Jesus the Alpha and Omega of Bible Study - Chapter 8-9

0:49Just give you an overview of where we've been. We're looking at this first half of the book. It's called Jesus the Alpha of Bible Study. We want to begin our Bible study by approaching the scriptures the same way Jesus approached his. Very simple concept. As we've gone through so far, we've looked at, and I'm just looking at the table of contents here. We've looked at the principle of growth that we all are going to grow. We don't come to the text as prose in interpreting and understanding the Bible. Come as novices, and that was Jesus. He came and he learned and he grew, and we are to do as well. Jesus also saw the words of Scripture as the basis of relationship with God. How do two spiritual beings interact? We interact through words, through communication. God is spirit. We are essentially spirit. Yes, we're body, but we are also spirit. And so our relationship with God is based on words, receiving his words and communing with him through those words. Our obedience is a way of connecting to him. Our disobedience is separation from him. We also notice that Jesus doesn't rip a scripture out of its context.

2:23Jesus doesn't contra, he doesn't take a scripture and contradict the author's purpose for it. We also notice that Jesus pays attention to detail, very precise detail. And if we're going to be followers of Christ, we also are going to pay attention to detail. There were two chapters on that. We looked at the first one, chapter six last time. We're not going to be looking at chapter seven tonight. There's a lot more examples of the details, kind of details that we can, by following Jesus' example, pay attention to as well. What I want to talk about. To you about tonight is really chapters eight and nine combined in one, and it's this issue of single meaning, the principle of single meaning. This is probably one of the most important issues in Bible study today and throughout history.

3:22How many meanings are in the text? And why are there so many denominations? And you can trace a lot of it down to this: is there a single meaning? If there are multiple meanings, then the question becomes: who is the authority on the multiple meanings? Let me just give you a little something looks kind of strange here. Did you? I had a different one. I had a picture. Yeah, we've lost quite a lot, actually. It's okay.

4:27I don't even know what. Okay. I want to talk to you about two, if we get this up here, two recent court cases that came to the Supreme Court. How many of you guys are familiar with the language of a living Constitution and an originalism? You guys are familiar with that? Okay, what basically does the living Constitution say? You can change, yeah, basically, and here's the general thought. The living Constitution, and this is about the Constitution of the United States, big issue right now. How do you interpret the text on the page? That has huge ramifications for our country. And for the last 80 years, 50 years, there's been a seismic shift in the way the Constitution is interpreted. This concept of a living Constitution has the idea that, okay, the words of the Constitution was written in words. And in time, we know that the meaning of words change. Therefore, the laws also change. The meaning of the Constitution is changing.

5:56On the other hand, there is the idea of originalism, that What the Constitution meant when it was written is what it meant. And it is to be understood in the language of the day. The meaning is fixed. Now, its application may be applied to a bunch of different situations, but if the Constitution hasn't dealt with it, or if it's not, then there's an obligation just to send it back to the legislator, let the legislation come up with a law. So there's this thing called legislation from the bench. I think you've heard of that.

6:41So two situations have recently come up that the Constitution was interpreted and made some very big changes based upon the meaning of a couple of words. And you guys remember a couple of them. One happened this year. And one happened back in a while ago. I'm sorry? Civil rights act? Civil Rights Act, Title VII, I believe, right? Bostock and a county in Georgia, right? And the issue was the word sex. They fired someone for being transgender, made way all the way up to the Supreme Court. And the The conversation then there, the ruling came down that even though sex meant two things, male or female, at the time, now it means all these other things. And so the court case went in favor of the LGBTQ lobby or paradigm.

8:02The idea was that, and you can read Samuel Alito's dissent, it's really, really good. He basically says, look, the word sex meant this at that time. Therefore, if we want to make a law about transgender issues, it needs to go back to the legislator. We didn't touch it then, we shouldn't touch it now. That was the issue. Remember, a few years before that, the whole idea of Obamacare. Do you remember that whole issue? Another court case. And the issue in that was over the word state. What does the word state mean? And the prevailing opinion was that state meant the federal government, or it could be, it could include the federal government. If you go back and read.

