CTF 2024 Session 5 - Confessional Guidelines for Scripture Interpretation
Confessing the Faith - 2024
Welcome to everyone. It's good to be back in this venue for this conference. And just again, a heartfelt welcome to everybody that is attending and especially to our speakers, Dr. Renahan, Dr. Barcelos. Again, a thanks to the Free Reform Congregation here in Chilliwack for making this venue available for us. Just one quick announcement. There's a lot of food. And I don't think the people who brought the food want to bring the food home. So, when it is break time, please help yourself. There's more room now in the gym, so you can spend time in there, near the food, taking as much as you want and enjoying some fellowship in that capacity. So, that's it. The format is on the schedule. We're going to try to stick close to that. Hopefully, you got your questions in, in the manner that was suggested in the book. Well, I wanna start this session by reading Psalm 110, this idea of Christ as scope of the whole. We certainly see Christ in Psalm 110. So I wanna read Psalm 110, and then I'll pray, and then we'll sing another psalm. So Psalm 110, beginning in verse one, a Psalm of David. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the due of your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the wayside. Therefore, he shall lift up the head. Amen. Well, let us pray. Our gracious God and Holy Father, we thank you for this opportunity to gather together again to sing your praises, to hear your truth, and to encourage one another in the fellowship of the saints. We give all praise and honor to you for the gospel of our salvation. We know it wasn't our wisdom or our will, it wasn't our decision that brought us here, but it's the sovereign grace of God Almighty. We thank you that you make men willing in the day of your power. We thank you for effectually calling us unto your dear Son, and for the graces of faith and repentance. We thank you for the churches that you have blessed us with and we pray that you would continue to strengthen your churches. We pray for the church as a whole. Here in this nation, we know it is a lawless and a godless nation, but we ultimately look to the power of the Christian gospel. We know that you are able to save to the uttermost all who draw nigh unto the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, and we pray that you would bless pulpits in this land, cause them to be faithful in proclaiming Christ and him crucified and resurrected. May you be pleased to save a multitude, and may you continue to strengthen the church, that we would be a faithful witness, shining as lights in a crooked and perverse generation, and give us that boldness and courage to hold forth your word of truth. And as we were encouraged yesterday, help us to be students of that truth. Help us to know the scriptures so that we are able to testify concerning the Lord Jesus Christ who lived, who died, and who was raised again for sinners. We ask for your blessing upon this meeting. Bless our singing and our hearing and our speaker as he brings your truth to us. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. We can turn to page 29 in your book. Page 29, we'll sing Psalm 138B to a familiar tune. So we'll stand as we sing together. I bring thee for the praise, your praise I sing. I worship thee in your holy place, and praise you for your truth and grace. For truth and grace will ever shine in your most holy work divine. ♪ For most holy, your divine ♪ ♪ I cry to you and you did say ♪ ♪ Your word of grace new courage gave ♪ ♪ The kings of earth shall thank you, Lord ♪ ♪ For they have heard your wondrous word ♪ Faith it shall come with songs of praise, for great and glorious are your ways. For great and glorious are your ways. ♪ In glory bright ♪ ♪ You reign above, in heav'n behind ♪ ♪ About in vain your favor sing ♪ ♪ But you have mercy for the weak ♪ ♪ Through trouble though my pathway lead ♪ ♪ You will revive and strengthen me ♪ ♪ To revive and strengthen me ♪ ♪ Who will stretch forth your mighty arm ♪ ♪ To safely wed my foe's alarm ♪ ♪ The work you have for me begun ♪ ♪ Shall by your grace be fully done ♪ Your mercy shall forever be. O Lord, my Maker, think on me. O Lord, my Maker, think on me. Amen. Just a reminder after Dr. Barcelos' lectures, he'll then pray and that'll be our cue to take our break. So Dr. Barcelos. I ran out of ink on my printer at home the day I went to print my lectures out, so I had to email the documents, excuse me, to Pastor Butler. He handed my lectures and the sermons that I'm gonna choose from for tomorrow to me, and he handed this manila folder, and I think it was at night, didn't kind of register. And then I looked at the, at the top you could see some numbers cut off, colors, and I thought, where'd he get this thing? So I said, where'd you get that? He said, you gave it to me in 1991 or whatever. My wife borrowed them from the Department of Water and Power County of Los Angeles in the 1980s when she worked there. And I had like 300, we got a file cabinet full of these. Do I have to give it back to you? Okay. It's signed by about 50 guys who have used it before but had to give it back to them. Okay, my assignment was, and