Video Transcript: Basic Interpretation

Welcome back to this short course on so you've been asked to speak  somewhere. Last time, you know, we just did some introductory stuff. I'm in fact,  where do messages come from? Well, today I want to introduce you to what I'm  going to call two different kinds of messages. And when we look at how to take a message from the Bible, and again, that's my primary emphasis as you've been  asked to preach somewhere, but this fits anywhere. But if you're looking at the  Bible, there are two different ways that you can approach the scriptures. One is  called exegesis. And the other would be called topical, or I'm going to give you a couple of different words for that initially, so exegesis, and topical. Now the word exegesis means from out of In other words, the message is going to come from  out of the passage that you are looking at. And so you're going to do an in depth study of a particular passage. And in that process, you're going to look at those  things that are on the screen. Now, you're going to look at the historical context,  you're going to look at Bible issues, you're going to look at symbols, you're going to look at rational thought, or in other words, you're going to think through how  all of this fits together. Now, they're just to make a comment on each of those for a few moments. First of all Bible issues, just want to make a comment about  that. And that when you're doing a deep dive into a particular passage, you have to keep in mind the whole of Scripture. So you want to have in mind the fact that you are not in some way or another contradicting another passage of scripture  as you form your message. So you have those things in mind. But then you  want to look at the historical context. In other words, what did this Bible passage mean for those original hearers? What is the context of that message? And just  to give you an example of how that might work? Yeah, I was doing a message  recently on the seven churches of Revelation, a series of messages. And you  may remember in Revelation chapter three, that there is a letter to the church  and Laodicea Revelation chapter three. And one of the things that Jesus says  there to that church in Laodicea as he's speaking in the book of Revelation is,  you are neither hot nor cold. Therefore, I'm going to spew you out of my mouth,  how I wish you were either hot or cold. Now, the traditional interpretation of that  passage that doesn't look at the historical context is, you've got to spend more  time in Bible study, you got to spend more time in the Word, you got to spend  more time, faithfully coming to worship, and engaging in those kinds of things.  But if we look at the context of how that was said, and where it was said, they  said, different nuance to the message, for instance, Colossae, the picture you  see there, and the Lycus, river that partly way up the mountain. And so it was  known for its cold water. In fact, many years ago, now I had the privilege of  standing on that hillside, where Colossae stood at one point, it is now totally  ruined, there's no nothing there to see. Collect pottery shards, and that sort of  thing. But I was with a group and we had communion together. And one of the  things we celebrated was the cold water, there was a stream coming down  there, and it was coming off the mountain. So you know, snow melts, and cold 

water comes down. And so Colossae was known for cold, refreshing water.  Now, here Hierapolis, which is also in view of Laodicea, and Colossae.  Hierapolis was known for its hot water springs. In fact, if you want to try  something, you should look that up online, and just look for a picture of  Hierapolis. And you'll see what often happens in hot water springs is that the  sulfur is coming up. But there's this forming of white kind of layers of crystal kind of stuff coming down the side of the mountain as the water comes down there.  But Hierapolis was known as a place that people would go to find healing in the  hot springs. And in fact, it was particularly known for soldiers. Soldiers who had  been injured would go to Hierapolis and they would spend a time recuperating  their of their wounds and felt like the hot water helped that process. So now you  put that context, that historical context into that idea of Laodicea being told you  are neither hot nor cold. It doesn't mean just just do more in your Christian life  just to study more, spend more time in prayer, etc. But it means what do you  identify as? Are you somebody who's helping people, are you are you a church  that is engaging and refreshing people in healing people How I wish you were  you were either hot or cold, you know, are you refreshing people who need it are healing people who need it. And because you're neither, I'm going to spew you  out of my mouth. That's just one example. But if we look at the historical context, we're going to get insight into what God meant back then. So that we can have a better idea of what it means now. Now, in addition to that, you look at this  historical context, we talked about Bible issues, you look at symbols. Now. There are a variety of symbols in Scripture, you know, the lion can represent Jesus,  he's known as the Lion of Judah, now that's an important symbol, right? And you can develop that in a message as one of the characteristics of a lion. But a lion  can also be a symbol of Satan, our enemy, prowls around like a lion, seeking  whom he may devour. And so we look at that symbol in the context, what does  that mean? Sheep are often used as a scripture symbol, and they are a symbol  of waywardness a tendency to wander All we like sheep have gone astray, we  have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity  of us all. prophecy of Isaiah, so it can be a symbol of something, bread and wine become a symbol, they become a symbol of food and nutrients going into our  body, but Jesus takes them and empowers them with a new symbol. And that  symbol becomes the symbol of the life giving presence of Jesus, spiritual  feeding that we get in communion. So when we're looking at a deep dive into a  particular passage, we want to look at what are the symbols in this passage,  there are symbols like snake, a snake is mostly in Scripture, a symbol of Satan.  And fact, I have a marvelous time. Many, many years ago, I was in a class that  went up into the mountains of Georgia to a snake handlers meeting. This is a  small group, I believe that the end of Mark says these signs will follow those  who believe they will handle snakes and not be injured, etc, etc. So they take  this as a command, but they've got to do this. So in their worship services, 