9:01Scalia's dissent. He said the court just decided that the word state means federal institution. And he said, after a hundred or after a million pages, they still state still means state. The word state at the time of the writing meant one of the individual states. Those are just some examples of what we're talking about. So, how are you guys coming back there? Okay, that's okay. Let me just go with what we have right here, and let's just work our way through.

9:51No telling what happened. But this issue, what I'm talking about, affects everything. Reading text on a page, Rehnquist, a former Supreme Court justice, said this living approach, this reading new meanings into the text is an end to American democracy. He was saying, because what will happen is we will start having laws that would never have made it through the legislation. Process. That's what has happened in the United States. And it's called a, it's, it's a great departure in Western civilization. It used to be: if you misrepresented the king's word, you were killed.

10:47And so, if you think about what's happening, is now the Constitution, in our postmodern world, Constitution doesn't really mean what it says. And so, so, how do you take over America? Well, it's not from outside, it's just redefining what the words mean, and you accomplish the same thing. Well, long before the American government and legal experts were dealing with this issue, we've been dealing with this issue hundreds of years in the church before that. What do the words mean? And that becomes the biggest or one of the biggest issues in interpretation. What are we looking for? Who's the authority? Is there meaning in the text? Well, and so the meaning of single meaning or the principle of single meaning basically expresses that the meaning expressed in each biblical text is definite and fixed by the meaning the words had at the time of the writing.

11:58The meaning expressed. In each biblical text is definite and fixed by the meaning the words had at the time of the writing. Seems simple, right? You know, if you guys look into the, there is a folder there. I just uploaded the whole, well, maybe he'll get it, but here's a simple explanation. The words of Scripture are to be given the meaning they had when the author wrote the text. The author intended to communicate his thoughts to his audience. That's exactly what he intended to do. And to achieve his purpose, he wrote using words consistent with the language of his times and readily understood by his audience. Is that pretty simple? Author intended to communicate his thoughts, and so how do you communicate your thoughts? You use words which both you and your audience understand their meaning, and you communicate through those words. Now, think for a second. Now my thing's not working.

13:20What's that? We might as well just go home. Okay. The last. Last year, Nancy and I and the kids, family, we got to spend a little time in England, and we got to see St. Paul's Cathedral, beautiful masterpiece. Right after church service, we fellowship with a wonderful church over there, and pastor took us out on a walking tour around England or London and some parts of it. Took us by St. Paul's Cathedral. Beautiful. Now, Queen Anne, that's Queen Anne, a statue of Queen Anne, you see there. Queen Anne, and this is in the 18th century, she complimented Sir Christopher Wren's architecture. She wanted to pay him a compliment about it. And you know what she said? She said, The cathedral is awful, artificial, and amusing.

14:27Allegedly, this is what she said. Awful, artificial, and amusing. Now, would you consider that a compliment? If somebody came up and said that about it, he did a great piece of artwork, and someone said, That's awful, artificial, and amusing. So, if we read into Queen Anne's words, definitions that we have today, we would think she threw the whole She was very displeased with the cathedral, right? But by the definitions of her day, you know what she was saying the cathedral was? Awe-inspiring. Yes, awesome, awe-inspiring, artificial. It was highly artistic and amusing, thought-provoking.

15:23So, by the definitions of her day, it was a very sufficient, it was a very now. Is that the end of my slides? Oh, okay, you do have the new one. Okay, well, the I can't even advance to the next one. So, there's a hymn by Isaac Watts: How great and awful just this place. Sometimes that's explained that how sweet and awful, yeah. Well, and that then that's that's. A very good point because awful meant awesome, yeah. Good stall, good stall.