still is, to try to dig into some statements in Confession chapter one, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God. And so I gave that illustration of the bullseye and then the target, and how all the circles, concentric circles, that are usually shaded different colors, serve to accentuate this black dot, without which it would just be a black dot. But with these concentric circles, we have a target. With a bullseye, with a center. And we have the other aspects of the target serving, somehow, some way, but in slightly different ways. the one goal of accentuating the dot and turning it into a target, a bull's eye. I say scripture functions that way as well. Not every verse is about Jesus, but every verse is serving to present either the coming one or the one having come. The coming one, the Old Testament, the one having come, the New Testament. The other section of scripture, confession, oops, The Bible is the written word of God, not the confession. The other part of the confession that I was assigned was that little statement in chapter one, paragraph nine, the only infallible interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself. And scripture interprets itself in various ways. We looked at Luke 24, I wanna turn back there if you have a Bible. We looked at Luke 24 in two passages. Jesus doesn't quote the Old Testament there, right? When he chides them for being slow of heart and dull of mind, he doesn't quote verses from what we call the Old Testament. He alludes to it and he draws from the entirety of the law, the prophets, and the writings from the entire canon of the Hebrew Old Testament. He draws out a conclusion from the basic motif that's in there, but not even in the words that's in there. Sufferings and glory, as far as I know, aren't in the Old Testament word for word, are the concepts embodied in the suffering Messiah and the glorified Messiah in the Old Testament, yes, but not in those words. So Jesus uses words, sufferings and glory, not in the word to describe the word. Kind of like creeds do that, right? Creeds often use words not in the word to explain the word. Why? Because the heretics were using the words that are in the word and putting wrong meanings on them. So, Jesus doesn't quote the Old Testament there, he does elsewhere. He alludes to it and he draws out a theological conclusion that the sum and substance of the Old Testament can be reduced to sufferings and glory. So let's go back to Luke 24, 44 to 49. Before I do that, I have a quiz. Subsequent revelation often makes explicit, nope, he took the class. Security, one more out of him. And by the way, she gets to sit in the front row one hour. If she does well, maybe a second hour. If she doesn't, get her out of here. We're important. We have image to uphold. Subsequent revelation often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent revelation, okay? And what was the other one? When the Bible interprets the Bible, when scripture interprets scripture, we have the word of God and the word of God, therefore an infallible interpretation. What are the ways that scripture interprets scripture? A direct quotation, for instance in the New Testament, This, what we're experiencing, is that which the prophet said would take place. There's a direct quotation. And so this is an infallible interpretation. We're gonna look at Acts 2, where Joel 2, at Psalm 16 and Joel 2 are used by Peter. And he says this, sufferings and glory, primarily the glory of Christ and Pentecost, is that which the prophet said would take place. And he quotes the Old Testament. So that's one way scripture interprets scripture. Therefore, it's an infallible interpretation. We saw another way yesterday, and it's in Luke 24, that is, Jesus alludes to the Old Testament, calling it Law, Prophets, and Writings, and he draws a conclusion from it. It is necessary for the Christ to suffer and to enter into his glory, or suffer and be raised from the dead on the third day. So entering into glory, be raised from the dead on the third day, it's in the Old Testament. You know who else taught us that? Paul, right? who is raised on the third day according to the scripture. So Jesus alludes to the Old Testament and interprets it. in one sense, as teaching sufferings and glory. It's not a quotation. So there's at least two ways it does it. The New Testament will quote the Old Testament in fulfillment language. The New Testament will allude to the Old, by the way, what's the first verse in the New Testament that alludes to the Old Testament? It doesn't quote the Old Testament, but if you know the Old Testament, you read this verse, you go, that's an allusion. Matthew 1.1, like the first verse, The book of the genealogy, there's Old Testament stuff, of Joshua, Messiah, Jesus Christ. Is Jesus a new Joshua? Yeah, he's a way better Joshua too, isn't he? Does he take the people of God into the promised land? Yes, into Emmanuel's land. Is he like Joshua? Yes. Is he unlike? Is he greater than Joshua? Yes. The son of Abraham, the son of David, there's at least five allusions to the Old Testament in the first verse of the New Testament. By the way, Augustine, let's talk to Augustine. Mr. Augustine, what's the first book of