{"id":18880,"date":"2017-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-refomation-013\/"},"modified":"2017-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-refomation-013","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-refomation-013\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Refomation 013"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[12],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18880","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-genesis","series_event-protestant-reformation","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Protestant Refomation 013","sermon_date":"20171001","sermon_month":"10","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":5033,"sermon_slides":5000,"sermon_mp3":5014,"sermon_id":"1011795277","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":12,"chapter_and_verse":"15:18-21","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Protestant Reformation\n\n10-1-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Genesis 15:18-21\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lesson 13\n\nLet me open us up in a word of prayer and we\u2019ll get started.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re thankful for this morning and waking us up this morning and giving us a new day to serve You and learn about You.\u00a0 I pray You\u2019ll be with us during Sunday School and the church service that follows and the time at the Lord\u2019s Table and during the fellowship lunch that follows.\u00a0 I just pray that Your Spirit will be at work and edifying us and fortifying us and feeding us.\u00a0 So we invite\u00a0 You to do these great works today in Your church.\u00a0 And we lift up these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said.. Amen.\n\nAll right, I\u2019m going to try to land the plane, this study has been going on for a while on the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 You can open up to the Book of Genesis if you have a copy of\u00a0 your Bible with\u00a0 you; Genesis 15 and verses 18-21.\u00a0 My goal is to finish this series by next week so if you\u2019re here with us for the first time we\u2019re doing a study on the Protestant Reformation and of course it\u2019s now October, isn\u2019t it, today is October 1 isn\u2019t it, so we only have 30 days left until the 31st<\/sup> comes.\u00a0 And you say well, tell me something I don\u2019t know, I know it\u2019s going to be Halloween.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m talking about something more significant than Halloween, October 31st<\/sup> will be the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the Cathedral Door in Wittenberg, Germany, which launched what we call The Protestant Reformation.\n\nSo to help us sort of appreciate that we started a study on that and here\u2019s the outline that we\u2019ve been using.\u00a0 We started with the early church, and the baton of truth that was passed off from the apostles to the first Christians.\u00a0 And particularly in the area of prophecy those folks for the first two centuries of the church took the Bible in a literal sense and they developed a school up north in Syrian, Antioch, and that became sort of the place where people were taught, people were trained, and the literal method of interpretation is alive and well for the first two centuries of the church.\n\nBut then really beginning around the fourth century, and it was formalized really with the writings of Augustine, there was a rival school that was developed in Alexandria, Egypt, down south, and they developed not the literal method of interpretation, which Antioch practiced, but they developed the allegorical method.\u00a0 So we\u2019ve talked about all that, what the allegorical method is, why we don\u2019t think it\u2019s an acceptable method.\u00a0 But sadly what you discover in church history is Alexandria, Egypt won the day and the church is engulfed in allegorization right up until really the 16th<\/sup> century, just prior to the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a period of time that we call the Dark Ages.\u00a0 Some people refer to them as the Middle Ages.\u00a0 But because of allegorization and a lot of other factors that we\u2019ve talked about the net effects of the Dark Ages, which last for over a thousand years in church history, is the Bible that we take for granted is removed from the people.\n\nThe people, first of all, couldn\u2019t read in many cases, and secondly, they were told they couldn\u2019t understand it for themselves because they weren\u2019t schooled in the so-called science of allegorization emanating from Alexandria, Egypt.\u00a0 So this put the sheep (God\u2019s people) in a very vulnerable position during this time and they were taken advantage of by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and they were sold\u2026 there\u2019s what\u2019s called the sale of indulgences, and this is really what upset Martin Luther probably more than anything else.\u00a0 When the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs, and\u00a0 so this became like a money-making racket for the church.\u00a0 And of course you don\u2019t have a Bible to critique what\u2019s being said.\n\nSo this takes us to Roman Numeral IV, The Contribution of the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 And what the Reformers accomplished is they brought back to Christianity the authority of Scripture in five areas that we call the five what?\u00a0 Five solas, and that\u2019s really the great thing that happened beginning with Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\n\nBut, as we have studied, the Protestant Reformers hermeneutical, you know what hermeneutics is, right? It just means interpretation.\u00a0 The Reformers hermeneutical interpretation was incomplete.\u00a0 They took the literal method in certain areas but they didn\u2019t apply it to the whole Bible consistently.\u00a0 And they fossilized the progress that they had made in the form of a creed so the creeds then become the authority rather than the Bible.\u00a0 And therefore the new theology that they started, called Reformed Theology, the new churches that they started, the new institutions of learning that they started steeped in Reformed Theology (and I\u2019ve given you many, many examples of this) to this day remains in this state of fossilization.\u00a0 Reformed theology is kind of a hybrid; it\u2019s Protestant in the area of the five solas but it\u2019s basically Roman Catholic in the area of eschatology, as amillennialism continues to reign in their system.