they're handling the poisonous snakes, rattlers that they caught in the  mountains. And so we went there as a group of doctoral students unbelievably  sitting in there. But the preacher was an old man in his 70s. At that time, Ive got  to watch how I say that now that I'm approaching that, but and he just followed  that image of a snake all the way through Scripture. And so most often, it's a  symbol of Satan. But sometimes it's a symbol of Jesus, where, you know, in the  book of Numbers, when there's a plague going through the camp, they have to  look to this serpent that's raised on a pole, for their healing and salvation. So,  we look at symbols, we look at all of these sorts of things. Now, exegetical  passage. This is Kevin Smith, who teaches at South African Theological  Seminary, and he put the idea of exegesis pretty well. And so I'm quoting from  him here. The scriptures are the inspired Word of God. The primary goal of  biblical interpretation is to discover the author-intended meaning. Each text has  one author-intended, meaning, meaning. So when you're doing this, you ask a  couple of questions. What did this passage mean then? In other words, back  when this was written, whether it's an Old Testament passage, or a New  Testament passage, when this passage was written, what did those original  readers get from it? What are those original hearers get from it? What was God  trying to communicate to them, and how it fit to their world? And then you look at scripture and say, what does it mean Now? In today's world, how can I make  this applicable to today? In fact, one of the old, old preachers that doesn't quite  fit anymore, but he said, you know, you should always pre prepare your  sermons with the Bible. In one hand of the newspaper in the other. Today we'd  say, you know, that you have online resources that you're looking at together.  What did it mean then? And what does it mean Now? The next kind of preaching is topical preaching or it's sometimes referred to as free text preaching, or  synthetic outlining, and that'll become clear as I describe the process that  happens with this kind of topical preaching one word here as before we go on,  and that is most people who have are not used to preaching are not used to  speaking in front of people will begin with topical kinds of messages. And that's  okay. There are a variety of strengths to this that we're going to look at, but the  process is that you're looking at a variety of scriptures and how they impact  people's lives. And how can I present this positively to people? So the process is this. The preacher starts with a topic. You know, that topic could be marriage, it  could be divorce, it could be, you know, when you when somebody's hurting,  where is God when it hurts, and many find Bible passages that deal with that  topic, seeking key principles. In other words, what, what principles can we learn  from this, and then he arranges those key passages and principles to exhort or  encourage people. And then you find anecdotes and quotes that will help people connect to that. And then you'll come to a conclusion to Apply that truth. Now,  that's a process that you go through, right, instead of starting with one passage,  you're looking at a bunch of them, and you look at everything you can find on it. 

And then you say, what's going to help people and you begin forming into a  message that you believe is going to be heard well, by people. Now, having said that, there are some real pros to this. It allows exploration of a Bible truth be on  a single passage, it encourages seeing the Bible as a whole. Because not all  truth is contained in one place. There's an application of felt needs is one of the  best ways to preach, felt needs, like anger, management, etc, etc. And great  Bible themes and doctrines are best explored this way. And then you can't really  explore things like omniscience or omnipresence, without grabbing on to this  idea of using many scripture passages. So there are big positives to this. There  are some negatives, one, many times you can take a verse out of context other  than sense of the whole passage. And it can mean something different. In fact,  you can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to say, if you take  enough verses out of context, you know, one of those, one of the great old  sermon examples of that is the guy who wanted to find God's will open the Bible, and he popped it open and did one of these things, putting his finger down. And  he looked at and said, Judas went and hanged himself. That can't be God's will  for me. So he did it again, give it another shot and did it. And they read, go and  do likewise. That can't be God's will. So he opens it again, flops it the open, puts his finger down. What thou doest do quickly. Obviously, it's an old, old sermon  illustration. But the idea is, you can make the Bible say anything, about slavery,  about marriage, about divorce, about racism, you could, you could make it say  anything you want, if you just take selected pictures. So one of the cons is,  sometimes you have to be you have to be very, very careful that you don't take  verses out of context. Now, second con is moral lessons rather than the whole  counsel of God, sometimes scripture, instead of looking at that passage,  becomes just a little moral lesson. I was part of that, and a Sunday School skit  that we did a skit on a passage, and the moral lesson was you got to work hard.  That's not the point of this passage. If you only do topical centered preaching,  you'll become need centered as a main way of preaching and that will be an  overall weakness for you. And oftentimes, the preacher then focuses on his own agenda, rather than God. So those would be the cons to this kind of preaching.  Just as an example. Let me give you an example of an outline of a topical  sermon. This person, you'll notice that this is compiled by  

www.onlinesermonsforbusypastors.com. This is available online. But this person did a topical sermon. Insights into winning the spiritual battles of life, we have  three enemies, the devil, the word, the flesh, each one has a different proof text.  And we have to battle fronts, personal holiness, personal witness two proof  texts, we have two weapons, the armor of God and the Word of God and proof  texts. That's an extreme example of a topical sermon, I would look at this as a  people are going to start tuning out to keep flipping around in the Bible that  much, etc. But this is an example of the outline that comes with topical sermons. So you choose the kind of sermon you want. And next time, we're going to look 

more carefully at okay, how do you approach putting this message that you have in your heart at this point, it's not your head. How do you go about putting it  together? We'll see you next time.