the New Testament? The Old Testament. I don't know where he said that. Somebody could have made it up. I heard it recently. I was telling some guys in my church. I said, that's getting in the sermon. it got in the sermon. Jesus is teaching us in Luke 24, and primarily in the context there, the apostles how to understand our Lord and themselves in relation to the Old Testament. That passage in Luke 24, 44 through 49 reads this way. Then he said to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. Okay, so the three parts of the Hebrew Old Testament, law, prophets, and writings, law, prophets, and Psalms, each section speaks of the Messiah to come. And now, how each section does that and where, that's a different question, but we know this much. These are red letters. These are important. I'm kind of kidding, but I'm kind of not. Who would you rather learn how to read the relation of Jesus to the Old Testament from? You want to learn it from Cam or Jesus Christ? How many want to learn it from Cam over the Lord? Zero, okay? Part of me wants to joke with that, but another part wants to say, well, wait a minute. The red letter part is the joke, although I like it because immediately I know these are the most important words in the Bible. I'm kidding. The entirety of the Bible is the written word of God. But when you have the incarnate son of God teaching his disciples how to interpret himself, explain himself in light of the already divine meaning filled Old Testament. And then you read the rest of the New Testament, you go, wow, Peter's speaking like Jesus now. Paul sounds like Jesus. Jude sounds like Jesus. The apostles followed the Lord's hermeneutical method. That's how we got Christianity. And by the way, where was Christianity first revealed? in the first book of the New Testament, the Old Testament. You know all the sermons in the book of Acts? Peter starts quoting Matthew's gospel, and then Mark's gospel, and Luke's gospel, and Paul comes on the scene, he's quoting John's gospel. They're not quoting the gospels, right? What are they quoting, or at least alluding to? Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, the threefold canon of the Hebrew Old Testament. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. Stop. Here's one thing I forgot to say yesterday, because I was in a hurry. The ontology, the quiddity. I used to say quiddity. What does that mean, ontology? What does that mean? The whatness of the Bible. What is the Bible? The written word of God. It was produced by God. It's been preserved by God. And if you're gonna understand it properly, it's taught to you by God. Okay, there it is. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. Then he said to them, thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. You remember the other text says, enter his glory. This one says, rise from the dead on the third day. What does entering glory mean, or when did it happen? When he rose from the dead on the third day. All this is in the scriptures of the Old Testament, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, that's in the Old Testament, to the Jew first, then to the Greek. It's grounded in what God said, had spoken through the prophets. When Messiah would come, there'd be a remnant of believers around him, and then the law would go out from Jerusalem to the nations of the world. and you are my witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you, but, Terry, wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are endowed with power from on high. Now, if we went over to Acts 1, before Peter's sermon, went over to Acts 1, we would see that Jesus, after the resurrection, before the ascension, what are they doing? He's talking to the disciples about the kingdom of God. It's very interesting. At the beginning of the book, Jesus is talking to his disciples about the kingdom of God. At the end of the book, in Acts 28, just read the entire chapter. In my notes, I have Acts 28, just read it. Because Paul is arguing with the Jews about the true identity of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God from the Bible. And so he quotes 2 Thessalonians, and Gospel of Mark. He's going toe-to-toe with the Jews, preaching Jesus and the present kingdom of God, the kingdom that was promised in, the Davidic kingdom, promised in the Old Testament. He's doing that based on the scriptures of the Old Testament alone. Now he could have had, I don't know about the date thing there, because Matthew was written pretty early, right, security? Yeah, you get that question wrong. You're out of here. I'll get her to take you out. So between the resurrection and the ascension, Jesus is doing the same thing. He's teaching them about himself and the implications of his sufferings and glory in relation to the Old Testament. And the spirit of Christ came upon them at Pentecost and gave them, cleaned up their hermeneutical lenses, and they were able to see Jesus clearly in the then present Old Testament scriptures. So I think realizing that Jesus taught hermeneutics to the apostles, when you think about that, you go, well, yeah. Because when you hear them preach in Acts, especially Peter and Paul, they sound like Jesus. They use the twofold