\n\nSo what you have in Reformed Theology, and I gave you a ton of quotes just to prove my point, and I try not to repeat information but I did run across these two quotes, this one and the following, from William Hendricksen, just to show you how Reformed Theology gets into the Book of Revelation and suddenly there are careful rules of grammar and precision and literal interpretation that they use to rescue the church in the area of the five solas.\u00a0 They basically discard that method and it\u2019s almost anything goes.\n\nSo notice this quote from William Hendricksen, a very Reformed, and he writes: \u201cThe expression \u2018a time, and times, and half a time\u2019 occurs first in the Book of Daniel 7:25; 12:7. It is the period of the antichrist. Now, John emphasizes the fact that the spirit of the antichrist is in the world already<\/em>, 1 John 4:3. Hence, in the Apocalypse<\/u>\u201d that\u2019s the Book of Revelation, \u201cthis period of three years and a half refers to the entire gospel age<\/u>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [WM. Hendriksen \u2013 Baker Book House \u2013 1967 \u2013 Chapter 9 - p.174]\n\nSo what he\u2019s saying here is the expression \u201ctime, times and a half a time\u201d which you can very easily show is three and a half years, really doesn\u2019t mean three and a half years; it refers to the whole period of time that we\u2019ve been in for 2,000 years where the gospel has been preached.\u00a0 So you can see what he\u2019s doing here; his literal method of interpretation just got discarded in the area of inter\u00adpreting prophetic literature.\n\nNow Hendricksen makes this comment on page 174 and then if you keep reading his book, same book, and you get to page 226, which is not that far from page 174, page 226 he says, \u201c\u2018Hence, in close harmony with all these Scriptural passages \u2013 and our exegesis must always be based upon the authority of Scripture! \u2013 we conclude that also here in Rev. 20:1-3 the binding of Satan and the fact that he is hurled into the abyss to remain there for a thousand years indicates that throughout this present Gospel Age, which begins with Christ\u2019s first coming and extends nearly to the second coming<\/strong><\/u>, the devil\u2019s influence on earth is curtailed so that he is unable to prevent the extension of the church among the nations by the means of an active missionary program.\u201d\u00a0 [WM. Hendriksen \u2013 Baker Book House \u2013 1967 \u2013 Chapter 14 - p.226]\n\nAnd the quote goes on, but you see what he just did here?\u00a0 First of all, three and a half\u00a0 years he told us on page 176, is the gospel age.\u00a0 All right, so far so good\u2026actually not very good at all because that\u2019s not what three and a half years means, right.\u00a0 Then you get into page 226 and then he says the expression, a thousand years mentioned in the Book of Revelation is really the gospel age.\u00a0 So he\u2019s got two numbers that contradict each other and he\u2019s trying to take two numbers, three and a half, found in Daniel 7 and Daniel 12, and then the number a thousand found in Revelation 20 and he\u2019s trying to say that both numbers equal the gospel age.\u00a0 So not only is he contradicting himself in the same book but he is dispensing with the literal method of interpretation that his movement so carefully used to rescue the church in the area of the five solas.\n\nAnd I\u2019ve given you many, many quotes to this effect and this is basically common in Reformed circles under what\u2019s called Covenant theology.\u00a0 And so the Reformed movement, as I understand it, is almost incapable of developing further progress.\u00a0 It\u2019s stuck in that state and it\u2019s been stuck in that state, really ever since the Protestant Reformers passed off the scene.\u00a0 And so they will take certain passages in the Bible, like the Book of Romans, the Book of Ephesians, the Book of Galatians, the record of Jesus Christ and His life on the earth and the Gospels and all of the numbers that are mentioned in those books, like Christ was twelve years old and went into the temple, or the ministry of Jesus Christ, you can sort of see based on the chronological markers in the Gospels the ministry of Jesus Christ lasted roughly three years, a little over three years.\u00a0 Jesus had twelve disciples, that number is literal.\u00a0 And on and on we could go.\n\nThey\u2019ll take all those numbers literally, but then you get to the Book of Daniel and they get to the Book of Revelation and suddenly the literal method of interpretation disappears and numbers become whatever you want them to be, to the point where these guys in print are contradicting themselves constantly.\u00a0 That is the state of the Reformed movement today.\n\nSo what I believe God began to do, and this takes us to Roman numeral VII, and this is the part of the study that we haven\u2019t looked at yet, what God began to do to complete the revolution begun by the Protestant Reformers is He started to reach outside the Reform movement.\u00a0 In some cases he used men and women within the Reformed movement to basically finish the job that the Protestant Reformers started.\u00a0 And that is, I think a pretty accurate way of looking at Reformed theology today; it\u2019s in a state of incompletion.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a half-baked meal.\u00a0 And the entire church throughout the dark ages is steeped in allegorization.\u00a0 The Reformers rescued the church from allegorization in some areas and we praise the Lord for that, and they did it with great risk to their own personal lives.\u00a0 And so we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 But they left other parts of the Bible steeped in allegorization.\n\nSo what does God have to do to finish the revolution begun by the Protestant Reformers?\u00a0 He has to raise up other people and that is, I believe, largely what God is doing with the dawning of the dispensational movement beginning in the 19th<\/sup> century, really taking root in the 19th<\/sup> century. So I want to basically compare very quickly the Reformed movement and what it accomplished and what\u2019s undone to the dispensational movement which is what we\u2019re a part of here at Sugar Land Bible Church and how that movement completed the unfinished work of the Protestant Reformers.\n\nFirst of all, Reformed theology really starts to come to influence in the 16th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 We have to give the Protestant Reformers a lot of credit because they had the right tool that they used to rescue the church in the five solas, the literal method of interpretation.