This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 534: How to Determine Content and Application with Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 

Exegesis and application take work. Today, you'll learn how to grasp the content of Scripture by asking the question what did this text mean to the original audience? Looking for a book's author, audience, occasion, and purpose will help you answer that question. Next we'll consider application and answering the question, what does this text mean to me today, we'll follow Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart's application strategy, as well as their forewarnings about extended application particulars that are not comparable cultural relativity and task theology. Here now is episode 534. Read the Bible for yourself Part 4 how to determine content and application. Last time we talked about how important it is to understand the context, in particular, a lot of different kinds of context. This is a a major part of exegesis, but once you understand the context, you have to understand the content. What is it saying? I want to begin by quoting Greg Kokol, who said if there's one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart. One useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life. What would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I've ever learned as a Christian here? It is never read a Bible verse that's right, never read a Bible verse. Instead always read a paragraph at least. Is the hysterical so read whole books. Read out loud. Read it with a pin in your hand and underline things. Or use a highlighter or a pencil. Do what you gotta do so that you can really experience the the process and enjoy the process and keep your mind focused during the process so so you're not just reading a sentence or two, you're reading much more and I want to give you some things to look for as. You're going to figure out. What is happening and what's the content? Author, audience, occasion and purpose. So first up, author's typically this is stated in the beginning, although there are plenty of Bible books where the author is not stated. And we do not know who wrote that book. Say, for example, the book of First Kings. It never says who wrote it. We don't know. And you know what? That's OK. If there is some indication of knowing who who wrote it, who the writer is, then you want to pick that up. But if not. It's OK, move on to the next thing. So the book of Deuteronomy, who's the author of Deuteronomy? Moses Moses, wrote the book of Deuteronomy. We know that from other parts of the Bible. And we know that from Moses. You know, being the main individual in the book, I think you could argue that there was a later editor. That added some stuff like the part where Moses dies. For example. I don't think Moses wrote the part where he dies at the very end, but you know, I think the Lions share and certainly later Jewish people refer back to the Book of Deuteronomy as one of the five books of the. Yes, So what about a book like Haggai who wrote that? That guy, man, that was easy. What about first Corinthians? Who wrote that? Paul, right. Yeah. So we can we can figure these things out for a lot of books of the Bible. And then there's others where we aren't really sure. Let's look at audience often. This is stated in the beginning. The question is who is receiving this book? Who is it for originally in its original? Writing this is especially easy for prophets and epistles. If you look at a book of prophecy, say like the Book of Isaiah or Hosea or whatever, you can see you know the word of the Lord that came to Isaiah the son of so and so to the people of Israel or to the people of Judah. During the reign of King so and so, all that stuff is good for you to pay. I know we typically probably just read over that really quickly, like give me to the. And, but pay attention to who is receiving this. What's going on like in the epistles, they usually begins by the person who wrote it, and then the person they're writing to. Paul, an apostle to the Ephesians, right. Or Peter to the scattered brethren, 12 tribes. Entered abroad. That's the audience idea. Then we have occasion. Occasion is answering the question. What was going on that caused the author to write? This is something that takes Detective work on your part much of the time, and it doesn't always have an answer either. OK? We don't know for what reason. Every single book of the Bible was written, but let's say you're reading a book of prophecy. Say like the Book of Hosea, for example, the overarching. The focus of the book is Hosea using his own life as a mirror or as a way of illustrating how God feels about what the people are doing. And so God has them go marry a prostitute. So that's. And then she leaves him and God says go get her back. Is illustrating how God feels about. So what? What do we know about the occasion? The occasion is the people of God are acting like prostitutes in worshiping other gods. Not literally, but in worshiping other gods is the the literal meaning. Sometimes we have to reverse engineer. The occasion, based on the contents of what is in the book. Other times the occasion is right up front or it's pretty obvious. For example, what's the occasion of deutera? For me, Moses is about to die. You got a whole bunch of people about to enter into a promised land, and they need to know how to live. That's the book of Deuteronomy. That's what's going on. He's about to die. So last month we're about at the end of the 40 years we're about to enter the land. This is the second telling of the law. The law had already been told to their parents, and now it's 40 years later. Now, this is the updated edition. You know, some extra stuff in there that has come up in the meanwhile and. That's the book of Deuteronomy. What about haggai? Well, the people