it is true,
what Jesus says is absolutely true, we know that.
But it doesn't carry authority unless it's confirmed
by multiple witnesses.
So that's important.
So we can use one verse to prove something
but it doesn't carry authority unless it's used
by multiple witnesses.
That is why I have kind of a compulsion
to always show two verses that say the same thing
when I'm preaching rather than just say,
here's what this verse is, here's what it means.
Because just out of practice, that's why I do it.
And first Timothy 6-3,
that I want to read this and this is where it went.
First Timothy 6-3.
If anyone advocates a different doctrine
and does not agree with the sound words,
those of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and with the doctrine conforming to godliness,
he is conceded and knows nothing.
But he is a morbid interest in controversial questions
and disputes about words out of which arise
envy, strife, abuse of language, evil suspicion,
and cost of friction between men of depraved mind
and depraved of the truth,
who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
What is the turning point for whether or not
your teaching sound doctrine?
Does not agree with sound words,
those of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and with the doctrine conforming to godliness.
What's the doctrine conforming to godliness?
So it would be the gospel,
I think more specifically,
it would be anything that is revealed to us by God
or his inspired authors.
It has to be confirmed.
So you got Jesus and the apostles,
and it has to have both supporting
in order to be called sound words.
If a Jesus and an apostle
attested to something and you reject it,
then you fall into that category.
Does Paul have an indifferent view of somebody
who does not confirm their words by the words of Jesus
and sound doctrine conforming to godliness?
Is he neutral in that subject?
No. He is conceded.
Understands nothing.
Has a morbid interest.
What does morbid mean?
I think the word morbid means death.
Has a deadly interest.
Right?
Ignorant or conceded,
pride, understands nothing,
and an interest that will lead you to death.
That's what it is,
not to use these tools that we're talking about this morning.
So just these are biblical concepts
that Paul and Jesus and other people present to us,
and they say, if you're not using these tools
when you study the Bible,
then you are acting out of pride,
you're acting out of stupidity,
really, is the concept there,
and you are going to die spiritually,
at least, because of it.
So when we have a Bible study,
and someone says,
well, this is what it means to me.
Doesn't that sound pretty harmless?
When you say this is what it means to me,
and you're not really studying it,
you're just kind of like,
and sometimes we say that,
because we have a depth of knowledge,
and we're using that as a way to speak to something.
But if we have no experience,
and we just, whatever my first take on something is,
without knowing the context,
without having any kind of depth of no real effort
put into studying the word in which it is,
just what it means to me.
That's what I'm going with.
You are putting yourself in severe risk,
and you're being proud.
You're being very proud,
conceited,
and you're doing great harm,
especially if you try to put yourself
off like you are knowledgeable
when you are not.
It's a harmful thing.
Paul is not indifferent to it.
We shouldn't be indifferent to it.
And when we study,
so simply, we're talking about a lot of things,
about the two or three witnesses,
every practice to be confirmed.
Just make sure that the Bible testifies
to it clearly in at least two different ways,
two different people, two different things,
and you'll generally find more.
Most sound doctrine is not going to have two testifiers,
it'll have five, six, seven.
Read John 5,
starting in verse 31,
through the render of the chapter of Jesus says,
if I'm the only one saying this,
don't even believe me.
And then he goes through and says,
but John the Baptist says it,
and the Bible says it,
and God does these miracles,
and God spoke for me,
and what I do is complete harmony with the Bible.
So he goes through,
and it names out all the ways that
what he's saying is in harmony
and in agreement with Scripture,
and he gives you his witnesses
in John chapter 5,
and that's how we should also
teach and confirm what we're saying as doctrine.
So let's go in and there for this morning.
Hang on to this packet.
Bring it back next week,
and we will finish it up and start
reading James chapter 1.
Also, read James chapter 1,
and do your exercises,
and you have a help now a little bit from,
however much help my stuff is in there.
So let's pray.
And if you don't keep this in your Bible,
you're going to be set back in your ability to study it.
So this is a super helpful thing.
So I just want to clarify what I'm giving to you,
so you can understand what I expect,
or what I would like for you to do with it,
is to keep that with your Bible,
so you can study the Bible passages that you're reading.
The middle page, how to study a Bible print out
that I gave you.
There's three pages staple together.
So the middle one is the one with the 17 questions
about how to study the Bible.