sufferings and glory motif. They say it's in all the sections of the canonical Old Testament. The sufferings and glory of Christ is in the book of Moses. The sufferings and glory of Christ is in the Psalms. The suffering in the prophets. The sufferings and glory of Christ somehow, someway is in the prophets as well. Direct prophecy, yes. Typology, yes. Let's see how bold you are. Joseph was a type of Christ. Just think about sufferings and glory, mistreatment by family members. I mean, to me, there's a lot there. So it kind of opens up the door and you wonder, oh, maybe there's more typology going on in the Bible. There's more Jesus back there than I ever thought. I think there is. We probably feel uncomfortable with all the typology that's actually there. Can you overdo it? Yes, but you know what? I would rather find Jesus where he isn't than miss him where he is and preach the Orthodox Christian faith and gospel from the wrong text than preach the text wrongly and miss him You know what I mean there. By the way, Pastor Butler doesn't always exegete perfectly. He misses it sometimes. But he's an Orthodox Christian theologian who preaches the Orthodox Christian faith. I get texts wrong sometimes. I don't think I get... I hope I don't get doctrines wrong very often. And when I do, I scrub them clean and tell the people, you know what? That's not Christian doctrine. That was made up by me. That was idiosyncratic pride coming out of me. Anyway, we have Pentecost happening. Let's go to a contemporary theologian, see what he says about the relationship, our Lord's understanding of his own relationship to the Old Testament. And I'm saying scopus scriptura. He saw himself as the bullseye of the Old Testament. By the way, most Christians, if you say, what's the New Testament all about? They'll say, Jesus. If we asked our Lord, what's the Old Testament all about? He'd say, Jesus, okay? Was the Old Testament, was the scope of the scriptures of the Old Testament our Lord before our Lord told us he was the scope of the Old Testament? So he's not inventing new things, okay. All right, good. Here's Richard Gaffin, he's a contemporary. He says, for Jesus and the New Testament writers, the Old Testament is one large prophetic and promissory witness to Christ, a diverse but unified witness that centers in his sufferings and consequent glorification The Old Testament has its overall integrity, its various parts cohere in terms of this death and resurrection focus. By the way, did ancient Israel have any death and resurrection experiences? Aye yi yi, they did, more than one, by the way. Put negatively, The Old Testament does not have multiple and discordant trajectories of meaning, but only one, that is, the unidirectional path that leads to Christ, however obscure and difficult it may be for us to follow that path at points along the way. I agree with him. Now, probably the most often cited words of our Lord to illustrate his view of himself in terms of scripture, how he relates to it, occur at the end of Luke's gospel. We read the passages yesterday and went through one of them briefly this morning. But John's gospel contains a severe rebuke by Jesus of some Jewish leaders which may illustrate Dr. Gaffin's point above, even better than Luke 24. Listen to John 5, 45 to 47. Very familiar words. Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father, Jesus to the Pharisees. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, that is what he wrote, right, You would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Now these words were spoken after Jesus had said, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. This is verse 39. And these are they which testify of me. So that's a more inclusive, broader statement in 539, is followed by this more specific statement concentrating on the writings of Moses. But what could be said of the scriptures, or about Moses, could be said of the scriptures as a whole. So he's not denying that the other parts of the Hebrew Old Testament fit this category of witnessing to him. I think he's assuming it to be so. Now these texts indicate not only that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as a witness to himself, viewed himself as a scope of the Old Testament, but that it functioned this way apart from his own self-witness. Think about that. Before Jesus tells us Jesus Christ is the scope of the Old Testament, he was the scope of the Old Testament. It doesn't take the self-witness of the incarnate son of God to tell us that he's the scope of the Old Testament for him to become something he wasn't already. We don't have to rely on Jesus telling us the things that he does in the gospel to conclude the Old Testament all along had been about Jesus. Now it helps us, all right, it helps us to do that, but apart from his self-witness, the Old Testament was a messianic document written by a team of messianic believing scholars, the prophets, who studied their own documents, by the way, to engender a messianic hope which created believers in the Messiah to come. You remember 2 Timothy 3 15? I remember it, but I can't cite it, so I need to find it in my notes. That's a very important verse. And if I can find it here. Here it is, and that