1424 - "Assumptions in Understanding the Bible"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1424. Today we're going to look at assumptions. Because how we approach the Word of God, how we reverence it, look at it, study it will make a difference in how we interpret it. Our hermeneutic or our method of discovery makes all the difference in the world. Most of you know that I have done an entire series, both video and audio podcast of hermeneutics, how to interpret the word of God. How do we discover the word of God? How do we discover the truths in the Word of God? And I boil that down to basically five basic realities. The first one is that God lives in the life of every believer and He will aid us, He will help us, He will illumine us because He is the only one that can. The Holy Spirit of God inspired every word, every syllable of the Bible. And because of that, He can help us to understand it. The moment you and I come to trust Jesus alone for our salvation, and we're born into the family of God as His children, one of the privileges is that we have God Himself living inside of us through the person of the Holy Spirit. And so there's a lot of assumptions we want to make, but in relation to this particular study, I want to give you just a couple. First of all, what I have stated over and over again and I stand by that the Bible is a Jewish book. It was written by Jews to Jews, primarily for Jews. Yes, I know there is wider application. Yes, I know there is a greater audience. But we cannot just skip through that because you or I may not happen to be Jewish. You see, I have no axe to grind with Gentiles. I am a Gentile. I am non Jewish. I in every way though appreciate the Jews. The apostle Paul said do they have advantage? Not in relationship to being placed above Gentiles, they don't have a separate way of salvation, that is the Jews. I do not believe in a dual covenant like many that I've worked with over the years, not a few, but many, especially those who love the Jewish people. Because I think in an effort to try to appease the Jewish population and to reach out in some way, I don't understand why, that they make it different for Jews to be saved. Listen, the only way that Jews can be saved is the same way that Gentiles are saved, and that is through Messiah Jesus. Jesus was speaking to Jews when he said I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. It was to a Jewish man that Jesus said, Nicodemus, you are a religious leader of the Jews. You're part of the Sanhedrin. You are no doubt a wealthy man, you're a smart man. You must be born again. And Nicodemus, who had a great mind, obviously he became a follower of Jesus, and was mentioned in the book of Acts, he was mentioned in the gospels after the death of Jesus, he and Joseph of Arimathea took care of the body of Jesus. All to say, yet he didn't get it. The apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, as he is known before his conversion, he was a Jewish rabbi, studying under the most learned and notable of all the rabbinical leaders of the era of Jesus. His name was Gamaliel the Elder. Gamaliel was the grandson of Helel, the great rabbi that was a contemporary with Jesus early years. Now the reason I'm telling you this is because just because you're Jewish doesn't mean you get it. It doesn't mean that you know everything. But what I can tell you, if you have studied the scriptures down through your generations, and you have been taught the word of God, you've been taught the Tanakh, the law, the prophets and the writings, the Torah, the instructions, and you have studied the Neviim and the Ketuvim, then when you come to know Jesus as the Messiah, all of a sudden all of the things that you've wondered about all your years and things in the Tanakh that you never read because it was not part of the Torah portion, so therefore you didn't bother with it, or it was not part of the Haftor, and you didn't bother with it. Whatever the case is, once you come to know Jesus in a personal way as your Messiah, then all of a sudden everything changes. It's almost like you go to the head of the class. Am I trying to convert you? What I'm trying to do is tell you the truth because I love you enough to tell you the truth. Jew or Gentile has to come through Messiah. And no man, Jew or Gentile, will ever be justified through works of righteousness by doing good deeds. No, that was a Johnny come lately theology that happened only after the destruction of the temple. But you see, we don't have the authority or the right, whether we're Jew or Gentile, to go in and change God's method of salvation. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And I will never back up on that. I will never compromise that. It doesn't matter Jew or Gentile. And even if you take my life, I will just wake up in the wonderful presence of Jesus the Messiah. Because he is the first fruits, that's right. The first fruits, that's a Jewish term. You see, what I want you to understand is that the Bible was written to Jews. It was written by Jews, and primarily it was addressed to Jews. But somehow along the way we forgot that basic assumption of Scripture. Secondly, I would say to you, as far as assumptions, and I'm telling you up front, what are mine, you have them too. But you might not be as honest about it. That's up to you. But I'm telling you my bias is right up front, my presuppositions right up front. I'm telling you the lens and giving you the lens through which I interpret Scripture. And uh I believe without any doubt whatsoever that every Bible writer from Moses to John, that's right, Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the