And the last page is the text that I handed out last week,
that the goal was to maybe get a head start
on studying this text, but if you haven't done it,
this week you need to start.
And then also, hey, Mike, Jason just came in.
Would you get him a hand out?
And JJ.
And then on the backside, I went through and did the work
that the questions were telling us to do.
And if you look on the side, I did.
You'll see my color coding for how I did answer
the each question, so I didn't follow his stuff
because I have a little bit more robust tool set.
And then also, you see on the top right-hand corner,
it says, 08, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, it didn't print,
but that's where it says, questions I didn't answer.
Because not every question is going to be relevant
for every study.
And then you see where it says, time, I started working
on this at 10.30 and I was done by noon.
And this is the product of all that.
So you probably would find different things that I find
or maybe see it slightly different.
That's OK.
But this is just an example of what we're going to get.
So we'll talk about that a little bit today.
So I'm just letting you know, because this
is going to be our project for the next week or two,
is to go through this text and really wrap our minds around it
so we can see how does this process work.
So here is first stage of review.
We have our circle of contexts.
And each circle, the context gets wider and wider.
So what do we call this middle circle
like from what we were talking about last week?
What's the middle circle?
Or if you can remember different parts of it,
just kind of say the different parts you remember.
But close enough, I would call it immediate.
But yeah, it's the context of the verse you're reading
or the passages that you're reading.
That is your immediate context.
So that is the part you're working with.
What's the part that follows it?
Well, make up your own words.
But say OK, if I'm in my mind thinking, OK,
here's the immediate context.
What would I call the part that comes just before it
and after it?
Just throw all words that they don't have
to be the right word, just like communicate the idea.
Less immediate is what Bruce says.
General context.
OK, what else?
I'm looking at Mason.
Yeah, chapter context.
Something like that, maybe broad is what I put.
But you are all on the right page, right?
It's the broad, OK, the verse falls in a teaching section.
What do we call that, teaching section?
And so now we've just taken a step out.
Now, what about the next one?
Ring number three here.
Yeah.
So the book.
So why are these three things pretty important?
Yeah, yeah.
So remember the goal of Bible study.
We talked about that on the first class.
What was the goal of studying the Bible?
It's more specific than that.
To understand the original intent of the inspired author.
Right?
And so when we say intent, what does that mean?
I'm looking at the teenagers because I'm
going to put you on the spot a little.
Because you guys are used to somebody really like pushing
you a little bit downstairs, right?
Bearcing you, making you read out loud.
I'm not going to make you read out loud, so that's good.
But I am going to ask, I'm going to direct questions to you
because I want you guys more than anyone else to know this
because it's going to serve you the longest.
So I want you guys to know.
So when I say intent or let's just say you said it, Trevor,
I didn't intend to slam you so hard.
All right, what does that mean?
You did it, but you didn't want to do it, right?
And so if I say, I intended to slam you so hard.
Trevor's a wrestler, if you don't know.
What does that mean?
I had a goal.
And my goal was to slam you hard to let you know.
This is my coach when I was a wrestler.
My coach would come up to me and he would grab me
behind the elbow and squeeze hard.
And like it's like a nerve point.
And he'd say, Finn, that's legal pain.
And so he'd always remind me, there's legal pain.
And so you're supposed to use that sort of thing
as an advantage.
And so if Trevor intends to slam you,
that means he set out to slam you and that was his goal.
And so if we say, what's the intent of the inspired author?
I wrote this to communicate something to you,
not to Mike or not to me, to the people
I'm writing the letter to.
And so there is a context to all this.
The book context might say to the Ephesians.
Well, the Ephesians are the ones who needed this.
Now that doesn't mean it's not useful for other people as well.
But we have to say, why would he say this to Ephesians?
To the people and Ephesists.
Why would he say this in this way to them?
So here's an example.
This is not to the Ephesians.
But when you read in Mark, I can't remember the exact chapter.
I'm not too 15, but I can't remember where it is in Mark.
Maybe 10 or something.
But in Mark, there's a section where it talks about the Pharisees
who are criticizing Jesus as disciples
for not washing their hands before they eat.
And if you read in Mark, Jesus says, well, don't you realize,
this is kind of summary, but don't you realize
it's not what goes into the body that corrupts it,
but that which comes out of the heart.
And then there's a little parenthesis at the end of that scripture
in Mark, like the author is adding in a piece of information
that Jesus didn't say.
And it says, thus, he declared all foods clean.