returned to the land they built themselves. Nice houses. But they didn't build the Temple of God. That's the issue that Haggai is focusing on. Or what about first Corinthians? Woo Wee, this is a church that Paul is writing to and they are full of problems. So what are their problems? Well, they get drunk during communion. One guy is with his father's wife and everyone knows about it, and they're all fine with it. There's sexual immorality, there's chaotic worship services where every everyone is interrupting each other. Chapter 15 indicates to us that there's a major disbelief in the resurrection of Jesus. This is a major cardinal Christian belief you you can't really be a Christian if you don't believe God raised Jesus from the dead. The foundational? Yeah, it's not just one thing for first Corinthians. It's all kinds of problems, and he's addressing them one after another after another. What about purpose? When you're reading, look for purpose. What is the per if? If a book gives you a purpose statement, underline it. Absolutely. You know, highlight it you know, write it down, say this person is giving me. The purpose this. Is gold. There's actually a place in the Gospel of John where he does that. I think it was the John 2031 wrote these things to you that you would believe that Jesus is the son of God. You know, it is just like thank you, brother. Now I know where you're going. What your, what your aim is. He's like he did all kinds of miracles, but I picked these ones to show you so that you would believe that he is this. One. OK. Awesome. Deuteronomy, what's the purpose of Deuteronomy is to give the people a comprehensive way of. We call it the law or the Torah, right? It includes a legal code, holidays, sanitation, religious services for a nation. So that they would remain faithful to God, to Yahweh in the land Haggai. His purpose is to convince him to build the temple, get working on the temple. At first Corinthians is to unify the factions or fighting with each other, and then to correct the problems. And so with each book of the Bible that you read, you you you can ask these questions. Who wrote it? To whom did they write it? What was the occasion? Can I find out the occasion or is it not clearly stated anywhere? What's the purpose? What are we doing here? What is the function that this book served originally? That's what we're after. Sometimes you can't figure all of this out. That's OK. The idea is to read with these questions in mind your first time through and basically I what I want you to be like is a survivalist that gets dropped into the middle of the woods and you you have to get your bearings. I prefer this approach. I know it's more frustrating. I think it's easier to just. Look up a little introduction to whatever book of the Bible you're reading and then just get the answers from some expert. But I think it's even better if you can just parachute in and start to figure things out on your own. The inductive approach, I think is better because then you did the work. And now it's going to stick in your head. If I tell you, somebody else tells you. Ohh first Corinthians is written because of these 5 problems. There's no joy in that. If you're reading through, you're like, Oh my goodness, another problem that's number three. And then you you get to the end of it. They're like, oh, it's actually 6 problems. Oh, my goodness. You know, like you're you're doing the work, you're getting the reward of that. And so that's like, kind of the survivalist approach is is figuring out which way is north, which way is South in the book? What's going on? And I think God will help you. I don't think you're totally on your own to do this. I think God will help you in the process. You know, God honors the effort that you put in. I believe that. And then when you understand something, you have that light bulb experience. That's the joy of the Lord right there, right understanding a verse or a paragraph. Get the authors point before asking about application, because we do need to go. We do need to go to application in this session, but what's the authors train of thought? Do not ask how does this affect my life as a starting place? You want to ask that, but that's the starting place. Just focus on getting what the author is conveying in his own historical context. Now there are some Bibles that have paragraphs. Other Bibles where each verse is its own line, and I think it's for just generic reading. It's probably more helpful to have a paragraph style Bible than like a you know where every verse is its own paragraph, cause then you your brain starts to think in paragraphs and you're like, OK, this paragraph, what is this whole section? What does this chunk mean? Rather than what does this sentence mean? If your Bible doesn't have that, don't worry about it. But I think you can still think that way. Think in units of thought rather than isolated verses, and look up words and phrases that you don't understand. You know, we live in the information age. Take advantage of it. How far is the Sabbath day's journey? What is the value of a talent or Amina, right. Like look these things up if you are not sure most of your Bibles will have a little footnote. Anyhow to help you with that. And in most cases an Internet search will provide the answer. A paper study Bible. If you have a, would I say a paper Bible mean like a physical. Bible. If you have a study Bible, then you will usually have answers to these kinds of questions right on the bottom of the page, and then some apps will have that sort of thing in them too. The two tasks of good reading are and. I mentioned this a couple of times, but I want to say it again. One figure out what a text meant to its original audience. 