16:43Okay, well, let me just jump right into this. Then, you know, we can turn this thing off if we need to. But, Jesus, did he give us any example in this area? Because this really is fundamentally core of how we, what are we after in interpretation? And we have to understand the meaning of the text through the words that they were through the meaning of the words that they had at the time of the writing. Otherwise, what happens is we open up ourselves to misunderstanding and misrepresenting what the scriptures really say. And it's clear as you study Jesus's words and Jesus's use of scripture, it's clear that Jesus saw each scripture as having a fixed and single meaning, a fixed meaning, a single meaning, and a fixed meaning in the words of this day.

18:02So, let me give you an example of this. If you'll go to, well, Hosea 6:6. Let me just take you to Hosea 6, 6. If you judged Scripture, what Jesus's favorite verses were by the number of times he used them, Hosea 6:6 would be one of them. Leviticus 19:18 would be one of them. And we'll take some time and we'll just look at Hosea 6:6. But Hosea 6:6 says this, For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

19:00So, to he's going to use this a couple of times, and we'll look at how he uses this. But this is a text. Now, if you want to understand the to be able to understand how Jesus uses this text, it's important to understand the context of Hosea 6:6. In Hosea, remember what the book of Hosea is about. Hosea is a book about what? A prophecy against. Yes, it's a prophecy against Israel. And you've got, who are the key players in that? You've got, we're good. Okay, let's go up to like, I don't know, go up to one. Okay, we the people, there we go. We've already originalism. There's Rehnquist. All right.

19:53We'll keep going. Okay. He used these verses on a couple on numbers of occasions. Now, the point, it's important to realize he, though he used these, he applied the principles differently in the different contexts, he never changed the meaning of the principles themselves. So he's going to use these Old Testament principles and he's going to apply them in different settings. So here's Hosea 6:6: For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. That's what he's really interested in. God is interested in loyalty. And the word loyalty is that word has said. It's that word for covenant faithfulness, loyalty, enduring commitment. Sometimes the word is translated as compassion, mercy. It's a very Rich Hebrew word. And so we'll look at the overview or context in which those words were given, Hosea 6:6. Remember, the main theme of the book of Hosea involves covenant faithfulness and really of Israel, right? The first part of the book is about an adulterous wife, her name is Gomer, and a faithful husband. His name is Hosea. That's really what chapters 1 through 3 are about. The second part, 4 through 14, is about an adulterous nation, Israel, and a faithful God. So you see that at the very beginning, this analogy of unfaithful wife, faithful husband, unfaithful nation, faithful God. And Hosea, what he does is he graphically portrays God's loyal love for Israel in spite of her spiritual adultery. But here's Israel's problem, as identified in the book of Hosea. It's a superficial loyalty. What he says in Hosea 6:4, What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and the dew which goes away early. I don't know if you can see that picture, but there's a picture of the wilderness east of Jerusalem. There's a morning cloud, sunrise. And what he's saying is, Israel, your loyalty is like a morning cloud, that it shows promise for relief, it shows some kind of promise or the dew, but it disappears. It's gone as soon as the sun really gets up. It's fleeting. Your loyalty is only superficial. It's here, it's gone. It looks like it's here, but then it's gone. And so their loyalty to God was merely external pretense. It was not genuine faith. And it quickly vanished. And for that reason, God sent judgment upon them, as he says in Hosea 6:5. And then he comes to Hosea 6:6. And it's in this context of rebuke that God told the people what he really wanted for them. What does he really want from them?