Torah, and was inspired to do so. But the same spirit that inspired him inspired another Jewish young man named John. He was a disciple of Jesus. It was John, the son of Zebedee, and they lived in Bethsida, which is at the northern entrance of the Jordan River into the Sea of Galilee. Bethsida is the house of Hunter. Five of the disciples came from Bethsida, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. And then you had Peter and Andrew. Peter's name was Simon. He was the son of John. As a matter of fact, the Aramaic is used for him in Matthew 16, Simon Barjonh, not Ben Jonah, which is Hebrew, but Barjonh, which is Aramaic, the language Jesus and the disciples would have spoken during that first century period when Jesus lived and they lived. So you had James and John, you had Peter and Andrew, and you had Philip. So five, almost half of the disciples came from that one village. Now the reason I'm telling you that is because they were religious Jews, and I can prove that to you, but that's not the purpose of this podcast. What I want you to understand is that John was Jewish and he was a religious Jew, and he wrote the Gospel of John, he wrote first, second, and third John, and he wrote the Revelation, the last book in the Breat Hadeshiah, the New Testament, the New Covenant. And so the Bible is a Jewish book. Every Bible writer, from Moses to John, assumed, believed, trusted that the people to whom they were writing understood the language, understood the geopolitical situation of that day, they understood the geography that is mentioned and taken for granted that everyone knows a certain way or path or road or village, and that's assumed. Even one of the disciples asked, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? That lets you know that in that period in which Jesus was ministering, the disciples knew that Nazareth was a small village. Everyone knew it. Read Josephus and see where Nazareth is in the populated villages of the Galilee during the days of Jesus, and you'll see everyone knew as a small insignificant village. It wasn't the village or the city that it is today when you go there with eighty thousand people spanning out over and spilling over the top of those lower Galilean mountains and out into almost the valley of Jezreel. No, it was a small village just perched on the side of a hill. And everyone knew that. Everyone knew about Corusine. Everyone knew about all of those places and certainly the environs around Jerusalem. So they knew the geography. They knew the historical setting. And many times those historical settings are mentioned in the Bible. And they're mentioned in books that are generally assumed to be written to Gentiles. In the book of Romans, you read about Jews from the very beginning. I mean in the right in the first chapter opening paragraphs. And then Paul talks about the Jew, and he talks about the condemnation of all of us. In the book of Romans, he uses Abraham. It was assumed that everyone knew the scriptural Abraham. Now I'm telling you all this because it was assumed. Obviously, Corinth, to whom 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians were written, was a cosmopolitan city, people all over the world, but there were Jews there. And it was assumed in those writings that they even knew about the feast because in the longest chapter in the entire New Testament, anywhere in the Bible, older New Testaments, in the Tanakh or in the Barit Hadashah, ever how you want to say it. First Corinthians 15, as it is labeled in our English Bibles, is the longest chapter on the resurrection of the Bible, and it is a reference, and you'll be lost without knowing about the firstfruits and Bicureim, the day of firstfruits, and what all of that signifies, or much of the Jewish analogy of the Moedim of those appointed days, will be lost, and you'll not understand what Paul is talking about, about Jesus being the firstfruits of the resurrection, about the Musterion of God that he talks about in the latter paragraphs of 1 Corinthians 15. I could go on and on. The Bible is a Jewish book. And so somehow we've gotten the idea that all the assumptions in there is that God is finished with the Jews. That is based upon taking a theological grid and placing it over the Word of God, which is called eisegesis, instead of exegesis, reading out of the text and letting then the text inform our theology. This is why I say if you tell me what your hermeneutic is and how you interpret passages, in other words, if it is historical narrative, you must take it as historical narrative. If it is allegory, you must take it as allegory. If it is obviously symbolic or prophetic language or apocalyptic language, you must take it as that. But even within those different categories, if it is historical narrative and there is an analogy that's made or some symbolism that's being used, the natural interpretation of that is to take it as symbolism. But on the other hand, if it's apocalyptic language or it's some prophetic literature that has symbols in it, but then it refers to literal entities or objects, then you have to take it as that. And so sometimes we just get silly with our interpretations and look for some spiritual application behind every word and every letter. When you just need to learn the story of God and learn the story of redemption, if you do that, then that'll help you to interpret the Word of God correctly. Well, that's enough for today. I pray that God will help us all to understand better. Yours truly, doubly included in that. May God bless you as you walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.