2 figure out what it means to you today if you just do the first one here and you just figure out. What it meant in the original context? OK, you just do that. The Bible will have no practical effect on your life. You're reading it like a like a scholar. You're reading it at a distance, you say. Well you could. See that for them it meant this. So what? What's that? What's that gonna do for you? And if you only do 2 and you figure out what it means for you today, but you have no idea what it meant for them, guess what? You're just going to insert your own assumptions and you're going to tell it what it means rather than it telling you what it means. The way you figure that out is that the Bible just you really confirms. All of your suspicions about the way the world works, and it never challenges you. That's because you're only doing #2. You're figuring out what? It means today. Without doing the hard work of figuring out what it meant then. So let's go to application. An application is actually Jesus is hard, application is hard. You can do it, but it's not. It's not just like this is going to be no big deal. I mean it takes effort, takes community too, as we'll see. So with application my first point is that you should have an open posture to the text. Except that you are going to disagree with the Bible at times. Accept it. There are some parts of the Bible you're going to say I don't like that. OK, look, everyone has this experience. Also accept that your understanding is what needs to change, not the Bible. OK, so it's OK to disagree with it, but at some point, if you're gonna, if you're gonna be a biblical Christian, you're the one that changes. We don't change the book because it, you know, you don't like it. That's part of the walk of being a Christian is it takes time to understand. And process and and think the way that God presents himself in the scriptures. Recognize that you are imperfect in your understanding. Morals, theology, your understanding of life. So adopting a posture of obedience towards the scripture I think is really important. You can pray God, please change me by what I read. That's a gutsy prayer. That's not a wimpy prayer. Wimpy prayer is God help me to feel really good about what I read. OK? I don't know. Maybe you'll answer that. But you know, a gutsy prayer has changed me by what I read. You better watch out if you pray that, pray and ask God to show you what to do in light of what you just read. Even if you raised some part of the Bible. There is seemingly no connection with your life today. There are lots of parts of the reading, genealogy, and you're like, well, what does this have to do with me? OK, whatever you finish reading, pray God, what do you want me to do in light of this? He may give you something else other than what was in the text. And that's fine. That's his business. Right. But I think we will always want to be open and have this open posture because I believe the spirit of God is lurking just beneath the surface of scripture because I believe the original writers were inspired by God to write it. The spirit of God is also hovering over the waters is also hovering over the text so that when you're reading it. God can work with. You and apply it to your life. Figure out if something applies to you, or if it only was meant for the original audience. There's plenty of things that just are. For them, and there's plenty of things that are for them and also for you and you have to do that as you go. Alright. I want to look at covenants with you. Covenants are agreements. This is this is important and we're gonna come back to it in a future session as well. But covenants are an agreement between two parties. So for example. Between God and the people and covenants have clear expectations and commitments from. So you want to have clear expectations to commitments for both. That's what a covenant is. A covenant is not just. An understanding or something? I mean it's it's clear it's written, it's people agree to it. And that's what covenants are so like for example, we have the the Covenant of Marriage, it's kind of like an easy one to look at or when you buy a house that's that's like a covenant that you make, especially if you have a mortgage, you have an agreement. They're gonna let you live in their house. It's the bank's house, by the way. So you're living in the bank's house, but you're going to pay them this amount every month. Or, you know, if you're married, the covenant is we're not gonna cheat on each other. We're gonna. We're gonna be loving to each other. And, you know, whatever goes into the marriage covenant. So let's look at the old covenant. In the new covenant, there are more covenants than this in the Bible, but I have to be kind of brief because I want to make some more points about application. So God established the old covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. This was the moment when the children of Israel became God's people, when he took them unto himself and said, I'm gonna be your God, you're going to be my people. You're not going to worship other gods. I'm going to make it rain, you know, like simple things like this are actually spelled out in the book of Deuteronomy. They would follow his Torah, his instruction. Or law, as it was taught by Moses, and he would take care of them. He would protect them. He would take care of fertility, for example, the fertility of the land, but also fertility of humans to bear. Children. And then we have the new covenant. The new covenant God established with the church at the Cross, the cross is the defining moment, sort of like the Mount Sinai moment, if you will, where the covenant was ratified by the blood of Christ. What is the new covenant is that we are going to follow Jesus and the Apostles teachings on how to live. And God is very clear on what he's going to do. He's going to forgive our sins. He's going to make himself known to his people, put his instruction or law inside of our