23:41I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice. That's what I want from you. I'm far more interested in your affection, your loyal love, affection for me than I am all the sacrifices. And you think about it. It's what married couples want from each other, right? Loyalty, faithfulness. It's what relationships are about. In fact, we want loyalty in all of our relationships. But much like Hosea wanted a covenant of loyalty from Gomer, so God wanted loyalty from Israel. And so, this is the key thought here: that God exhibits covenant loyalty to his people and wants his people to exhibit the same. That's what God is after. I want loyalty, I want a relationship, I want covenant fidelity. I don't want you to go off and chase idols and the various raise up different gods and serve them. I want a relationship with you. So then you come to Matthew 9:13. And Jesus is going to use Hosea 6:6. In Matthew 9, Jesus had just called Matthew, and he has responded by following him. He got up, left immediately, and left everything to follow Jesus. So then Matthew holds a dinner, and many tax collectors and sinners come and they're enjoying a dinner. With Jesus. So it's in this setting. So you've got sinners there. Imagine what the tax collectors, they're going to bring in some sinners. They're going to bring in, especially traitors, right? Those who tax the Jewish people. And so they're really seen as traitors, all kinds of sinners at this dinner party. And upon seeing this association, the Pharisees went to the disciples with a great complaint against Jesus and basically saying, What, oh, we can read it.

26:10When the Pharisees saw this, they said, Why is your teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners? But when Jesus heard it, he said, It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means. I desire compassion and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. And so he responds by quoting really the first half of Hosea 6:6. I desire compassion, not sacrifice. I desire, and that's that word, covenant loyalty. I desire that fidelity, compassion, mercy. I desire. And really, the word is loyalty, covenant loyalty.

27:05So that's how he used it. That was the setting. So if we make a few observations from this, 9:13, it's interesting. And Jesus says, Scripture has meaning. Go and learn what this means. Imperatives. You go and you learn what this means. So Jesus unquestionably sees that there is meaning in the text. I know that that seems so basic, but in our confused world today, we put meaning in the interpreter. We put meaning in those who want to read the Constitution, not in the Constitution itself. And so you have the same thing going, go and learn. By the way, Jesus outshined the brightest legal minds of his day. And they were all about reading the law. I mean, that was the law, Mosaic law. He was a master at understanding text on a page and applying it correctly. The best legal minds of the world could do no better than to come and take a lesson of reading law at the feet of Jesus. Same with us. We can do no better than to sit at his feet and learn and see how he interacts. With Scripture. Yes. I just had to comment that when Harvard was first founded, a pastor had to first get a theological degree before they'd be even allowed to study man's law. So they had to have a deal with you had to understand God's law before you could even attend. So at the beginning of Harvard, you had to have a degree in understanding in Bible, really, before you could even go into law, because if you didn't know how to relate properly to God's law, you wouldn't be able to relate.

29:05Yes. Boy, it's changed. But we've been dealing with this, right? I mean, text on a page. How do you get around the duties, requirements of Scripture? Redefine them. Read into them something totally different. Take the authority away from the Bible and usurp it yourself. That's lawlessness. That's the movement. That's the hermeneutics of lawlessness. I am the authority. I'll read into it what I want. But Jesus, that thought is foreign to him. Go and learn what this means. Meaning is clearly there. And it's readily available. Go learn. These probably aren't believers. Right? Definitely not. Go and learn. Go use the mind that God has given you. Go learn. Yes, sir.

30:10That phrase, go and learn what this means, is different to what we might hear today when people say, What does that mean to you? Right. That's right. What does this mean to you? Is that Jesus' language? Tell me what this means to you. No, he says, go and learn what this means. Meaning is there in the text. You go, it's readily accessible. You can go, apply yourself, learn what it means. But it's interesting, also, the second phrase, what this means, is singular.

30:43Jesus commanded the Pharisees to go and learn what Hosea 6:6 definitely meant. He did not tell them, you know, go learn, go come up with a valid meaning from this text. He says, he doesn't say, go learn what spectrum of meanings this text has. No, very precise in his language. You go and you learn what this means. Singular. And so, if the Pharisees had understood the principle of Hosea 6:6, they would have known that God calls sinners to. Himself. Remember, one of the very first elements of Hosea 6:6, I mean, just the beginning of chapter 6, listen to what he says. Come, let us return to the Lord.