\u00a0 The downfall of the Protestant Reformers and that movement is they applied the right tool to only some of the Bible.\u00a0 And so the churches today that trace their spiritual lineage directly back to the Protestant Reformers are stuck in that same vein, literal in some areas but very allegorical in other areas.\n\nBut the Protestant Reformers deserve credit because they showed us the right tool, which is the literal method of interpretation, in terms of rescuing the church because they successfully, and I\u2019ve given you many, many quotes from Luther and Calvin and others how they used the literal method of interpretation to retrieve from the Dark Ages something that the Bible taught in the area of the five solas.\n\nJust by way of review,\u00a0 you know the five solas by now, right?\u00a0 These are all Latin expressions: Sola Scriptura<\/em>, Scripture alone, Sola Christus<\/em>, Christ alone, Sola Fide<\/em>, faith alone, Sola Gratia<\/em>, grace alone and then Soli Deo Gloria<\/em>, to the Glory of God alone. \u00a0And that is the contribution of the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 And most of the presentations that you\u2019re going to hear on the Protestant Reformation, and you\u2019re going to start hearing a lot of them as we get closer to October 31st<\/sup>, just out there in the world and also in the church, they\u2019re going to stop the study at that point.\u00a0 But I sort of felt the need to continue on with history and to show you that the groundwork that the Protestant Reformers laid, which was very significant, God had to raise up other people to continue to apply that method to the totality of God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the significance of the dispensational movement.\n\nSo the dispensational movement starts, not in the 16th<\/sup> century, it starts in the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 And all the dispensational movement did is it took the Reformers hermeneutic, or their method of interpret\u00adation and they desire to apply it, not to some of the Bible but to the whole Bible.\u00a0 And one of the questions I\u2019ve gotten as I\u2019ve gone through this is people have asked me, you keep using this word, \u201cliteral method of interpretation,\u201d and what exactly does that mean?\u00a0 When it says in the Bible that the mountains clapped do we actually see the mountains clapping?\u00a0 When it talks about the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the earth seeking someone whose heart is pure do we actually see God with eyeballs?\u00a0 Maybe He\u2019d need a certain prescription to keep His eyes in focus.\n\nAnd so there\u2019s a lot of confusion about what literal method of interpretation means.\u00a0 Somebody, I think it was Bruce, asked me to address the statements that Jesus makes in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, if your right eye causes you to sin what should you do?\u00a0 You should cut it out.\u00a0 I mean, if you\u2019re for a literal interpretation do we actually cut out our eyes.\u00a0 Well, the short answer to that one is no, because even if you cut out your eyes it wouldn\u2019t fix the problem, would it?\u00a0 If your fantasizing about adultery or murder being blind doesn\u2019t necessarily help, right?\u00a0 I can fantasize in the dark just like I can fantasize in the light.\n\nSo I think there Jesus is speaking more in a symbolic sense about dealing drastically with sin.\u00a0 But what does a literal hermeneutic mean?\u00a0 And here\u2019s the definition from a Protestant Biblical inter\u00adpretation by Bernard Ramm.\u00a0 You see, this is what the Reformers gave us, this is what they retrieved from the school of Antioch that had been buried for all of these centuries.\u00a0 And this is what the Reformers\u00a0 used to apply to the area of the five solas.\n\nBernard Ramm explains: A literal hermeneutic attaches to every word the same meaning that that word would have in normal usage, whether employed in speaking, writing or thinking.\u00a0 So you\u2019re reading in the Bible and you come across the word \u201cBethlehem\u201d and you don\u2019t interpret it Bethlehem as Jerusalem; if\u00a0 you interpret the word Bethlehem as Jerusalem or some other city you\u2019re not paying attention to what the text says.\u00a0 In other words, Bethlehem is going to carry the basic meaning that that word has, particular in biblical times, in ordinary writing, speaking or thinking.\u00a0 So you\u2019re trying to put yourself in a position of the original audience and you\u2019re trying to ask yourself how would they understand that basic term.\u00a0 Would they reinterpret it as something else?\u00a0 And our answer is no, they would have understood it in their ordinary sense because God\u2019s goal at the end of the day is to do what?\u00a0 To communicate.\u00a0 And how can the communication process take place when we take things that God has said and we just apply our own meaning to them.\n\nSo we talk a lot about the literal, grammatical, historical, contextual method of interpretation.\u00a0 Literal, if you were to look up the word \u201cliteral\u201d in the Oxford Dictionary, literally what literal means is by the letters.\u00a0 That\u2019s what that word means.\u00a0 In other words, when you\u2019re reading something in the Bible you\u2019re interpreting what\u2019s there rather than bringing a bunch of baggage from the outside and reinterpreting what\u2019s there.\u00a0 Grammar\u2026 grammar matters, and God sovereignly chose to have the New Testament recorded in the Greek language and most of the Old Testament, with a couple of Aramaic sections God chose to have the Old Testament recorded in the Hebrew language.\u00a0 And so you\u2019re trying to study those original languages and you\u2019re paying attention to things like grammar, syntax, sentence structure, which is what you would do when you\u2019re interpreting anything.\u00a0 Right?\n\nIf it\u2019s in the Bible or not because once a message becomes encapsulated in linguistic form language has laws that govern it.\u00a0 Just like mathematics has laws, science has laws, biology has laws, engineering has laws, the legal world has laws (they probably have too many laws\u2026 in my opinion), but every discipline has laws that govern it and that\u2019s how language functions.\u00a0 So immediately when God took his message and encapsulated it into the Bible, into linguistic form, certain laws take over to understand what God has said.