from childhood, this is Paul to Timothy, you have known the Holy Scriptures, what do you think he's referring to? Most likely the Old Testament, which are, the Old Testament, apart from the self-witness of Christ and the apostles and the New Testament, which are, that is, the Holy Scriptures, the Old Testament, are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Remember Simeon? I've seen the Lord's salvation, I can die now. He didn't read the New Testament. He didn't have to hear the oral self-witness of the Lord Jesus in terms of his relationship to the extant scriptures of the Old Testament. The Jesus was an infant, and he connects the incarnation with revelation that's already been given. He doesn't say, now that Jesus is here, whole new meanings nobody knew ever before from the Old Testament are gonna become vogue. Now we can really read Jesus into the Old Testament because he's here and he was never in the Old Testament in the first place. But now that he came, we can go shove him in there. We can find him in places he wasn't. You're listening. Find him in places nobody ever would have thought he's there. You know, we can pull rabbits out of our hats. That's not the way the New Testament reads the Old Testament. That's not the way Jesus read the Old Testament. Oh, by the way, we're gonna put new meanings on old texts. And the old meanings of the old texts, they'll come true, but they're not gonna come true until, sorry, the millennium. That's one view of all that. So these are important things. Apart from his own self-witness, the scope of the Old Testament was the incarnate son of God to come in his sufferings and glory. So in other words, the Old Testament was a messianic document apart from the Messiah's earthly testimony that it was so. Here's that gaffing man again. Here Jesus affirms the relative overall clarity and independence of Moses, the Old Testament, as a witness to himself distinct from his own teaching and so by implication of the New Testament. So much is the case that this Old Testament witness to Christ serves as an adequate basis for the just condemnation of those rejecting him, John 545. In itself, an independent of his own self witness. That's, I think he's right. And I think that's massive to think about. A, is that how you do it? Some of you were falling asleep. It was very discouraging, so I threw the A in there to wake you up. Isn't that, that's huge, think about that. Apart from the self-witness of the incarnate Son of God, the Old Testament is about the incarnate Son of God to come. How so? Well, it reveals his sufferings and his glory. Where does it do that? It does that in the law, it does that in the prophets' writings, it does that in the prophets. In what ways does it do that? Well, direct prophecy sometimes. There are typological people, typological events, typological persons, events, institutions, and places. Where is the first typological place? The garden. It's a type of temple. It's a type of, it's a land that's typological of, it's Adam the first land, but it's typological of Emmanuel's land, ultimately. So, I'll assume that readers agree that Jesus viewed himself as the scope of scripture. Let's go to the apostles. the apostles on Christ as scope of scripture. Now Luke 24 is probably the most comprehensive statement from Jesus in the Gospels concerning his understanding of the Old Testament and his relation to it. Jesus' audience was very important there, two unnamed disciples and then the 11 and probably others with them as well. He told him to stay in Jerusalem. We're going to get to the apostles. But he told him to stay in Jerusalem. Upper room, you guys are in the upper room at Free Grace Baptist Church. Upper room, Jesus gives those promises. I'll not leave you as orphans. I'll send the spirit. I think we have a tendency to rip those passages out of the redemptive historical context and try to make them fit me personally. Like, I'm gonna cause you to recall all that I taught you. Oh, Lord, please help me to remember all that you've taught me. I don't think that's what it means, primarily. I'm gonna, the Spirit is gonna do that. The Spirit will also lead you into all truth. Lord, lead me into all truth. And tell you what's gonna happen in the future. Lord, please tell me what's gonna happen in the future. No can he do. Does Scottish people say that? I had a Scottish friend that used to say that. No can he do. What that means is Jesus is giving the promise of the coming spirit. and by implication, the promise of the New Testament documents. He's going to cause the disciples to remember what he taught them, lead them into the implications of his sufferings and glory, and tell them about the future. I think that's a promise of the New Testament. But that doesn't happen until the endowment comes, until Pentecost happens. So what happens is you go from Peter before Pentecost to Peter after Pentecost. We usually like Peter before Pentecost, in one sense, better because we say dumb things. You say dumb things. I don't. You say dumb things quite often, especially some of you. Before Pentecost, he's one thing. After Pentecost, he's another. The preachers like him after Pentecost, in one sense. The difference is