31:44And he says, Come, let us return. I delight in sacrifice. If you read the context, I'm sorry, I've lost my place here. Come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, but he will heal us. He has wounded us, but he will bandage us. He will revive us. Let us press on to know the Lord so that we may live before him. He will come. So there's this call, you know, come, let us reason together. Come.

32:23But if they had known this, if they understood what Hosea 6, 6 meant, they would know that God calls sinners to himself. That's what Matthew was doing. And he wants the response that Matthew and the other repentant sinners were exhibiting. Matthew got up, left all, and went and followed him. That's what he wants. And here are these Pharisees. If they had known that, they wouldn't have asked their incriminating question. So Jesus was not acting contrary to the God revealed in Hosea at all. But consistent, yes, God is a God of mercy, he's loyal, even though man fails, even though Gomer was a prostitute and prostituted herself. Hosea kept loving her, much like God keeps loving us, even when we go astray, even the nation. So He's Jesus very much acting consistent by meeting with tax collectors and sinners.

33:31He was acting very much in line with the God revealed in Hosea 6. But then you come to Matthew 12. It's interesting. Matthew picks it up again. The same text Jesus is going to use, but in a different context, in a different setting. Matthew chapter 12, the disciples had been plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath. So they were going through the fields and they were plucking the grains and they were eating them. So they would pluck them, grab, you know, kind of rub them, take the grains, and eat them. And by the way, that was completely legal according to the Deuteronomy. It was a Pharisaical tradition that said you could not do that. What they could not do is they could not harvest. They could not be employed in business enterprise, harvesting for. The purpose of selling or commercial commerce. They did this. They were just going through. They didn't have McDonald's back then and all that kind of stuff. This is so you could glean the fields and eat as you travel. That was perfectly legal by the Deuteronomic law. So they accused the disciples of being lawbreakers, and they implicated Jesus in the process. Look, look, look, look what your disciples are doing.

35:07Your disciples do what is not lawful on the Sabbath. And so Jesus responded to them by asking them a couple questions that testing their Bible knowledge. And it's in verse 3: Have you not read what David did when he became hungry? And then verse 5, or have you not read in the law the Sabbath priests, about the Sabbath priests and what they do? And so he starts his questions like, Have you not read? Do you not know? It's like Jesus is taking them on, saying, Okay, you seem to not understand some basic truths because you're not reading your Bibles. That's basically the issue. You're not reading your Bibles. So Jesus responded. With him, these questions, and then he again quoted Hosea 6.6.

36:06But if you had known what this means, I desire compassion and not a sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. So, observations. Again, Scripture has definite meaning that is knowable. The phrase, what this means, is again singular. And you remember when we were looking at the detail last week, those of you who were here, do you remember how much Jesus based his argument on the tense of a single verb? He was very much intent on looking at the details. And here again, you have this go learn what this means. It's singular.

36:53Same as in 9.13, but its meaning is applied to a different situation than 9.13. So if the Pharisees had understood the principle of Hosea 6, 6, which we've looked at, and the character of God is revealed in the scriptures, they would have known that Jesus and his disciples were acting with fidelity toward God and toward man, and they would not have condemned the innocent. But because they were ignorant of these things, they condemned the innocent. So if we summarize these, in both cases, you don't have many examples. Where Jesus used a verse different times, but there are enough to see a pattern. I'm not going to go through Leviticus 19:18. He uses that one quite a lot. It seemed to be a favorite of his, kept coming up. But this is sufficient just to give you an idea of the pattern or what certainly the chapter is about. But Christ, in both cases, Christ exhibited the compassion and fidelity depicted in Hosea, and the people had responded to him appropriately. Do you have a question?