\u00a0 And so your goal as an interpreter of the Bible is the same goal you have in interpreting anything else, whether it be the newspaper or what have you you\u2019re interpreting what is being said according to the laws of language.\n\nSo literal, that\u2019s what grammatical means, historical basically means that each book of the Bible was written in a historical context.\u00a0 We read about Paul\u2019s letter to the Ephesians.\u00a0 Well, we ask ourselves what era was that?\u00a0 Where was Paul when he wrote it?\u00a0 He was in Rome.\u00a0 Who was he writing to?\u00a0 He was writing to a group of people called the Ephesians at the church at Ephesus.\u00a0 How did they understand history?\u00a0 How did they understand language?\u00a0 So you\u2019re basically transporting yourself backward in time and you\u2019re trying to figure out with all of the historical aids that we have available today, how would the original recipients have understood this.\n\nAnd we have literal grammatical historical, then we have contextual.\u00a0 In other words you\u2019re trying to read things in their original context without sort of hop-scotching around and piecing things together that don\u2019t belong together.\u00a0 So should we cut out our eyes because Jesus said if your right eye makes you sin pluck it out?\u00a0 The answer to that is no based on the context; in the Sermon on the Mount what is the context?\u00a0 What is Jesus dealing with there?\u00a0 If He dealing with severed body parts or is He dealing with something else?\u00a0 He\u2019s dealing with the heart, isn\u2019t he?\u00a0 He\u2019s dealing with heart issues and He says if you\u2019re unjustifiably angry with your brother you\u2019re a murderer; if you are fantasizing about adultery you\u2019re already an adulterer.\n\nSo these are heart issues and because these are heart issues Jesus is using a figure of speech called a hyperbole.\u00a0 What is a hyperbole?\u00a0 It\u2019s a deliberate exaggeration to communicate an idea.\u00a0 And what Jesus is saying is deal with those issues in your life that are causing your heart to stumble dramat\u00adically.\u00a0 So if\u00a0 you\u2019re on your computer and you keep looking at pornography you need to deal with the dramatically.\u00a0 Maybe you should not have a computer would be an application.\u00a0 Or maybe you should have somebody given authority to have accountability over your life where they can actually see the things you\u2019ve been viewing all week.\u00a0 So that would be an application of what Jesus is saying concerning \u201cpluck out your eye.\u201d\u00a0 And I\u2019m reaching those conclusions because I\u2019m studying the Sermon on the Mount here in its proper context.\u00a0 The context is the heart.\n\nSo literal\u2014take words in their ordinary sense.\u00a0 Grammatical\u2014pay attention to the laws of language.\u00a0 Historical\u2014seek to understand the history and the time frame in which these things were written.\u00a0 What would these things have meant to the original audience.\u00a0 And then contextual\u2014you\u2019re looking at things in their proper context.\u00a0 Then after\u00a0 you\u2019ve done all that work then you develop your application.\u00a0 How does this truth that I\u2019ve studied apply to my own life?\u00a0 How would I, as a preacher, apply these truths to other people\u2019s lives.\u00a0 And that really is what the school of Antioch was teaching for the first two centuries and that\u2019s what got lost and this is what the Reformers reclaimed in certain areas relative to the five solas.\n\nWe all know what a straw man fallacy is, right?\u00a0 A straw man fallacy is where you misrepresent\u00a0 your opponent\u2019s position and then you tear down your misrepresentation.\u00a0 And if you want to see this in play just watch politicians do this; they do this all the time\u2026 if you vote for my opponent he\u2019s going to steal your Social Security check, and everybody gets all scared and the fact of the matter is the poor guy never said anything about social security, but suddenly that is attributed to him and the fellow making the assertions then tears down the misconstruction he\u2019s just created.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a logical fallacy because you\u2019re not dealing with what your opponent is actually saying, you\u2019re dealing with your misrepresentation.\u00a0 And it\u2019s called a straw man fallacy because a man of straw topples over very fast.\n\nSo as literal interpreters we get a straw man thrown at us all of the time.\u00a0 And the straw man is this: well, you guys don\u2019t believe in figures of speech.\u00a0 You want to cut your eyes out, you want to cut out the eyes of other people\u2026 no I don\u2019t because that\u2019s a hyperbole there in Matthew 5, a figure of speech.\u00a0 You believe God has eyeballs; you believe the mountains clap.\u00a0 And in fact, you guys are so ignorant, remember this one heading, she showed me this on her phone, I said can I use that as an illustration, you guys are so ignorant when you read a sign that says \u201cin case of fire take the stairs,\u201d I mean, you\u2019re actually taking the stairs out of the building and running off with them.\n\nSo whenever you stand up today and you begin to promote literal interpretation this is the straw man argument that will be hurled at\u00a0 you.\u00a0 The fact of the matter is every literal interpreter who\u2019s written on this area that I can think of always makes room for figures of speech when they\u2019re conspicuous in the text.\n\nSo Charles Ryrie, one of the great defenders of literal interpretation writes this: \u201cLiteral interpretation \u2018\u2026might also be called plain interpretation so that no one receives the mistaken notion that the literal principle rules out figures of speech<\/u>.\u201d\u2019\u00a0 [Dispensationalism<\/em> (Chicago: Moody Press, 1965), 86.] So Ryrie was so badly misrepresented with the word \u201cliteral\u201d that he just quit using the word even though the word makes sense when you understand what it\u2019s saying. He started using the word plain because in plain language you can communicate literally or you can communicate figuratively.\n\nAnd I want to introduce you to a book by E. W. Bullinger;\u00a0 I don\u2019t agree with everything E. W. Bullinger said and wrote but he was a phenomenal intellect.\u00a0 He lived from 1837-1913 and the book I want to call your attention to is called Figures of Speech in the Bible<\/em>.\u00a0 And I was going to bring it in today, kind of like show and tell, but I forgot it, but when you hold it up it\u2019s a thousand pages.