Ch 4 continued

Hello Men. We will be continuing our Zoom call tonight and continuing chapter 4 at 7pm. Have it read and be looking for a email with the zoom details.

Ch4: Practical Rules for Interpretation

People want to hear from God. Many even believe the scriptures are from God, and seek to read it to find out what he is saying to them. This in a way is good, but in these days there are all sorts of weird methods of interpretation. I heard a story once that went like this: 

Two old friends met one day after many years. One attended college, and now was very successful. The other had not attended college and never had much ambition.

The successful one said, “How has everything been going with you?”

“Well, one day I opened the Bible at random, and dropped my finger on a word and it was oil. So, I invested in oil, and boy, did the oil wells gush. Then another day I dropped my finger on another word and it was gold. So, I invested in gold and those mines really produced. Now, I’m as rich as Rockefeller.”

The successful friend was so impressed that he rushed to his hotel, grabbed a Gideon Bible, flipped it open, and dropped his finger on a page.

He opened his eyes and his finger rested on the words, “Chapter Eleven.”

I thought that was comical, but it is not far from what people actually do.Some want to find God's will for their lives so they will open the bible to a random page, put down their figure at a verse and take it as a word from the Lord for their given predicament. While God does speak to us through his written word, proper interpretation is not done by randomly placing your finger down at a verse. We dont do that with any other book, so why do it with the bible? The bible should have the same meaning for you as it does for me, but it can have different applications for you and for me. In our chapter today we will discuss practical rules for biblical interpretation. We need to understand the different literary genres and features we see in the scripture so we can better interpret the meaning from the text. 
For this week have chapter 4 read of "Knowing Scripture" for our zoom call on Wed the 6th. We will likely only do half of the chapter this week. I will send the Zoom details soon.