Pentecost. God promised to endow their cranial apparatuses with the ability to interpret scripture unlike they were, at least consistently, before the glory of Christ, and interpret scripture not only unlike they were, but like their Lord. We see this in Peter first in Acts chapter two. Speaking of Peter, let me remind you of our brother Peter prior to the resurrection in Pentecost. I'm gonna end up in Acts 2, 14 to 36. But let's go back to Matthew 16. Just think for a little bit, okay? So this is Peter pre-Pentecost. Then we have Peter Pentecostal sermon. He said to them, who do you say that I am? Remember the answer, Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. One of the books Pastor Butler and I read together, I think it was John Bear, didn't he go to this verse and say this is the foundation for the next two or 400 years of Christian thought. What does this mean? You are the Christ, the son of the living God. Orthodox Christological confession, Yes, a wonderfully orthodox Christological confession. Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, produced by God, preserved by God, taught by God. Here's a taught by God text. Orthodox confessions of Christ are caused by God's internal work of producing them. Now watch what happens. Then he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must, where's he show, show, he's showing them, what is he, was he like going, watch how I'm walking. I'm showing you how I'm gonna go to Jerusalem. What was the point from which he was showing? What is that from which he was showing? I think it's showing them from the scriptures. That he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. By the way, be raised. That means a resurrecting agent other than the incarnate son of God, at least according to his human nature, is going to resurrect him. Elsewhere he says, destroy this temple and I will raise it up. Then there's the resurrecting agent is the second person of the Trinity incarnate, but according to his divine nature. Wow, inseparable operations. That's for next year. Then, but I didn't get invited for next year, so I needed to throw that in there. That was free. You can get some of your money back for that. Then Peter took him aside. This is Peter. before Pentecost, right? Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now he's gonna rebuke the incarnate Son of God. Something's wrong here. Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You're an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. You know that passage really well. Orthodox Christological confession rebukes the Lord and it gets called Satan, all in one passage. You don't find that after Pentecost. You see, you know, the disciples were connecting the dots with Jesus and the Old Testament during his earthly ministry. But sometimes the disciples who are writing, Matthew in this case, show us that they got it wrong sometimes. They didn't always get it right. I think Martha, or one of the ladies in the gospel, John has a wonderful confession, then five verses later tries to undo it. I remember reading Ryley says, we must be careful, especially with newer disciples, they haven't figured it all out yet. I think all of us. I haven't figured it all, none of us have figured it all out. But once you get to Acts, it's way different. Peter's preaching sufferings and glory. He's saying this, the events we've witnessed is that which the prophet said would take place, and he's doing even more than Jesus did. He's actually quoting, citing Old Testament texts. Psalm 16, Joel 2 in the Acts 2 text. Now I'm not gonna read the entire passage for you in Acts chapter two. I'll just assume you know what I'm talking about. Just make some observations first. Peter is interpreting the Old Testament in light of the then current events, the sufferings and glory of our Lord and Pentecost. He basically says this, remember I said keep that in your head, this is that. This, what you now see, is that which the prophet Joel prophesied. He cites Joel 2, 28 and 29, your young men and your daughters shall prophesy and all that. Second, take special note of verse 17. Verse 17 is very important. Prior to quoting Joel 2, he puts the words of Joel in a wider Old Testament context indicated by these words, and it shall come to pass in the last or latter days says God. Then he quotes Joel. But it sounds like the whole thing's Joel. It's not all Joel. It's Joel and Peter's reduction of a certain strand of teaching from the Old Testament that puts Joel in the context of fulfillment in what he calls the latter days. Did Peter make that statement up? No, where is it? If you go backwards into the Old Testament, it's in Micah. latter days, Micah basically is, it's Micah, right? I think it's Micah, 6-1. It's in one of the prophets. And he's going back to Isaiah because it's in Isaiah 2-2. It's almost a direct quotation. A prophet's quoting a prophet. You think the prophets read the prophets? You think the prophets reading the prophets, searching carefully, 1 Peter 1-10, You think the prophets read the prophets and profited from reading the prophets, and it enhanced their minds once it was time for them to produce a prophetic oracle? Probably, I think so. If I ever get back to the