38:07In both cases, the Pharisees pretended to be loyal to God, didn't they? They appear to be very concerned about honoring God by despising sinners and rule breakers. So that's their loyalty. Oh, we would never do that because we are loyal to God. And then the issue in Hosea 6:6 is 6-4. Oh, Ephraim, what am I going to do with you? Your loyalty is like a cloud. It's gone. Just an appearance. And that's what Jesus is dealing with with these Pharisees. Their loyalty was not to the God of Scripture, but to the God of their own making. They preferred to listen to the oracles of Pharisaical tradition rather than. The oracles of God. And listen, that is something we can easily slip into. We can easily start paying attention to the words of men and the doctrines of men and the systematic theologies of men. And we could, and very quickly get away from the God of Scripture. And so our desire is to come to the scriptures, to read them the way Christ read them and let them shape our thinking, otherwise, we will end up with a God of our own making.

39:35And so these Pharisees that Jesus confronts exhibit the same spirit of infidelity that Hosea's generation had exhibited. Very similar. In both cases, their loyalty was only a pretense similar to that which God rebuked in Hosea 6. Jesus' tone toward the superficial loyalty of the Pharisees is very similar to God's tone toward the superficial loyalty of Israel in Hosea 6. There is a very close connection. God wanted covenant faithfulness from his people in Hosea's time. He wanted it in Jesus' time. And guess what he wants today? The same thing. He wants covenant loyalty. That's what he's asking. After he's after, he wants us to respond to him. So the principle is timeless.

40:39And Jesus applied the principle of Hosea 6:6 to multiple situations, one meaning, but multiple applications. Any questions on that? Yes, sir. What happens if someone drew approaches the scripture with the historical fanatical perspective for that prophecy? A double fulfillment. Yeah, I would say there's singular fulfillment. There's ultimate fulfillment. Now, there's patterns along the way. For instance, if I said, My wife is one day going to eat herself, she's going to have death by chocolate. She's going to eat chocolate so much that she dies one day. I don't think she will. But just say, that's a prophecy I make. Then, let's suppose we go out to dinner and there's an apple dessert and then there's a chocolate dessert, and my wife says, You know, I'll have the chocolate cake. Ah, that's a fulfillment. Well, it's a partial fulfillment, it's indicative of where this is ultimately going, right? And so. I think you have something very similar happening in prophecy. There is prophecy that you see a pattern being fulfilled over and over again, but there's an ultimate fulfillment.

42:15Yeah, like a type or a shadow. Yeah, you can see an ultimate fulfillment in that. But keep in mind, we're learning about a personality. There's a personality being revealed in scripture. So that the fact that something is prophesied about Christ, you might see that show up several times in the character of God because it's the very same individual. So there's personalities being revealed, prophecies that speak about him. Some are very definite and fixed, but some, like that, seem, okay, it seems like there's a double meaning or there's something here. I would say there may be something going on. These get into some of the more difficult ones. I understand that it's not just so clean as you would like for it to be, or I would like for it to be, but it's no reason to see, to set aside the principle of single meaning.

43:13That there's partial fulfillment or that it's indicative of an ultimate fulfillment. Judgment. Sodom and Gomorrah. God judges the wicked. Okay, is that fulfillment? Yeah, it's a fulfillment. It's a fulfillment of him. But it's also a pattern. You see an ultimate. Judgment coming. And so the fact that there's little judgments along the way is consistent with the God who judges sin and equity. But there's an ultimate. So that's the way I would, that's a very good question. And books have been written on that issue that you just raised.

43:50Other thoughts? Well, I'll bring up some objections. Oh, yes, sir. Did you say the apostles also stuck? Yes. Yes. I think the apostles, and what we're dealing with here in this book, is just the New Testament use of the Old Testament. And this is kind of a subcategory of that, specifically Jesus, how he used the Old Testament. But yeah, I think they understood what they were talking about. They didn't rip, they didn't read into, they didn't take something out of its context. And the way they use it in the New Testament has a very similar situation to how it's being used in the Old Testament. And one of the biggest objections to single meaning, and I deal with a number of them in my book, but one of the biggest objections is how Scripture has been interpreted historically.