hearts as taught by Jesus. You know, this is the new covenant. And so when we look at all the books of the Bible, there's 66 books in the Bible. Many of them are old covenant books. I would say most of them are old covenant. Books, right? So I would actually make an exception here on Genesis. Genesis is pre old covenant, so I'm just going to throw that in its own category. But then yeah, the old covenant follows through all these books of the Old Testament. Coming all the way through until Malachi is the end of the Old Testament, the Latin word testamentum is just a translation of the word. Covenant, by the way. OK. Just in case you work curious about that and then you have the New Testament or the New Covenant? Which you could say begins in Matthew and comes all the way through. To revelations. So This is why we have most of our Bibles, that dividing line between Malachi and Matthew. And so we have the 39 books before that and then 27 after that. But it's honestly it's a little bit more complicated than that. That's the oversimplified view. So I have a little diagram for you to help you visualize this. Genesis is pre covenant and then you have Exodus through Malachi. That's the old covenant. But the old Covenant actually is still in effect in the Gospels. And so the the key point I'm trying to communicate here is that. That in the time of the gospels, that's the time when Jesus is doing his ministry. He is still bound to keep the old covenant he has to rest on the Sabbath and he can't eat bacon, right? Like they're like all the rules that are in the old covenant, Jesus is still following at the same time he's living and teaching. The rules that are going to be in the new covenant. OK, so it's it's an overlap period where he's still living out the old covenant, but he's also living out the new covenant at the same time. So we will talk more about this in a later session, but I just wanted to mention this about covenants because look, if you're going to take something from the old covenant and apply it to Gentiles today, I think you're going to have problems because that's not. Who the covenant is with? It's not with Gentil. Else which is non Jewish people, we do have a class on this whole subject goes into great detail called New Covenant theology from a couple of years ago. It's on our website lhim.org. If you want to know everything about all the covenants take that class and you'll you'll be able to learn that. The important point is, especially when reading the Old Testament, not to assume a command is applicable today. Alright, let's look at application rule. Miles, I want to mention this book because I've relied on it heavily for this class and it's called how to read the Bible for all its worth by Gordon C and Douglas Stewart. So if you don't have it, it's a good thing to have. You can look up different sections of the Bible in there and they will give you. Very brief explanation on what how to read that section of the Bible serves like what we're going to be doing in this class. But in that book they talk about application and they say a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or reader. The idea is we're not free as Christians to give the text a brand new meaning that it could not have possibly meant to the people that originally received. That part of the Bible. Number two rule they have for application. Is that whenever we share comparable particulars with the 1st century hearers, God's word to us is the same as his word to. You notice that phrase? Kind of a strange phrase. Comparable particulars alright, so let's say that what you're reading about is this the commandment Jesus said to forgive and and you know Peter came to him and says do I have? How many times do I have to forgive? And seven times you know Jesus like 70 * 7. Oh my gosh. So that's easy, right? You you have been in comparable particulars to Peter, right? Like you've been in situations where you didn't want to forgive somebody, and Jesus's command to you applies today. You also need to forgive. 70 * 7 in those situations. And so these are times where it's really easy to. Apply. Here's something else they say. They say the great caution here is that we do our exegesis well so that we have confidence that our situations and particulars are genuinely comparable to theirs. This is why the careful reconstruction of their problem is so important. They're concerned about making sure that it's genuinely comparable, that our situation lines up. It's similar enough to their situation that we can take some biblical command or instruction and apply it to our situation. Today. And so we're going to look at some of the problems of application. Not to scare you, but just to just to show you where the rocks are at sea. So you don't crash into them. OK, here are some application problems that Gordon Fee is and Douglas Stewart list out number one the. Problem of extended application #2 the problem of particulars that are not comparable #3 of the problem of cultural relativity and #4 the problem of task theology. First up, the problem of extended application and I'm I'm going to explain these to you with examples if you want to go in more depth, you can get the how to read the Bible for us all. It's worth book and you know go into more depth. The problem of extended application the best way I can explain this to you is First Corinthians chapter 6 where Paul says when any of you has a grievance. Against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous instead of taking it before the Saint? Do you not know that the Saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels, to say nothing of ordinary matters? If you have ordinary cases, then do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is not one person wise enough to decide between brothers and sisters instead, brothers and sisters go to court against one