II Peter 1:20 First of All

Welcome to Steadfast Hope. I'm Stephen Lawson, president of One Passion Ministries. And four times a week I teach through a portion of scripture to encourage you in your Christian walk. Join me now for this brief devotion in God's Word. I'm Steve Lawson joined by Kent Stainback, coming to you from Herb's Coffee House in Dallas in the Great Republic of Texas. Deep in the heart of Texas. So we've got a great study for you. It's in second Peter 1 and verse 20. Title of this is First of All. And I want to begin by reading the passage and then we'll take our time and look at it. Verse 20, Peter writes, "But know this First of All that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation." So Kent when he says, "First of all, that should just leap off the page." What that means is this is of utmost importance. This is of first priority. Everything in the Bible is true, but some things rise to a higher level of importance. Jesus would often say, "Truly, truly I say to you." And that was his way of elevating something to the highest level of importance. And that's what Peter is doing here. And so as we look at this, this is really important. So he says, "But know this First of All that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation." And let's just kind of walk through this. When he says, "Prophesy of scripture," he's really referring to any chapter, any verse, any passage of scripture. All scripture in this general sense is prophetic in that it is divine revelation, is divine truth that has come to us. And the word scripture, Kent, I think is an important word also. We use the word scripture. What does the word scripture actually mean? And it comes from a Greek word that means graphics or writings. And so what he's talking about with no prophecy of scripture, he's referring to the objective written word of God, what we call the Bible. And so he says, "No prophecy of scripture, the written word of God, is a matter of one's own interpretation." Now, what this says is that we must be taught by God if we are to rightly interpret scripture, that we must be illumined by the Holy Spirit if we are to rightly understand the Bible. So we don't come to the Bible just like it's a book of mechanics or mathematics or accounting or something like that, where it's just sheer cognitive IQ. We do apply our minds to the Bible, but it must be more than just us. It must be that God is involved in opening our eyes to behold the truth of scripture. So when he says that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, the word interpretation is an interesting word. It means to untie a knot. It means to loosen something that has been bound together like a knot. And that's the idea of interpreting scripture is that you are untying a knot in that what was unclear now becomes clear. The meaning was tied up in a knot and with proper interpretation, you now are untying the knot so that the meaning is very clear. And so when he says that it's not a matter of our own interpretation, what he means is none of us are free to play fast and loose with the Bible and make it say whatever we want it to say. There are fixed laws of interpretation that govern how we are to understand the Bible. And there are any number, I'm going to, I have a book, a commentary on the Psalms where I list 12 laws of interpretation that are fixed and set, that guide us in how to untie knots in scripture. And so if you don't know what these laws of interpretation are, you're kind of just making up laws on your own as you go. And so that's what Peter is saying here that none of us are free to just come up with our own meaning of what the Bible says. What we strive to understand is what did this biblical author mean by what he said to this group of people? And behind that, what did God intend us to understand? Not what does it mean to me? What did it mean to Peter? What did it mean to those to whom he wrote? That leads us down the right path. So let's talk about this. And maybe one more footnote here, as Peter writes this, he has in mind the false teachers that were already circulating through the church, who were coming up with bizarre interpretations that were not in accordance with sound doctrine. And as a safeguard against these false teachers, Peter is having to say to the church, listen, don't be seduced by these false teachers. They're just making this up. No matter of Scripture is a matter of our own personal interpretation. We've got to be locked in on what does God mean in his word. And these false teachers are just skilled at deception. So. Well, I think the first question is, you're not saying that you can't read the Bible and the Lord speak to you. And I'm sure there's people listening going, "Well, Steve, what are those 12 interpretations?" Means I can't read the Bible without having those 12 interpretation laws. So you're not saying that. No, no, no. I'm not saying that. And there is the doctrine of the purpose of Scripture, which means the lucidness, the clarity of Scripture. I mean, that came out of the Reformation with Luther and Calvin. That you ought to be able to pick up a Bible and read it and understand it in matters of salvation and in matters of basic Christian living. But even at that, there are certain passages that become twisted by false teachers. And so Peter is really addressing that. But I don't want to give the impression you can't pick up the Bible and read it and understand it. But let's be clear. Even Peter himself says, "Well Paul's hard to understand." He says that in chapter 3 of this same book. And so we need to be aware, there are passages of Scripture that are challenging. Well, we have to really labor at getting to the bottom of it. It can be understood. But you've raised a very good point. Yeah. Well, so the next question is, people are going to say, well, what are those 12 interpretive laws that don't need those right now? Yeah. Well, you do need those right now. Where do they go? Yeah, where do they go? Well, let me just try to quickly walk through some of these. First of all, we take the Scripture at face value. You don't allegorize the Bible. It's just a very straightforward written book. Second, you need to know figures of speech. The Bible is written with figures of speech. And you need to know there's some 35 figures of speech that are used in the Bible. You need to know what those are and be able to understand them. Third, you need to interpret any one passage of Scripture with the entire rest of the Bible. And so you never interpret the rest of the Bible through the lens of one verse as the other way around. Next, there's always the historical background of a passage. You need to know where the author was and what was going on with the recipients. Next, you need to understand the cultural practices of that time. And so, in order to understand certain passages, you just need to understand what Jewish life was like at that time. The next would be geographic setting, geographical setting, that you can see where cities are, where mountains are, where valleys are. And you can see the movement of a passage of Scripture from one place to the next. Next, you need to have a linguistic analysis of a passage, meaning to be able to parse the verbs, to be able to do a sentence, diagram, just to understand what is the subject, what is the verb, what is the object, what modifies what. I mean, this is just pretty basic stuff. I mean, stuff that I didn't pay attention to in high school, quite frankly. But now that I'm called to preach, and as a Christian that I must know the meaning of the Bible, I've got to dig into this. So can't just off top of my head, those are just some. It's okay. We don't what you're saying is, as a layman, we need to be able to dig in and learn and we can get on the Internet and we can find these tools. Not we just don't have to sit around and wait for a preacher to teach us. Right? Right. That's what you're saying. Go pick up as many tools as you can and start getting into it. It doesn't have to be. You don't have to go to seminary but you can get on the Internet and you can look up great commentaries of Godly men and start figuring this out. The more you read the Bible, the more you know of the Bible, the better you're able to interpret the Bible and can't. here's one more point. No passage of Scripture contradicts another passage of Scripture. It all is a seamless tapestry. It's all woven together. So sometimes people find one verse and they go, "Well, what about this verse? Well, if you've got 500 other verses clearly teaching this, then you've probably misread this one verse that is out of sync with the rest of Scripture. And I'm going to give you one more, Kent. It's the literary genres of the Bible. There's history, there's law, there's poetry, there's prophecy, there's discourse, there's a pistol, there's parable, there's even allegory, there's prophecy. Each one of those literary genres has some unique features to it that you need to be able to operate in. And I think the point is for our listening audience is that all of us can go into a little deeper end of the pool and study the Bible maybe more than what we're doing now. And that's awesome. That's really fun. Absolutely. And a great opportunity. Yeah. So Kent, you've helped really bring out a lot of good points this morning as we're looking at this. So thank you. Well, I want to thank you for joining us for Steadfast Hope. I'm Steve Lawson with Kent, Stainback, saying we look forward to being with you our very next opportunity. God bless you. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Steadfast Hope. If this was helpful to your Christian walk, please leave us a review wherever you listen to this show. And if you want to connect on social media, I can be found at Dr. Stephen J. Lawson or at One Passion Ministries. Thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again for the next episode of Steadfast Hope. [BLANK_AUDIO]