45:01Historically, there's been a fourfold meaning of Scripture. There's the literal sense, which is simply the plain meaning of scripture in its historical context. That's the literal sense. There's the allegorical sense, refers, and really two, three, and four could all go into this category of allegory. But there's the allegorical sense, typically refers to the church and its faith, what it's to believe, and usually involves kind of a salvation motif. The tropological sense refers to the church and what she should do, usually involves a moral motif. I'll maybe give you an example here in just a moment. The anagogical sense points to the church's future and usually involves a motif of hope. So you have this fourfold meaning of scripture, and early schools, and this has taken large bodies of Christianity in very different directions. Orthodoxy, very different. They would still ascribe to this fourfold Catholicism, still very much. And many Protestant denominations still very much would give to, they would drop off the last two and really, but still read a lot of allegory into the Old Testament or into Scripture itself. And these approaches, this is why, if my kids ask me why there are so many denominations, I will take them here and say, This is why you see so many, because there's different approaches. I mean, if these words start allegorizing, they can really start taking on meanings.

46:51They may take on all kinds of meanings, and that's what typically happens. Now, here's one: here's a favorite that usually gets kind of easy: Rahab's cord. What did Joshua intend to communicate by talking about Rahab's cord? You remember in Joshua chapter 2, coming into the land, you know the story, right? Coming into the land, Jericho, they're going to march around, they're going to destroy it, right? And but they go and spy out the land and they meet a harlot or an innkeeper who is probably prostitute very much.

47:38See, some people try to walk that back a little bit, but the issues about her house and this cord. She said, if they made an oath not to destroy her and her household when they came in, and they said, We shall be free from this oath to you, which you have made us swear, unless when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down, and gather to yourself in the house your father and mother and your brothers and all your father's household. In other words, let down the cord, put the cord that is there. Now, what does the cord mean?

48:30What does it mean? Don't beat it up. It's a cord, right? It's a scarlet cord. Right? Or it's a scar, it's maybe it's purple, maybe as we can color, maybe there's variation, but but it's it's definite. You can see the background. It's a way to mark, right? It's a cord. It was a literal cord or rope of some kind used to identify Rahab's house, right? I remember when we were talking about this in Africa, one of the pastors said, said, What is this? Oh, Pastor, that's the blood of Jesus. That's the blood of Jesus. In fact, I bet you you've been around in the church a while, you might have heard it preached like that. Anyone care to raise it? Have they ever heard a sermon where, yeah. Yeah, it's the blood of Jesus, right?

49:33And that's an allegorical interpretation. It's interpreting that as the blood of Jesus. No, it is a cord. Now, if you look ahead and you're reading the New Testament, now you're saying, okay, you're starting to see a salvation motif there in Rahab, which is there. There's a salvation motif. And then all of a sudden, your mind goes to the ultimate salvation motif, and you take Jesus' blood and then you read that back into the Old Testament. And that's how the whole allegorical school came about. They were really informed with the New Testament and started reading these mature thoughts that have been developed in the New Testament, and they were taking those and reading those back into the old.

50:22The tropological sense maybe would be something like it could have the moral obligation of identifying with God's people. That's what it's about. It's about identifying with God's people or being on the right side or something like some kind of moral obligation. That's what tropological, anagogical, it might be an interpretation that says that this is the emblem of final salvation or hope, Christian hope, that ultimately we will all be like Rahab saved. Well, all that sounds great. All that preaches great.

51:02And yet it's not what it means. If you're going to follow Jesus' example or interpretation, you're going to see he's going to honor what's there in the Old Testament. He's talking about a cord. And some people, I think this gets to where they get to where they can't, they find the literal very dry, and so they want to read in something to kind of take it. Well, principle of single meaning, I'm going to have to be very quick on this, asserts that it must be taken in the literal sense. The cord, but don't think for a second that the literal sense is void of beauty and richness. There's a depth and a treasure here. And the cord, what was it? It's a testament to the faith of a Canaanite prostitute who is devoted to God's destruction. The whole land, right? All the Canaanites. Destroy them, right? She's a Canaanite prostitute. Not only is she a Canaanite, she's a low Canaanite, right? And here she is. She's devoted to God's destruction. And yet she has faith.