another, and this before the unbelievers. You understand the situation. You have Christians suing each other in a city like chorus. There's a court, just like in our city, there's a court, you and you, you take that person to court, and then the judge decides who's right and who's wrong and who's going to have to make payment or what the punishment will. Be and Paul is. Furious. Did you notice his tone, asking a lot of questions? What are you? An idiot. That's that's. That's how I. Would have said it, but he didn't. He's like, I can't believe you're doing this, and he's asking all these questions. How would this apply today? You have one Christian. Who maybe sells something to another Christian. Maybe person A has. An old car. And he sells it to person B. Now person B has the old car, the used car, and the person B drives a car for one day and it breaks. And now it's too expensive to fix, like the whole engine is broken or something, right? So now person B goes the person A and says yo. You sold me a lemon. How you gonna sell me a car like this? You knew it was gonna break, or if you didn't, you should. You should know better. Give me my money back. And person A says I don't know anything about that. I'm not talking to you. I got the money. That's your problem. Right. So what do they do now? They go to court and this person sues the other person. And what Paul saying is. You can't do. That Christy isn't supposed to figure this out. Go get another Christian who has some sort of wisdom. To help you figure this thing out. And so that would be comparable particulars. But the danger that they're pointing out here is when you have an extended application. So let's just change a couple of little things. Is this still applicable? If a Christian sues a Christian before a Christian judge. Is this what is meant by extended application now? Now is it OK to go to the judge because now he's a Christian? How far does it go? Is it OK for a Christian to sue a corporation? That's a different scenario than a Christian doing a Christian right now. It's a Christian doing a corporate what if the corporation has a CEO that's a Christian? OK, these things are hard to figure out. Is this applicable if a Christian sues a doctor for malpractice? You have to figure these things out. These are the kinds of application questions we need to wrestle with. Here are three questions to help question one. Does extending the application contradict other scriptural statements? Two, does extending the application align with general principles taught in Scripture? And three, does extending the application align or contradict with the example of Jesus or the Apostles? I'm not looking to give you answers on everything right now. My point is, when you have a scenario in the Bible and then you have a similar scenario today, if if the everything doesn't line up the same, you're now seeking to extend the application to a new situation and that's not always valid. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Check the other places in the Bible that talk about similar things to figure out. Does this make sense? Look at the example of Jesus. So often looking at the example of Jesus will give you an intuition to know what to do with this situation. All right, #2 the problem of particulars that are not comparable. So first Corinthians 10, there's a concern over eating food that was sacrificed to idols, and they're they're. Eating it later on what he says to them is that if somebody brings up to you that this food has been sacrificed to idols, you shouldn't eat it for their sake, for their their conscience, not your conscience, their conscience. So then the question is, OK? What about if I'm in a different situation because we don't have food sacrifice to idols in 21st century America, at least not that I'm aware of. OK, so we have no similar particulars, comparable particulars. We're in a different particulars, but there might be a principle here. There might be a principle that we should be able to apply. But then. What is the principle always give up my rights if someone's going to be offended? It sounds good, but like. Then the the most offendable person takes control of your organization and your house, and your you know, workplace and and and everything else. Just imagine a judgmental church elder who's offended by dancing, playing cards, watching TV, tattoos, drinking any amount of alcohol, ladies wearing pants, or eating. Now we can't. Have any of those things like? Nope. So I I think you have to be careful when you apply scripture that you don't make such a big application that you end up like. Basically, imprisoning yourself into the most offendable person if we capitulate to such people, we take upon ourselves a whole slew of new sins not forbidden by scripture. And look at Jesus. What's the example of Jesus? He offended religious people all over the place. It's like you had a PhD in it. You know, he's hanging out with the outcasts and the centers. And the down and outers. So we can always use his example to kind of correct and inform our application. But there are still situations where this principle would be applicable. Let's say you're having a friend over who's in recovery, who doesn't drink, and you maybe you normally drink wine at dinner. Well, don't drink wine when that person's over, right, like there are. There are applications still for this sort of thing. All right, #3, the problem of cultural relativity. Here's a list of direct commands in Scripture. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Romans 1616 all the brothers and sisters sent greetings greet one another with a holy kiss, 1st Corinthians 1620. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the Saints greet you. 2nd Corinthians 1312 and 1st Thessalonians 526. Greet all the brothers and sisters with the holy Kiss. There it is. You gotta kiss each other. We all have to kiss each other as a as a whole and whatever. A holy kiss is. That's what we need. And if you're not greeting each other, I I could just say right now. Not one of you greeted me with a holy kiss when I came in. The room. And I didn't agree with anybody. So are we in sin? Is. Is is like our salvation and some somehow endangered by this. I don't think so. This is a see in Stewart. They say one should be prepared to distinguish between what the New Testament itself sees as inherently moral and what is not. Those items that are inherently moral are therefore. Absolute and abide for every culture. Those that are not inherently moral are therefore cultural expressions and may change from culture to culture. Non romantic kissing, especially after COVID is not commonly practiced in American culture anymore. Did you notice that? Other places and cultures would be offended if you didn't offer a kiss. Putting cultures like that still around. In situations like this, we must inquire about the meaning of the command. What is what? Why is Paul telling everyone to greet him with the Holy Kiss cause he's trying to say greet people with joy, greet people with, you know, a blessing when you see them. So in our culture, we translate it to a handshake or a hug or a smile, or some bring a baked good. That's a great greeting. You show up with Apple fritter. What is it cake? Apple fritter bread that's I'll take that over a holy kiss. Just going to say that right now. So once again, take a look at the sin lists in the Bible. That's something they mentioned. If you look at the sinless in the Bible, they don't put in their customs, they're moral failings. They're not. They're not just like this is how we do it around here. This. They're not just tradition and. Culture. They don't include cultural behaviors. All right, #4 the problem of task theology. Building general theology from texts that address specific issues presents challenges. So, for example, Paul rebukes of Christians accounts for suing each other on the grounds that they will judge the world and angels. So then we look at that, we read that we're like. Or snap, Christians are going to judge angels. That's juicy. I'm going to take that. I think it's fine just for the record, but like he doesn't say anything about what that means, how that works, when that you know what I mean, it's just like, don't you're going to judge angels. You can't figure this out. That's how it's using. But then we're we come along and we're like, well, we're we're working on doctrinal synthesis here. We're working on systematic theology. So we want to figure out, like, when Jesus comes back, we're gonna judge angels. But is that before or after this? Or, you know what I mean? And we wanna say, and I I don't think that's necessarily bad. I'm just saying, like, it presents a problem because we're lifting. Theology from a from something that's like intended to be used over here, and we're we're using it in a general or abstract sense. And so that's a difficulty in the process of doing. Most of the Bible is written to engage with particular situations, not to present a general theology of something. This is something else to keep in mind. It's helpful to see what other Christians have done OK, because if you found a way of putting together versus to build a new doctrine, no one in 20 centuries of Christianity has ever expressed, chances are you've made a mistake. Look, there's been a lot of smart Christians over literally 20 centuries working on stuff. I'm not saying it's going to be impossible that you don't have a new insight that no one's ever had before, but. Chances are somebody else saw it too. So it's helpful to have some knowledge of what other Christians have done, what other Christians think about the subject, and if you want to learn more about doctrinal synthesis, I wrote a document called The Restorationist Manifesto. Definitely my edgiest names academic paper ever. But anyhow, it's sort of like going through the various principles on how to approach the Bible in general and Christian theology in particular. And the idea with the manifesto is to just kind of like lay the cards on the table. As to like how the. Networks and in the appendices, Appendix 2 and Appendix 3I cover and approach to doctrinal synthesis and an approach to evaluating competing doctrines, which is fairly Simply put, you know you can see it's just a few points on each one that you know, maybe may be able to help you when you're. Doing the the business of like figuring out your theology from various verses in the Bible. All right, let's review. When reading scripture, look for clues about authorship, audience, occasion, and purpose. Figure out what a text meant to them first, then figure out what it means to you. Pray, ask God to change you by what you read. Seek his wisdom in applying scripture to your particular situation. Understanding covenants is necessary to figure out if a particular command in Scripture applies to you today. It's easiest to apply scripture when your situation lines up closely with the biblical situation. Recognize that scripture has a limited application, don't extend application beyond the original intention. Sometimes our situations are so different that the best we can do is extract the principle behind a particular instruction. However, applying that principle in a new situation takes wisdom. Ah, a keyword's wisdom. We need wisdom as we interpret and then apply scripture. You remember my story about David Koresh. Study the Bible. Committed very reverent. And yet he ended up getting himself in 70 plus people or however many he was killed. Did not have wisdom. Stockpiling weapons surrounded by the FBI. Look, there's a way out, buddy. OK. And it's not staying inside. Hold up with your weapons pointed at the FBI. OK, that's just not wisdom in