So he tells this story.
And he says, thus, he declares all foods clean.
What would be his intention to write
that little parenthetical statement in there?
Why would he?
Why did the author include that?
Does there a question?
What was the reason they're exchanging to?
Yeah.
Now, it's hard to think this way.
But Mark was not written.
The book of Mark was not written.
As a story, generally, it was actually written
and given to some group of people.
And those group of people had a question, can I eat any food?
And so as he wrote that, Mark clarified.
Before that, he clarifies other things,
saying that they had traditions about all sorts of washing.
And he put that in there because he was writing to likely
a Gentile audience who wouldn't understand ritual washing.
And so the author had an intent.
I want to clarify what was happening
to these people who may not understand it.
I want to clarify to the people who are concerned
about whether or not I can eat any food, that it's okay.
And here's Jesus' teaching on it.
Now, that's the intent of the author.
Now, if you go to Matthew at the end of the writing,
it doesn't have that parenthetical statement.
What it says is a conclusion.
Matthew says, but to eat with unwashed hands
is not a sin or is not a transgression?
Not a file.
Does not defile a man?
Yeah, so Bruce has it.
He's on it.
To eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.
Now, what did Matthew say at the point of my teaching was?
Yeah, he was clarifying that the Pharisees' traditions
does not equate to the law of God.
And so his disciples don't have to eat with unwashed hands
in order to be acceptable to God or wash hands.
As the Pharisees are saying, what kind of disciples are these?
They don't even wash their hands when they eat.
How righteous could you possibly be?
And so that Matthew clarifies, here's my point.
And so if someone decides to take those verses and say,
oh, well, Jesus was trying to change the law of Moses.
Or Jesus was trying to contradict Moses.
That's not really the intent of the author whatsoever.
He's just relaying a story to a group of people
and he intends to teach them something using this teaching.
And also, like Mark is particularly helpful,
because it helps us to understand, like, yeah,
I can take a principle out of what Jesus teaches
and apply it to a lot of situations where that principle applies.
Matthew doesn't do that.
He's very specific.
So the point is the intent of the author
makes a difference.
Our job as Bible students is to discern the intent of the author.
And one of the ways we have to do that
is by going through context.
So you have book context, which is where, OK, what did
all Mark say about this?
Because there's, like, teachings sections in Mark.
And then what we went through is, OK, here's Testament context.
If we compare what Mark said to what Matthew said,
we can see some contrast there and maybe understand
a bigger picture, see the specific things
Mark includes that Matthew doesn't include.
And say, why did Mark include that and Matthew didn't?
That helps us to have some broader context.
OK, here's the core of the teaching.
Here's kind of the application or the things that
reveal the intent of the author to us.
And so we get testamental things that
helps us understand the context.
Now, what about biblical context?
This is where Psalm 111, 16, comes in.
The sum of your word is truth.
In every one of your righteous ordinances is everlasting.
So the sum of I word is truth.
That's biblical context.
And the big picture of God's teaching, how does this fit in?
What over arcing principle does it apply to?
And so we can ask that.
And so the more of these things we can grasp
on any particular Bible study we're doing,
the more you're going to see God's broader teaching.
And so what ends up happening is, as you link things together,
your teaching doesn't just become isolated little pockets
of what the Bible says is here and this here and this here.
But what if all three of those things
are contradicting each other?
See, as you learn and study and learn to study,
you're going to be able to harmonize all three
of these things and say, here's this was a wrong conclusion
because it contrasts with this.
But if I change it to be in line with all these other things,
then I can understand the true meaning.
And so you just have to work through it.
But that's where understanding these contexts.
Now, immediate, broad, and book, you're generally
going to get through a normal kind of Bible study.
Test them in Bible context.
You're only going to get if you actually
read your Bible on a regular basis.
So if you're not doing that, don't ever
expect to see in color, just expect
to see the Bible in black and white.
That's really what it comes down to.
So you neglect that.
And you're neglecting a part of knowing who God is,
understanding him personally, and a clear understanding
of the truth, and the ability to speak
with any kind of authority about scripture.
You can somewhat.
But if you don't know the testament and the Bible context
of what you're reading, you're not
going to really be able to teach with authority
because you won't really know.
And so that's where what regular Bible reading
adds to all of this.
Secondly, I'm emphasizing these things.
We're going to get to just observation
and working through the text.