52:26And if you're reading this in context, all of a sudden you start. Noticing a huge contrast with this woman and the generation that just died in the wilderness, right? 40 years they were in the wilderness. That whole generation that came out of Egypt who saw they were faithless and died. They didn't enter because of their unbelief, right? And they had seen God's deliverance at the Red Sea and yet did not believe God. 40 years later, here's Rahab. She's only heard.

53:10She goes, I've heard. She said, we have only heard about those things and yet they believed. And she believed, and listen to her confession, the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Here's a Canaanite woman. Generation. What a contrast. They saw it all and didn't believe. Here's a woman, Canaanite, we have heard and we believe. Your God is God in heaven and earth. That's faith based on what was heard. She's an example of faith, isn't she? Listen, we're not going to see a lot of things, right?

54:00We will, future. But we have to believe on what we hear. Here's an example: those that saw didn't believe, they died in their unbelief. And yet, here's one that just heard. She became a prime example, and Hebrews is going to pick this up. This is what saving faith looks like. And if you really quickly read the blood of Jesus into that, you can very quickly miss what's being developed here. Rahab's scarlet cord testifies to God's faithfulness, not just to her faith, but to God's faithfulness. And that extends to all who take refuge in him. And Joshua goes on and talks about it, but everyone who takes refuge in him. This is a Canaanite. His impartiality is vividly portrayed in the contrast between Rahab and Achan, which is just taking place. You know, it's going to happen in the very next. So you have God's impartiality. And it indicates from the very beginning that God is about salvation, even as he moves Israel into the land. Those with faith, even those who are devoted to destruction, a Canaanite, she's brought into, she experiences salvation. She is brought into the nation of Israel, and she is given a place of highest honor.

55:30Being in the very lineage of Christ. You see, even in the conquest, you see God's mercy right here at the very beginning. So, the principle of single meaning does not deny that there are valid implications of the scarlet cord that can be drawn. There could be valid implications, or there could be many applications. The motifs of salvation are definitely there. Deliverance, moral duties, all that, future hope, all of that are definitely there and present in the narrative, and they can legitimately be linked to other such themes in the Bible. You can see the salvation motif, it's going to keep growing, but let that salvation motif that happens in Joshua 2 inform what comes later. You'll really start getting a picture of what happens on the cross.

56:34But one must be careful not to strip the Rahab narrative of its contribution to Revelation by assigning it a meaning foreign to its original context. Like, oh, Pastor, that's the blood of Jesus. Well, it certainly involves salvation. Can simply say, This is just a reminder that God is the God who saves. Now, let me take you to the cross and show you how He saves ultimately the blood of Jesus. Yes, the cord speaks about a salvation, speaks about a faith. But let me tell you, let's not strip it away from there. Let's put it in its, let's go to the New Testament for information about the blood of Christ or prophecies that speak about it.

57:31We're out of time, but just want to end there. I'll be up here to, this is a huge, huge, huge issue, but I think if we just take Jesus's example, and there are others that I write about in my book, he takes the text, reads a singular meaning into it, applies it to the situation, and he remarkably honors the context and what was going on, and he applies it. So let me dismiss this, and then I'll be up here if anybody wants to continue to talk about this. Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you for the scriptures, we thank you for giving us Jesus this example.

58:30Of how he related to Scripture. And we just thank you as we settled our minds upon Rahab and her faith. And Father, we just thank you that you are faithful, God. Father, that you will pardon, that you're about salvation. Your primary goal is not to destroy us, but that we might look to you and be saved, that we would come out of ourselves and experience you as the God who saves, the God who loves. And Father, we just thank you that your goodness surrounds us. Thank you for this day. Go with us now in Jesus' name. Amen.