that situation. So we need wisdom. Continue with the review. Some instructions in Scripture are culturally. Embedded and obeying them literally would result in new problems. Building general doctrines from biblical texts is sometimes problematic, since scripture often addresses particular situations well. That concludes our four sessions on how to read the Bible, like why should you read your Bible, what the Bible is, how to read it in context, and now how to apply it. There are overviews of each of these different subjects, and now what we're going to do is in our next time we're going to, we're going to take a section of Scripture and we're going to think about how to read just that section. We'll be adding more on to what you've already learned and some repetition as well and what we're going to look at. Versus Old Testament historical narrative, it's just the best. It's the easiest you read it. It's interesting. Crazy stuff happens that you couldn't even make up. Like I didn't see that coming. Right? You can really benefit a lot from reading this as we continue through this class on. How to read the Bible for your? 

Well that Brings this session to a close. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find Episode 534 part four of our read the Bible for yourself class how to determine content and application and leave your feedback, questions, corrections, concerns there on episode. 531, which was part one of this class. Why should you read the Bible for yourself? Jeff wrote in the Hebrew name of the Messiah yahshua. And what his name means is more evidence in support of the Unitarian position that God is not Jesus. The Hebrew name yahshua means ya is salvation. The name Jesus derived from the Greek doesn't mean this. This has been lost in translation and he goes on from there to talk about the different names in the Bible. Now this is something I brought up before and I am kind of on a campaign. Admittedly, against people insisting that we use non-english names for people in the Bible, especially Jesus. And I've commented about this a couple of times and I think I'm just going to keep. Beating this drum because this just keeps coming up over and over again and that is there is no word. There is no word yahshua in the Bible, in any language, full stop. This is a made-up word by people that don't know Hebrew. The Hebrew name for Joshua, the individual from the Old Testament who took over after Moses, is Yehoshua. Or yeshua. It is not yahshua. There is no yahshua in the Hebrew Bible. Sorry, this is a fake name that was made-up because Messianic Christians who were really big into Hebrew roots wanted to say the name in that way. And I I don't know if this is just an English phenomenon where we hear the AH sound from Joshua and. The AH sound in Yahweh, and we're like, Oh yeah, Yasha. Well, that sounds great. Well, it's just not factual. It's not true. The Hebrew translations of the New Testament will use the. It will use the name Yeshua or Yehoshua, but they're not going to use yahshua. To me there's just such an irony. Having studied Hebrew and still reading my Hebrew Bible just about every day trying to do the hard work here and being corrected by somebody who obviously doesn't read Hebrew. On how to say the name Jesus, it is frustrating. I'm just going to admit that. One of the claims he makes is that the name Jesus does not mean yah is salvation or Yahweh is salvation. Yes it does. It's just the English translation of the name. From the Greek language, which is from the Hebrew language, I get that, but it it doesn't change the meaning of the name. If you call me Juan or Sean or John. It doesn't change the meaning of the name. My name is Sean. It's a Gaelic name which is a translation from the word John, which is from Yohanan, which is maybe from Yonatan. I don't know, but my point is you you have different ways of saying the same name. It does not change the meaning of the name, so that's that's another false claim. And look, I am all for freedom in Christ. If you want to call Jesus Yahshua and name that he never knew a name that nobody ever called him a name that's not on record before recent times when Hebrew roots movements got started. Fine. Fine, do that. I don't think Jesus will be offended by you changing his name to sound more like the name of God in Scripture. Fine. But. But here's where the problem comes in. When you're going to correct everybody else and insist that everyone else. Use this fictitious name or insist that everyone use the name Yeshua or Yehoshua. Look. These are Hebrew names. We are not speaking the Hebrew language. If we're speaking Hebrew, we would say the Hebrew name. We're speaking English. And so long as you're having this conversation with me in English, I'm going to insist on Jesus. Now if you want to write your comment in the Hebrew language and spell out Yeshua in the Hebrew language or Yehoshua, that's fine. I'm not going to challenge that. I'm not going to write Jesus back to Yehoshua when you're writing in the Hebrew language, but so long as we're in English, hey, man, that's that's what his name is in English. And if it was in Spanish, we're having this conversation. His name is. Hey. It was. And for you to call him Jesus. It's kind of inappropriate if you're speaking the Spanish language. Right? So it's just the way language works, and I'll leave it there. Mark wrote in on the same episode in response to Sean's comment, which I replied to last week. He says As for the series, I guess I may not exactly be the target audience, generally a bit elementary. Animation. Nevertheless, I'll be listening because it's still enjoyable. I just want to respond to this comment you made here, Mark. First of all, I so appreciate you listening as I do appreciate all the listeners that TuneIn to rest of studio, whether you do that on an app, on your phone or