But I really want to emphasize the importance of some
of the things we're talking about are not like,
it's just here's fodder to put in a class about studying
the Bible, like we're just throwing it.
That's not why I'm putting it in.
I've been really working hard to not add things
that don't need to be here.
This has to be here.
So this is really important.
The thing we studied last week, rules
for understanding the scripture, these are super important
rules.
If you don't know about your Bible study,
we'll be limited.
So I didn't just throw these in on a whim, like, oh,
here's something interesting.
Here's something interesting.
These are actually, like, super critical things.
So the rule of faith doesn't agree with the apostolic teaching.
That is the standard by which we stand or fall.
If it agrees with the teaching of the apostles,
if it does not, you are not justified.
If it does, you are justified.
And so to say, OK, does this agree with the apostolic teaching?
Sounds pretty standard.
And we take it for advantage, but just remove yourself
from your normal experience.
There's, of course, we know it needs to agree with the apostles.
But what does it mean if it doesn't?
It means you need to put a guy who has a chance
if not a scripture, if not the answer of the teaching
is whoever has come up with the idea that if it exists
or they don't agree, it's on them, not on the street.
Yeah, and really, it is not doctrinal, right?
And so if it does not agree with the apostles,
it is not doctrinal.
It is not sound.
It's false, or maybe ignorance, or maybe,
because false teaching, just to clarify,
I'm just going to take a quick little tangent.
When the Bible says false teacher, what it means is people
who put themselves in the position of teacher
in order to take advantage and benefit the flesh.
That is a false teacher.
Somebody who doesn't teach precisely right
is not a false teacher.
They could just be someone who's uninformed
or hasn't matured to their full level yet.
And here's the question you ask is, if you don't think
you will change in the next 10 years, which means right now
there's something you believe that is wrong.
If you don't think you will change in the next 10 years,
you are locked into tradition, and you are a false.
You are teaching falsely.
And if you think you probably will change your mind
in the next 10 years in your Bible study and in maturing,
you are also teaching something false right now.
One of them is willful ignorance.
And one of them is the product of growth, right?
Neither one of them make you a false teacher, right?
You might be kind of locked in on something,
but you're saying what you think is true.
You just don't know otherwise.
So you're willfully ignorant.
You may be choosing not to grow, but that
doesn't mean what you're saying is true or false base
just on that is you're just under-informed.
The other guy is under-informed too,
but he knows he's going to grow.
And so we're all going to teach something that's not true
and have to change it later.
That's just comes with the territory of growth.
But I'm never going to purposefully mislead
and be careless in mislead, or even worse, mislead
for the sake of profit.
And misleading for the sake of profit
is what a false teacher is.
It's the defining characteristic of false teachers
and false prophets is for a purpose other than God's purpose.
So just to be clear with that is we need to be careful.
To be accurate, but also realize just
because someone makes a mistake or doesn't understand
what you understand right now, doesn't make them a false teacher.
It just means that they are at a different maturity level.
And it may be higher because you're not understanding
or maybe lower because you know something more than they do.
So that's just the way it is.
So just to clarify, biblical, there's a saying,
use the Bible to interpret the Bible or use biblical turn
for biblical ideas or biblical definitions
for biblical ideas.
And a biblical definition to a false teacher
is intent to gain, like that's a major part of it.
So back onto the rule of faith,
your conclusions must a line agree
with the Apostle's teaching.
The criteria for canonicity, I brought that up
because this is how the early church decided
which books were inspired.
Now if that's the process they used to decide on entire books
which one we're going to keep
and which one we're not going to keep.
And here's the criteria.
It's also probably a pretty good criteria to decide
whether or not a teaching we should keep
or we should reject, right?
So it has to be inspired, has to agree with the Apostles,
has to come from, you know,
historical background, like there are some ideas
that have no history behind it,
like the 80, 70 doctrine or pre-millennialism
or things like that, like kind of robust doctrines
but they actually have no historical acceptance
or teaching.
Even Calvinism, it didn't exist in the church
until Augustine started talking about it
and he had a mannequin bent
which was a kind of philosophy that said
the body is totally corrupt and the spirit is totally good
and so as long as you have,
as long as you maintain your spirit
doesn't matter what you do with your body.
That's mannequin, mannequinism.
And so somebody who came out of that philosophy
with a narcissism in the background too
and they say, okay, well, there's nothing you can do.
You're totally depraved.