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a wonderful book because he identifies every possible figure of speech you can have in the whole Bible, even figures of speech you may have never even heard of.\u00a0 He talks about simile, about comparison of two things with the expression like or as.\u00a0 Metonymy, a comparison of two things (if I remember right) without the words like or as.\u00a0 Hyperbole, deliberate exaggeration to get across an idea.\u00a0 Personification, ascribing to an inanimate object, like when it talks about the earth is groaning in Romans 8 we don\u2019t put our ear to the ground and actually hear an audible groan.\u00a0 It\u2019s a personification where he is, Paul there in Romans 8, is ascribing to an inanimate object the earth, a living quality.\n\nAnd he goes on and on like this for a thousand pages identifying every possible figure of speech.\u00a0 And you can see when he lived, 1837-1913 and guess what?\u00a0 His book is still the standard book on this subject, to this very date, 2017.\u00a0 So you know you\u2019ve done a good job in your book if number one, it\u2019s a thousand pages.\u00a0 And number 2, it outlasts your lifetime and is still the standard on the subject of figures of speech.\n\nNow Bullinger, and I don\u2019t agree with all of his conclusions but Bollinger stood on this idea of literal interpretation.\u00a0 So when somebody throws this straw man argument at you\u2026 oh, you believe in literal interpretation therefore you don\u2019t believe in figures of speech\u2026 think of Bullinger and think of this book that he wrote.\u00a0 Literal interpreters are very sensitive to figures of speech.\u00a0 In fact, the greatest book ever written on figures of speech in the Bible comes from E. W. Bullinger.\n\nNow here\u2019s my slide that I borrowed from Earl Radmacher and I\u2019m embarrassed to put it up because at the top I misspelled interpretation so here I\u2019m talking about interpretation and I misspelled it so you guys can cross out that extra letter, I think there\u2019s an extra \u201ct\u201d in there.\u00a0 But Earl Radmacher basically says all language has two parts to it.\u00a0 Whenever you try to communicate with somebody you\u2019re communicating in one form or another form.\u00a0 And the two methods of communication are number 1, plain literal, and the other method of communication is figurative literal.\u00a0 Radmacher says, \u201cliteral interpretation is the explicit assertion<\/u> of the words,\u201d we would call that denotative language, and figurative literal is the literal interpretation is the specific intention <\/u>of the figure.\u00a0 We would call that connotative language.\n\nSo anytime someone is communicating with someone they are only using one of two methods of communication; they\u2019re either communicating denotatively, plain literal, or connotatively, what Radmacher calls figurative literal.\u00a0 So this morning my wife asked me how did you sleep.\u00a0 And I say I slept pretty good, I slept in till 8:30 a.m. (which is true, actually it was 8:38 a.m.) and I slept like a log.\u00a0 So you\u2019ll notice that in that sentence I used both forms of communication.\u00a0 When I say to my wife \u201cI slept in till 8:30 a.m.\u201d what method of communication am I using?\u00a0 Plain literal or denotative.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t say to me well what do you mean by 8:30 or 8:38, is that some kind of secret code in there?\u00a0 She is an inherently language speaking being just as I am an inherently existing language speaking being and so she knows, generally, when I\u2019m speaking literally or when I\u2019m speaking figuratively.\u00a0 But right in the middle of the sentence I say I slept \u201clike\u201d a log and my wife doesn\u2019t say well, our last name is Woods, and are you saying that you turned into a piece of wood in the middle of the night.\u00a0 She knows that I\u2019m not saying that because of the word \u201clike\u201d or \u201cas.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, obviously I\u2019m using a simile.\n\nSo generally what happens in communication is you try to just take the text for what it says until you discover something obvious in the text, like the word \u201clike\u201d or \u201cas\u201d or a few other clues which say well, wait a minute, they\u2019re not communicating here literally but they\u2019re communicating figuratively.\u00a0 And of course the danger is always trying to interpret somebody figuratively when they really want to be understood literally.\u00a0 Or interpreting someone inverse, they want to be understood figuratively and\u00a0 you interpret them literally.\u00a0 That\u2019s the danger and that\u2019s what has to be avoided.\n\nSo one time I took my coffee and I put it into my microwave oven and I forgot to turn the microwave oven off so the coffee was heating up and I was in the office in the other room, I\u2019d forgotten that I had put the coffee in the microwave oven and the coffee cup starts to boil over.\u00a0 So my wife yells out to me, \u201choney, your cup is overflowing.\u201d\u00a0 And I had forgotten I had left the cup in there and I said you know, my cup is overflowing, I mean, I am so blessed and God has blessed me and this kind of stuff.\u00a0 So that would be an example where she\u2019s trying to be understood denotatively; I\u2019m misunderstanding her as connotatively.\n\nBut the fact of the matter is you run that danger in any communication you have.\u00a0 And 99% of the time you can figure out what\u2019s literal and what\u2019s figurative and it\u2019s the same issue you have in the Bible.\u00a0 Is the author wanting to be understood literally here or is the author wanting to be\u00a0 under-stood figuratively here.\u00a0 Generally speaking when the Bible wants to be understood figuratively it\u2019ll give you a clue, just like my statement to my wife, \u201clike\u201d or \u201cas\u201d gives her a clue \u201cI slept like a log\u201d gives her a clue that I am speaking figuratively and not literally.\n\nNotice Galatians 4:24, it\u2019s speaking there of Sarah and Hagar and Paul says, \u201cThis is allegorically speaking<\/u>, for these women<\/em> are two covenants: one proceeding<\/em> from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar.\u201d\u00a0 Now generally in the Bible the Sarah and Hagar story, Genesis 16, right in there and following, you take those two characters, Sarah and Hagar literally.\u00a0 But here in the New Testament Paul is using the two, Sarah and Hagar, to develop a spiritual idea. \u00a0Now I am not free nilly-willy to go into the Bible and assign allegorized inter\u00adpretations to historical events unless the what?