you do. It on a. Computer, whether you're subscribed through a podcast app. Or you're listening to this on YouTube. So appreciate all of you who listen in and who share the show. Now, mark. Mark brings up the issue of the target audience who is the target audience for this? Read the Bible for yourself. Us he's right. This is more elementary material than I have typically done in the past. I sort of assumed that people had a working knowledge of the Bible in the past, and many probably most of the classes that I've taught with probably the exception of why Christianity, because that was mostly apologetics and just talking about. General reasons to believe in God and the Bible and Christianity. So that is true, but I think I go deep enough that if you haven't been through seminary, you probably will still get a lot out of this class, because I'm going to be going section by section, through Scripture and giving giving sort of 30,000 foot overviews that a lot of times people don't get. You know, they they read the Bible, they're in the. Which is and they don't necessarily know how the book of Leviticus relates to the Book of Deuteronomy, or how the wisdom literature fits together. Having general or conventional wisdom in the books of proverbs and a few of the Psalms versus the subversive wisdom that's available in job. And Ecclesiastes versus the romantic wisdom that's given to us in the song of songs. So I think this class will be helpful to even advanced Christians who have read through the Bible multiple times. But really, I think Mark, you're right, there is a lot of elementary material here. And what I am looking to do is to generate a class that will help somebody who is not experienced with the Bible to get their bearings and get started and to read the Bible profitably. So on that note, if you. No such people. Maybe you have kids. Maybe you have friends. From work, maybe you have a niece or a nephew, or a grandchild that you think would be a good candidate to learn how to read the Bible for him or herself. Please share this class with them, because that's who it's for. We've got this on YouTube as a video class on YouTube. It's just audio. We've got it on. Apple Podcasts on Spotify on whatever podcast app you use, and it can really help people to get their bearings to get through the Bible. Because I I'm such a big believer that if you can get addicted to reading the Bible, that if you can develop a hunger for Scripture, as I said in in the. This episode, then God can work with you. He can help you to be troubled by erroneous theological beliefs that you may hold, and it will help you to have the staying power like an anchor in the midst of the waves and the tides and the currents of our culture that are always tugging you in different directions. That's always difficult to know. Is this really a good idea? Is this a bad idea? What does God think about this? And so that's the inside scoop of Scripture is helping us to see what does God think about this? What moral issues are just simple and black and white, and you can just easily figure out and what moral issues does the Bible not address and are more Gray and you have to figure things out. And there are multiple interpretations and you should. And you shouldn't really die on that hill. These are all benefits of developing an overall scope of Scripture and a daily reading habit. So. Please do share this with others that you think we'll enjoy it and we'll learn a lot from it. Mark goes on to comment that the YOU version app does now have Hebrew and Greek in it. Well, I'm glad to hear that when I checked it some years ago, it did not have the original languages and that's primarily what I'm interested in. So I actually use some knockoff app called and Bible. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it actually had the Hebrew and. Greek and it was really helpful. It had lots of other languages too, because I have traveled to other countries and sometimes I need a Swahili translation or a French translation, or a Lingala translation or Tagalog translation. So and so forth. So. So that's what I was using. But I I don't even think that app is around anymore. And as I mentioned in the episode. I did switch to logos for my phone app and I found that to be very good, very helpful. Maybe not quite as easy to use as EU version, but it does have more accurate and up-to-date resources on it. So for example Mark you mentioned the SBL Greek New Testament. You know that's fine, that's that's a fine sort of like public domain Greek translation, but it's it's not quite as good as the Nestle, Alan. 28 or the Tyndale House Greek, which are available on these other apps and on a coordinates as well, if you're a Mac user iPhone user. And then, uh, for the Hebrew, you know, the BHS is still kind of the standard, uh, looking forward to when version five will be coming out. So yeah, I'm just a total nerd. Snob. Cannot really get along in the queue version, but I think for 90% of people it probably does everything they need it to do. But yes, thanks Mark for that correction. I appreciate it. To me, it doesn't matter what app you use for reading the Bible, I think what matters the most is that you find some way that works for you. So many people love paper. Labels and you know there's so many advantages of reading a paper Bible. I personally use paper Bibles for decades and decades, and then I went to. I just use it on my laptop now and I just read it there and I can highlight it and I can look stuff up. And that's where I'm at now. Maybe I'll go back to paper after that. Maybe I'll get a brain implant. Who knows what the future holds? Well, that's enough for today. Thanks everyone for listening here to the end. If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitutio.org. We'll catch you next week. And remember, the truth has nothing to fear.