A total of gravity didn't even enter into the church
for like 400 years.
Does that mean for 400 years,
a church didn't understand the doctrine of Paul and Christ
or maybe for 400 years, it was fine
until something got corrupted, you know?
So that's when you talk about antiquity
or apostolicity, if something didn't come out,
if we, and that doesn't prove it one way or the other
but it's at least a test you can use.
Antiquity, conform to come, so anyway,
that we're not gonna go through all this
but the point is, is going back through
and testing what you say with some methods
that create true answers is important
and that's what this is all about.
Accurately handling the text.
This is where we left off last week.
Discutting the scripture in such a way
that we can understand the intended meaning
of the inspired author and keep it in the context
of the whole teaching in the scripture.
So those are, that's, that, when Paul says to Timothy,
show yourself a workman who does not need to be ashamed,
handling accurately the word of God,
second to Timothy 2.15 I believe,
when he says you need to handle accurately the word of God,
that is the goal.
It's to understand the intended meaning
of the inspired author and keep it in context
of the whole teaching in the scripture.
So those two things, that's handling accurately.
You could take it out of context and use it
for whatever you want, but that's not accurate.
And you could take it out of the context of the Bible
and apply it to other things.
I was just, I listened to a podcast this last week
and it was a woman who, in her younger years,
kind of got into cultic practices in witchcraft.
And she was told she was a Christian early on
and she's like, she kept doing all these cultic practices
in witchcraft, but, but I'm also a Christian.
Like she had that kind of conflict going into her mind.
And part of this cultic practice was reading the Bible.
And like using chance and using say ounces
and things like that, but they were
from Biblical language.
And she's like, so obviously we're using the Bible.
We're just understanding the Bible
in a deeper, more powerful way.
Like that's what her understanding of that.
Well, this woman became a Christian
and she just denounced it all.
And this woman had Bible meant everything she said
she threw out a quoted Bible verse.
Like, but she understood the power of using it
in the intended context.
See, they were just taking it out of context
and using it as a tool to serve Satan.
Bible can be used that way.
Bible can be used by abusers to convince the person
they're trying to abuse that what they're doing is
blessed by God.
That's not the intended context.
That's just an abuse of what God intended.
And so there's all sorts of ways you can use.
There were preachers in before the Civil War
that used the Bible to confirm that type of slavery
they had where they're kidnapping people,
forcing them to work and so,
but they were using the Bible to justify that sort of thing
even though the Bible does not justify that sort of thing.
So, understanding it in the context of the context
of the whole teaching of the Bible is important.
So how do we do that?
So here's some important tools that are gonna be,
this is like every Bible study
when you make conclusions.
So this is not stuff that you just would,
not other stuff, it's good to know and it's helpful.
And if you ever really wanna have robust right Bible study
you're gonna have to have a grasp of some of that stuff
because that's how you anchor your conclusions in scripture.
So that's the previous page.
This is how you work through drawing conclusions.
So this is super critical.
First tool for what is a doctrine?
Like so let's just start there.
What is doctrine?
Now the Greek word is the didasticalo
and the meaning is teaching.
What is sound teaching or teaching that is actually true
and conforms to the mind of God
and the intent of the apostles or the inspired writers?
Like how do we discern that?
The first way to discern it is
by the mouth of two or three witnesses
every fact is to be confirmed.
Now you've heard this before,
this is how you discern if someone needs to be executed
or not, like if someone needs to be put out of the church
or not, how do we do it?
By the mouth of two or three witnesses.
One witness cannot condemn a person.
In the same way, one witness is not enough
to determine the nature and the truth of God.
So here is, I'm gonna bring up the biblical standard now.
And Hebrews chapter two, verse two.
If the word spoken through angels proved unalterable
and every transgression and disobedience
received a just penalty, how will we escape
if we neglect so great a salvation
after it was first spoken through the Lord?
So when it was spoken through the Lord,
how many witnesses were there?
Jesus spoke and so in John, you're right,
but when Jesus spoke like from the perspective,
if I'm standing in front of him
and God gives him something to say
and he just repeats it to me,
how many people, how many witnesses am I seeing?
Just one.
And in John chapter five, we'll get to this in a minute,
but 531 and 32, Jesus says,
if I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.
So, testified by Jesus, was that enough
to convince people you should rather die
than disobey this law?
They God think it was enough.
No, because it says middle of verse three
after it was at first spoken through the Lord,
it was confirmed to us by those who heard.