\u00a0 The text tells me.\u00a0 What\u2019s the giveaway word here?\u00a0 I have it underlined, \u201cThis is allegorically<\/u> speaking,\u201d aha, there\u2019s my clue, the author is not wanting to be understood, in this case denotatively but he is wanting to be understood what?\u00a0 Connotatively.\n\nAnd if I didn\u2019t have that little phrase there, \u201callegorically speaking\u201d I would have no permission to allegorize Sarah and Hagar.\u00a0 And when the Bible gives us permission to allegorize the Bible itself will give us the interpretation of the allegory.\u00a0 I can\u2019t come in and just interpret the allegory any way I want based on my own sanctified imagination.\u00a0 I have to follow with the interpretation that the text gives.\u00a0 So you see how the game is played here this game of communication.\u00a0 You\u2019re taking the text for what it says unless the text itself gives you a hint that the author is not wanting to be understood denotatively but connotatively; not plainly but figuratively.\n\nHere\u2019s another example in the Book of Revelation, chapter 11 and verse 8, it\u2019s speaking of the two witnesses in the tribulation period, \u201c\u201cAnd their dead bodies will lie<\/em> in the street of the great city\u201d now at the end it identifies the great city, where \u201ctheir Lord was crucified.\u201d\u00a0 So what city would it be?\u00a0 The city of Jerusalem.\u00a0 But then John, in the Book of Revelation says I want to come alongside that truth and I want to add another meaning to it, the city is \u201cmystically is called<\/u> Sodom\u201d Sodom I think would represent moral depravity, and the city is also mystically called \u201cEgypt,\u201d Egypt I think would represent bondage because that\u2019s where the children of Israel were taken in the time of Moses for 400 years, into bondage.\u00a0 And so what John is doing is he is showing that it is the city of Jerusalem where these two witnesses are killed but this city is out of fellowship with God\u00a0 It\u2019s an\u00a0 unbelieving city which is probably why the antichrist, the beast, comes on the scene and kills these two witnesses in the city streets of Jerusalem.\n\nNow I would not have permission at all to come along with a subsequent mystical or allegorical interpretation unless I had this clue in the text which says what? \u201cwhich mystically is called.\u201d\u00a0 Do the expression, \u201cwhich mystically is called\u201d is my clue that I\u2019m given another meaning to be added on top of the original one and allegorical meaning would be appropriate.\u00a0 The exact same thing in Galatians 4:24.\n\nSo I really like the way David Cooper, a great Bible scholar from a prior era, sums this up.\u00a0 He writes this: \u201c\u201cWhen the plain sense<\/u> of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal <\/u>meaning unless the facts of the immediate context,\u201d things like mystically is called, things like allegorically speaking, \u201cunless the facts of the immediate context studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.\u201d\u00a0 [The World\u2019s Greatest Library Graphically Illustrated<\/em> (Los Angeles: Biblical Research Society, 1970), 11]\n\nSo you take the Bible based on its ordinary use of language unless there\u2019s something in the text that tells you not to do that.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re consistent with that from Genesis to Revelation guess what\u00a0 you\u2019re doing?\u00a0 You\u2019re allowing the authority to remain where?\u00a0 In the text.\u00a0 If you deviate from this method of interpretation and you just begin to spiritualize things that aren\u2019t meant to be interpreted spiritually then the authority in the interpretive process transfers from the text to the mind of the interpreter.\n\nAnd that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s going on with this battle of literal interpretation.\u00a0 The issue really what it comes down to is who is going to be in control here.\u00a0 And if you follow the issues going on with our Supreme Court it\u2019s the exact same battle.\u00a0 On one end of the stick you have folks that want to interpret the Constitution according to the Founding Father\u2019s 18th<\/sup> century intent.\u00a0 So how in the world would you do that?\u00a0 Well,\u00a0 you\u2019ve got to study the era of the Founding Fathers which is not too far back, a little over 200 years.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to look at their writings, like The Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist papers.\u00a0 You have to understand what would Jefferson, the way he used language or James Madison, the way he used language, what would they mean by this statement?\n\nAnd so there\u2019s a school of thought, and I\u2019m part of this school of thought that when judges interpret the Constitution that\u2019s what they ought to do; they ought to derive its meaning and then once they have its meaning based on the literal grammatical historical contextual methods of interpretation then\u00a0 you take that meaning, which is fixed and stable, and you apply it to the facts before you.\n\nBut there\u2019s a whole other school of thought that tells us well, the Constitution is really a living document.\u00a0 What do they mean by that?\u00a0 Well, it means whatever a judge says it means.\u00a0 So they are given freedom to simply rewrite the document according to what they think it says or should say.\u00a0 So that\u2019s why some of the key cultural issues of our day, the abortion issue, the banning of Bible reading and prayer in the schools, the whole issue there is it\u2019s a battle of who is interpreting the Constitution and what philosophy are they using.\n\nSee, if my school of thought was prevailing there wouldn\u2019t be abortion on demand in this country.\u00a0 Why would I say that?\u00a0 Because you can\u2019t find abortion in the Constitution and in fact, when the Constitution was ratified by the various states every single state had on their books at the time pro-life legislation protecting the unborn.\u00a0 So there is no way you could ever infer that the United States Constitution guarantees a woman a right to terminate her pregnancy.\u00a0 But my school of thought, unfortunately, doesn\u2019t prevail most of the time.\u00a0 The school of thought that prevails is the guys that come along and say well, you know, you\u2019re very na\u00efve, and you need to see this as a fluid document, a flexible document, a living document.