So Jesus said it, a witness testifies to it.
God also testifying with them by both signs
and wonders in various miracles and gifts
of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.
So you have God testifying now, confirming miracles.
So three witnesses, Jesus said it,
witness repeated it and miracles testified to it.
What would one of the miracles that confirmed Jesus
is being accurate was the resurrection, right?
Jesus claimed a bunch of stuff.
Now, are Jesus's claims legitimate
or are they not legitimate, how do we know?
Jesus said, predicted he was gonna rise from the dead
and then he did rise from the dead.
So if Jesus predicted he was gonna rise from the dead
and made all these claims about the kingdom of God
and then he did not rise from the dead,
is Jesus a true prophet?
Because his prophecy didn't come true, right?
That's how we know.
So, but if his prophecy does come true,
then the other things he said has been confirmed by God.
So God is giving him what carte blanche approval
in doing that.
And then you have the second witnesses,
here's what Jesus said and then now that I taught you something,
here, let me heal your lame foot
and let me give you back your sight.
Let me go ahead and in some cases,
I'm a strike you blind like on Cyprus,
Paul did that to a magician.
And so you have all these miracles going along.
Well, how do I know if someone's saying something
that's approved by God?
Something only God can do is being done by them
at the same time that they're teaching this.
That confirms that God's approvals there.
That's what this is saying.
If you read above the text, it says,
by the mouth of the two or three witnesses,
I have confirmed everything Jesus taught,
everything that cut Apostle's taught.
That's how we know it's true.
And if angels saying it counts,
what about the Son of God?
So, that's the standard.
Look with me here again, second Timothy 2.2.
Things which you have heard from me
in the presence of many witnesses
and trust these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also.
It says, the things which you have heard from me
in the presence of many witnesses.
Why is that important?
The presence of many witnesses.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
Did Paul expect us to take his word for it?
No, he expected us to take his word along with witnesses.
He doesn't name the witnesses,
but it could be miracles.
It could be other people who were there in 1 Corinthians 15.
Paul says, okay, Jesus rose from the dead.
And there were 500 people who saw it.
And then also the Apostle saw it.
And then James saw it.
And this guy saw it.
And that guy saw it.
And they were all,
and they're all still alive.
You can go ask them.
Right, presence of many witnesses.
Paul's claims were not on the basis
of take my word for it.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm a professional.
Anything like that.
It was through witness.
And even me.
Right?
I could say I'm a professional.
I make my living teaching the word.
You should just take my word for it.
What should you say?
Kids, if I say take my word for it,
I'm a professional.
Here's what God wants you to do.
What should you say to me?
What's the right answer?
You know the answer.
What?
Show me in the Bible.
Show me in the Bible.
Right?
And I'm like,
well, let me tell you what the Bible says.
What should you say?
Show me.
Give me the book chapter verse.
Open it up.
Let's read it together.
Right?
And that's your responsibility.
Before you make a major life decision,
that someone convinced you
is a biblical decision.
What should you say?
Show me in the Bible.
If you're watching TikTok or
Reels on Facebook or YouTube
and you listen to something that has
Bible teaching in it,
and they say,
here's a verse, here's what it means.
What should you do?
Before you start repeating it to other people
or make decisions based on it.
Read the Bible first.
Like, look at it.
I've seen all sorts of those things
that are just flat out wrong.
And so, you just have to test that stuff.
So, mouth of two or three witnesses,
every fact is to be confirmed.
So, what are some applications of this?
First mark,
unclear passage does not take the authority of doctrine.
What's that mean?
One unclear passage does not have the authority of doctrine.
Do you agree with that?
Maybe you can find a point.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you can find a scripture that says,
why are we baptized for the dead?
Right?
What does that mean?
The assumption is that we baptized for the dead
for the dead.
That's the assumption.
Yeah, but does that mean since my,
you know, whatever my granny died
and she was a wonderful woman,
but she was never baptized
that I can go get baptized for her
since she was dead,
and she can't do it for herself.
Is that what that means?
Is there anyone who...
What was that?
I told you it's used in some place.
Yeah, yeah.
There are people who try to practice something like that.
Is that what that means?
How do we know?
Is it...
Hold on.
Let me count our argument.
You guys said no.
And you're going down the road with me,
so let me count our argument.
Man should not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
That word came out of them,
those few words came out of the mouth of God.
Are you rejecting the words of God?
I'm taking the black tongue
in the middle of the description
you're taking here because of the standing,
your pregnancy.
Yeah, so it's interesting, huh?
But now let me add to my devil's advocate argument.
When Jesus was trying to prove
that there is life after death,
there is a resurrection.
He said,
God didn't tell Moses,
God told Moses,
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
One word, I am.
Is that one word enough to confirm doctrine?
The Jesus thing, so.
Is there more context to that?
Yeah.
Do you have to know more than that?
Here's the thing.
If you're teaching children,
how much do you have to say to children
to get them to understand something?
You've got to give them a lot, right?
You're teaching teens maybe the same way
because they're learning and they're going to say,
show me in the Bible, right?
Is that what the teens are going to do?
I tell you something.
You're going to say, show me in the Bible.
I've got to say a lot about that to show you in the Bible.
If I'm teaching teachers,
I just have to allude to a concept
and they understand the rest, right?
The Pharisees knew the Scripture.
The Sadducees knew the Scripture.
They knew what the Bible said about this.
And I'm showing them a chink in their armor.
I don't have to make the,
by the mouth of two or three witnesses kind of thing
because if I point out,
here's what God said,
then they can take that and start measuring
against other things they already know, right?
So Jesus' expectation was,
take this and harmonize it
with these other things that you're accepting
and other things the Bible says.
He gave them a tool.
He didn't approve doctrine in that word
but he gave them a tool by which they could
and they were skilled teachers
so they were at the capability.
And so you just have to realize, you know,
okay, there's some context here, right?
That Jesus wasn't saying this word
and that means you can go out and find one word
and make your doctrines on it.
In fact, if you were going to say,
what does the Bible say about using one word
of the doctrines on?
And if you can argue the meaning of the word
and get right,
then you can prove your point.
What does Paul say about that?
He says,
don't wrangle about words
over and over and over.
Don't wrangle about words.
And so maybe our next one here
is,
so one unclear passage doesn't have
the authority of doctrine,
meaning God's approved teaching.
Multiple scriptures
with different contexts
don't add up to a doctrinal position.
So,
if I, like,
here's how I envision that.
Let's talk about
something like premillennialism.
It's like a quilt.
You take all these little chunks
that were intended to go together
and you organize them
and you sew them together
and you look at the finished product of a quilt
and isn't it beautiful
or doesn't it make sense to look at a quilt?
Can't you say that?
That's artwork.
But the question is,
were all those pieces
if fabric intended to be knitted together that way?
No.
They're taking a bunch of things
that don't belong together
and putting it together to make something else.
That's what a quilt is.
And it will never be
or multiple scriptures
with different contexts
don't add up to a doctrinal position.
Let me give you an example.
In the beginning of the book of Revelation,
it says,
we're going to show you the things which must soon take place.
Over and over again,
at the end of the book,
these things are going to take place quickly.
It's going to happen soon.
That's what it's going to happen soon.
2000 years later,
people are reading the book of Revelation
as if it hasn't taken place yet.
All right.
How do people demonstrate
that it doesn't have to have taken place?
And it's still happening shortly.
Mike?
Okay.
Does that make sense?
He says it's quick.
It's only been like two days for God.
That's pretty quick.
The third day maybe.
So we've got three days,
three thousand years.
Let me predict the end of the world for you.
Okay.
So here's my question.
Prove to me
that that applies to the context of Revelation.
Does a thousand years
is the day and a day is a thousand years to the Lord?
Does that apply to the context of Revelation?
And how do you know?
What is the use of these twice?
Yeah, but the phrase in both cases
is basically God telling
who's talking to you at that time.
I do need so much time.
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe three times.
Maybe in second Peter.
And maybe Jude or something like that.
I feel like it's used twice in the New Testament
and it's an Old Testament
from a Psalm.
So maybe three times.
The point is, okay, that is a true statement.
But that doesn't mean it applies to revelation.
And if you want to apply a scripture to revelation,
you have to link them together.
You have to say, here's why.
Here's how I know.
And if you can't say that, they're unrelated.
That's the thing.
Multiple scriptures with different contexts.
Don't add dad up to a doctrinal position.
And so that's important is we've got to make sure we
things are talking about the same thing
when we have these conversations.
Next, doctrine will never be determined
by the definition of a single word or concept.
Whatever it is, if you come down to a word
and if this word means this, we're going this way
and if this word means this, we're going this way.