\n\nNow I\u2019m in favor of a living document; what I mean by \u201cliving document\u201d is I\u2019m taking the fixed meaning and reapplying it over and over and over again.\u00a0 That makes the document alive.\u00a0 What they mean by it is the meaning changes; the meaning that you\u2019re applying that itself changes over and over again.\u00a0 And so the reason there\u2019s a great tension on this issue is the battle of who\u2019s going to be in control here.\u00a0 Is it the values of America\u2019s Founding Fathers, or is it the 21st<\/sup> century values of\u00a0 some judges who happen to cobble together five votes.\n\nAnd if you can understand that debate that is exactly the debate that is happening in the Bible; this is the exact battle that the Protestant Reformation fought.\u00a0 The issue is who is going to be in charge?\u00a0 If you follow consistently the literal, grammatical, contextual, historical method of interpretation whenever you can you are enthroning this Book over and over again.\u00a0 That\u2019s something I want to do because the last time I checked who gave us this Book?\u00a0 God.\u00a0 So who am I to rewrite God?\u00a0 You know, when Moses was given the Ten Commandments Moses didn\u2019t say to God, well, You gave ten but You interpret ten Your way and I\u2019m going to interpret ten my way.\u00a0 That would be putting Moses in charge, right?\u00a0 We don\u2019t want that, we want God to be in charge.\u00a0 And the more you deviate from this method is the more you\u2019re enthroning your own mind rather than what the text says.\n\nSo the battle of consistent literal interpretation, if you really want to cut through all the minutia it\u2019s a battle of authority and who\u2019s going to be in charge.\u00a0 So kind of summing up Cooper, \u201cWhen the plain sense makes good sense seek no other sense lest you wind up with\u201d what? \u201cnonsense.\u201d\u00a0 And even if you don\u2019t want to commit Cooper\u2019s definition to memory you can commit that one to memory and you just consistently use that no matter what part of the Bible you\u2019re in.\u00a0 If you\u2019re in the solas you use that.\u00a0 If you\u2019re in Genesis 1-11 you use that method.\u00a0 If you\u2019re in the Book of Revelation or the Book of Daniel and you come across phrases like a thousand years or three and a half years you keep using that method and as you do that\u00a0 you\u2019re going to come away with what God has said rather than what we think God ought to have said.\n\nSo I like this quote here from Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889, now he is writing this a few centuries after the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 And he writes this: \u201c\u2018literal if possible,\u2019 is, I believe the only maxim that will carry you right through the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 And to that I say amen.\u00a0 All Bonar did is take the hermeneutical principle espoused by the Protestant Reformers and say let\u2019s just take this baby and apply it to the whole Bible.\u00a0 The Protestant Reformers, and I\u2019ve given you the reasons why they didn\u2019t do that, did not do that and Reformed Theology today does not do that.\u00a0 But God raised up a new movement, the dispensational movement beginning in the 19th<\/sup> century and they began to take the methodology of the Reformers and apply it to the whole Bible.\n\nAnd so consequently the dispensationalists retrieved from the Bible key doctrines that had been lost because of allegorization, just like the Reformers used this methodology, literal, grammatical, historical, contextual to retrieve from the Bible doctrines that had been lost.\u00a0 What doctrines are the Reformers focusing on?\u00a0 The five solas.\u00a0 Well, the dispensationalists come along and say well let\u2019s just take that method and apply it to the whole Bible and retrieve everything that was lost.\u00a0 So what comes roaring back is chiliasm, anybody remember what chiliasm means?\u00a0 That\u2019s what the early premillennialists called themselves, at the school of what?\u00a0 Antioch.\n\nSo the belief in a future thousand year kingdom, which had been lost thanks to Augustine and allegorization, chiliasm comes roaring back into the life of the church, not because of what the Protestant Reformers did.\u00a0 The Protestant Reformers rescued the church in five areas (the solas), but because of what the dispensationalists did.\u00a0 So the dispensationalists began to look at the Abrahamic Covenant, how it\u2019s unconditional and unfulfilled and they began to look at the plot of land that I had you open up to which we probably won\u2019t have time to read, you can read it on your own, Genesis 15:18-21, which is describing a plot of real estate that the nation of Israel will occupy starting from the River of Egypt all the way to the Euphrates, from roughly the Nile to the Euphrates River.\u00a0 [Genesis 15:18-21, \u201cOn that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, \u2018To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:\u00a0 [19] the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite [20] and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim [21]and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.\u201d]\n\nAnd the dispensationalists started saying wait a minute, if we take that literally that\u2019s never been fulfilled.\u00a0 Well therefore for it to be fulfilled and God can\u2019t lie there must be a future kingdom whereby these things will be fulfilled and this develops into premillennialism which the school of Antioch had already taught the first two centuries called what?\u00a0 Chiliasm.\u00a0 And what you discover with dispensationalists is they are reversing Alexandria Egypt over and over again and getting back to what?\u00a0 Antioch up north.\u00a0 They not only retrieved chiliasm they began to retrieve the Israel\/Church distinction.\u00a0 The Israel\/Church distinction is completely lost in Reformed theology.\u00a0 I\u2019ve given you some quotes from Charles Hodge last week indicating that effect.\n\nBut the more you begin to apply this literal, grammatical historical method of interpretation consistently what you start to see is Israel and the church are different.\u00a0 Israel means Israel; the church means the church.\u00a0 They are two separate trains running on different railroad tracks and oh my goodness, if they are separate trains running on different railroad tracks then maybe God is coming back for the church at a different time than He is coming back for Israel.\u00a0 And what develops out of the Israel\/Church distinction is the doctrine of the pretribulational rapture.\n\nNow the doctrines that I\u2019m articulating here would have just laid dormant.\u00a0 They are lying dormant in Reformed theology because dispensationalists have applied the Reformer\u2019s hermeneutic to the whole Bible these doctrines start to re-emerge.\u00a0 Just like the five solas would have remained dormant had the Reformers themselves not applied the literal method of inter\u00adpretation to those areas.\n\nSo we see an Israel\/Church distinction, we have a rapture, a tribulation period, Second Coming of Christ, a kingdom that follows and all of these things are the product of literal interpretation.\u00a0 The Reformed camp themselves admit this.\u00a0 They admit that if you interpret these things literally you\u2019ll see these things but the battle with them is they don\u2019t want to interpret them literally; they took literal interpretation to a certain point.\n\nAnd what did dispensationalism do?\u00a0 It throws a wet blanket over a force that\u2019s always at work in the world called anti-Semitism.\u00a0 If you go to Israel today the unbelieving Jews in Israel love dispensationalists.\u00a0 Why do they love dispensationalists?\u00a0 Because they recognize that we are in massive force in the United States of America that is very pro-Israel.\u00a0 We don\u2019t agree with every little thing Israel does but we believe Israel has a purpose and a role, she has a right to her land and where do we derive these concepts from?\u00a0 We get them from the Bible.\u00a0 Well, why do some people get it from the Bible and other people don\u2019t get it from the Bible?\u00a0 It relates to your consistent application of literalism.\n\nAnd some of the experiments that I\u2019ve shared with you that awry, like John Calvin, politically taking over a government in Geneva and putting to death theological objectors, other social experiments that have gone awry, like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.\u00a0 Our method of interpretation rescues the church from those terrible social experiments because to get those social experiments to work biblically you have to take passages relating to Israel and the Mosaic Law, Israel being a country and a nation, and apply them to the church.\u00a0 That\u2019s what John Calvin was doing in Geneva.\u00a0 He was taking the Mosaic Law, he was applying it to the government there and he was actually putting to death, as the Mosaic Law says you are to do, certain people that had sinned or sins in their lives.\n\nNow we come along and we say wait a minute, literal interpretation tells us that Israel and the Church are different.\u00a0 So if Israel and the Church are different I can\u2019t come along to Israel\u2019s Mosaic Law, which was given only to Israel, and willy-nilly apply it to the church.\u00a0 And so the church is kept on focus on what it\u2019s supposed to be doing, which is the great commission, and not taking over countries and cultures and trying to impose the Law of Moses on people. \u00a0And so we have key commentators that are very, very involved in doing exactly what I\u2019ve tried to articulate.\n\nI wish I had time to go into all these names in depth but you should know the name John Nelson Darby, who\u2019s one of the heroes, one of the good guys; he is applying the Reformers literal years when all these folks lived.\u00a0 He is applying the Reformers literal method of interpretation to Bible prophecy and he\u2019s seeing the Israel\/church distinction and he\u2019s seeing the doctrine of the pre-tribulational rapture.\n\nIf you\u2019ve been tracking with us on Sunday mornings in Daniel you\u2019re already familiar with Sir Robert Anderson who unlocked the secret of the seventy weeks of Daniel, which is what we\u2019re teaching on right now on Sunday morning.\u00a0 And why did he do that?\u00a0 Because he said let\u2019s take the Protestant Reformers literal method of interpretation and let\u2019s apply it to the seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel.\n\nAnother name you should know is Cyrus Ingerson Scofield who gave us the Scofield Bible and it\u2019s hard to under estimate the power of the Scofield Bible because it put the Bible in the hands of the laity with notes at the bottom.\u00a0 It made the Bible accessible to your average person with explanatory notes.\u00a0 Now most of the notes I agree with, there\u2019s a couple I would probably do away with but what would happen is as the mainline denominations were going liberal people were picking up on this.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t sound right, my pastor is saying something in the pulpit that doesn\u2019t sound right, because they had the Bible open with Scofield\u2019s notes in it.\n\nYou should know the name William Eugene Blackstone who wrote a book called Jesus Is Coming<\/em>, he was sort of like a forerunner of Hal Lindsay.\u00a0 Remember Hal Lindsay\u2019s book, The Late Great Planet Earth<\/em>?\u00a0 It became a runaway best seller; that\u2019s basically what you have with Blackstone and his book, Jesus is Coming<\/em>.\u00a0 Other heroes you should know would be Henry Allen Ironside and then probably one of my favorites, Lewis Sperry Chafer who started which seminary?\u00a0 Dallas Seminary.\n\nSo what I\u2019m trying to get at is how the dispensational movement completed the hermeneutical movement begun by the Reformers.\u00a0 That\u2019s the point I\u2019m getting at.\u00a0 And next week we will wrap up the series, I just have a little tiny bit, believe it or not, to cover next week.\u00a0 And we\u2019re just going to have, after I finish my monologue or my bore-log, whichever you want to refer to it, we\u2019re just going to open the whole thing up to Q & A. \u00a0So those of you that have questions there\u2019s going to be ample time next week.\u00a0 You guys lost or confused or is this semi-helpful?\n\nLet me close in a word of prayer.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for this morning; we\u2019re grateful for Your Word and Your truth; we\u2019re grateful for the historical forces that went before us to give us the heritage that we have.\u00a0 And I just pray that You would use this historical survey not to fill our minds with data alone but to make us good stewards of what we have been handed, many times through great sacrifice.\u00a0 Help us to be appreciative and thankful and help us to carry on the legacy. We\u2019ll be careful to give\u00a0 you all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said amen.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t