That's trash.
That's not two or three witnesses for sure.
And that is my interpretation of word.
Now here's an addition to that.
Where do I have this?
Oh, this is going down.
We're out of time already.
All right.
Read the rest of this section.
I'll talk about this next section quickly next week.
But this just has this concept is, all right,
by the mouth of two or three witnesses.
Notice what Jesus says about himself.
This is the next section.
John 531 through 32.
If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.
Even in verse 8, John 814, even if it is true,
what Jesus says is absolutely true, we know that.
But it doesn't carry authority unless it's confirmed
by multiple witnesses.
So that's important.
So we can use one verse to prove something
but it doesn't carry authority unless it's used
by multiple witnesses.
That is why I have kind of a compulsion
to always show two verses that say the same thing
when I'm preaching rather than just say,
here's what this verse is, here's what it means.
Because just out of practice, that's why I do it.
And first Timothy 6-3,
that I want to read this and this is where it went.
First Timothy 6-3.
If anyone advocates a different doctrine
and does not agree with the sound words,
those of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and with the doctrine conforming to godliness,
he is conceded and knows nothing.
But he is a morbid interest in controversial questions
and disputes about words out of which arise
envy, strife, abuse of language, evil suspicion,
and cost of friction between men of depraved mind
and depraved of the truth,
who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
What is the turning point for whether or not
your teaching sound doctrine?
Does not agree with sound words,
those of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and with the doctrine conforming to godliness.
What's the doctrine conforming to godliness?
So it would be the gospel,
I think more specifically,
it would be anything that is revealed to us by God
or his inspired authors.
It has to be confirmed.
So you got Jesus and the apostles,
and it has to have both supporting
in order to be called sound words.
If a Jesus and an apostle
attested to something and you reject it,
then you fall into that category.
Does Paul have an indifferent view of somebody
who does not confirm their words by the words of Jesus
and sound doctrine conforming to godliness?
Is he neutral in that subject?
No. He is conceded.
Understands nothing.
Has a morbid interest.
What does morbid mean?
I think the word morbid means death.
Has a deadly interest.
Right?
Ignorant or conceded,
pride, understands nothing,
and an interest that will lead you to death.
That's what it is,
not to use these tools that we're talking about this morning.
So just these are biblical concepts
that Paul and Jesus and other people present to us,
and they say, if you're not using these tools
when you study the Bible,
then you are acting out of pride,
you're acting out of stupidity,
really, is the concept there,
and you are going to die spiritually,
at least, because of it.
So when we have a Bible study,
and someone says,
well, this is what it means to me.
Doesn't that sound pretty harmless?
When you say this is what it means to me,
and you're not really studying it,
you're just kind of like,
and sometimes we say that,
because we have a depth of knowledge,
and we're using that as a way to speak to something.
But if we have no experience,
and we just, whatever my first take on something is,
without knowing the context,
without having any kind of depth of no real effort
put into studying the word in which it is,
just what it means to me.
That's what I'm going with.
You are putting yourself in severe risk,
and you're being proud.
You're being very proud,
conceited,
and you're doing great harm,
especially if you try to put yourself
off like you are knowledgeable
when you are not.
It's a harmful thing.
Paul is not indifferent to it.
We shouldn't be indifferent to it.
And when we study,
so simply, we're talking about a lot of things,
about the two or three witnesses,
every practice to be confirmed.
Just make sure that the Bible testifies
to it clearly in at least two different ways,
two different people, two different things,
and you'll generally find more.
Most sound doctrine is not going to have two testifiers,
it'll have five, six, seven.
Read John 5,
starting in verse 31,
through the render of the chapter of Jesus says,
if I'm the only one saying this,
don't even believe me.
And then he goes through and says,
but John the Baptist says it,
and the Bible says it,
and God does these miracles,
and God spoke for me,
and what I do is complete harmony with the Bible.
So he goes through,
and it names out all the ways that
what he's saying is in harmony
and in agreement with Scripture,
and he gives you his witnesses
in John chapter 5,
and that's how we should also
teach and confirm what we're saying as doctrine.
So let's go in and there for this morning.
Hang on to this packet.
Bring it back next week,
and we will finish it up and start
reading James chapter 1.
Also, read James chapter 1,
and do your exercises,
and you have a help now a little bit from,
however much help my stuff is in there.
So let's pray.