notes. I'm gonna quote John Gill, who says that, and I think for good reason. So he's gonna quote Joel, too, and before he quotes it, he puts the reader's minds He wants them to be reminded, oh, by the way, the latter days of the Old Testament have been inaugurated. We can go behind Isaiah because it didn't start with Isaiah. Guess where it started? We had this conversation. Genesis 49.10, the Shiloh prophecy has the phrase latter days in it. When the scepter shall not, you know what I mean. Some is gonna come up from Judah and it's gonna have authority over the peoples in the latter days, that's where it starts. It was a Balaam oracle, right? We don't like those, because they're weird. It's just like, what's going on there? But if you put all, by the way, Lion of the tribe of Judah, does it come from the same passage? I think it does. So, Jewel, to, in its fulfillment, is first put in a wider Old Testament context of the latter days. From the Old Testament perspective, the latter days are in the future. From the New Testament's perspective, they were inaugurated by the sufferings and glory of Christ. Hebrews 1.1, in the former days, God spoke to us in many ways through the prophets, but now in these latter or last days, he has spoken to us in his sons, in his son. So we are in the latter days. Latter day glory is being experienced right here. The latter day, the last day started at the entrance of the son of God into glory. So that's interesting how Peter's doing that. Peter's gonna preach the fulfillment of Joel 2.28, he's gonna cite the text to a Jewish audience. Before he does that, he's basically putting it in a wider Old Testament context. He's setting up the readers to understand Joel 2.28, not merely in the context of the book of Joel. OK, so he's saying, hey, I'm going to go back to Joel, but we're going to open up our interpretive wide lens and realize that Joel was actually speaking of the inaugurated latter days, days in which we live. Matter of fact, he's going to say it in Acts 3. And all the prophets from the beginning of the world have prophesied these days, these latter days. Third observation, the Bible itself in Peter's sermon in Acts 2 cites itself, then contains an explanation of a citation, utilizing words not in the citation to explain the citation. Repeat that please. I shouldn't have read this third one, because I'm running out of time. What time do I end, at 9.20, 9.30, 9.50? OK. Let me say this again. The Bible itself, in Peter's sermon in Acts 2, cites itself, so scripture is citing scripture. Luke's writing what Peter said, and it becomes scripture. Peter's gonna cite the Old Testament, Psalm 16, and then after he cites Psalm 16, eight through 11, he's gonna explain aspects of Psalm 16, eight through 11, with words not contained in Psalm 16, eight through 11. So let me say this sentence again. The Bible itself, in Peter's sermon in Acts 2, cites itself then contains an explanation of a citation, Psalm 16, eight through 11, utilizing words not in the citation to explain the citation. The words not in the citation used to explain the citation are Christ and resurrection. Now if you read Psalm 16, concepts of the Messiah, the concept of a Messiah and the concept of resurrection is in there, but not the very words. So is it okay for your pastor to get up in the morning and to explain the Bible by using words that aren't in the word to explain it? Peter did it. Otherwise, all we could do is just get up and say, my sermon this morning is the reading of Genesis 1 through chapter 11. Stand up for the reading and preaching of the word of God. And all you could do is just read it verbatim. Some of you are going, really, that'd be great. I don't always like my pastor's preaching. I don't, you know who my pastor is? Me, and your pastor's you. Do you always like your pastor's preaching? Of course not. Do you ever finish a sermon and you just wanna go hide in a closet? But you walk around, right? Hi brother, sister, good to see you. And in your heart you're going, that stunk. And you get an appointment with your pastor. and it quite often becomes your wife, right? So here's Peter doing what Jesus did, basically, in Acts 2. This is that. But Peter's slightly different. He quotes Psalm 16. He quotes, Jesus quotes the Old Testament elsewhere, but we didn't look at those. We just looked at him alluding to the Old Testament as finding Christ himself as its scope, right? John 5, Luke 24, two times. But Peter goes wider and he's referencing two particular passages. And both passages, by the way, are put in context. I looked at the latter day statement at verse 17, putting Joel 2 in context, but if you go up from there, he's actually putting Psalm 16 in context as well. He puts it, Psalm 16, Peter puts Psalm 16, puts its human author, David, in a broader Old Testament context. Listen to these words. Peter says, being a prophet, this is after he quotes Psalm 16. David was the human author. Being a prophet, here's a quiz, was David a prophet? And the answer is, yes, I had a friend from a certain institution with a certain really strong view of eschatology and hermeneutics, denied David as a prophet. And I said, Peter, the written word of God says he's a prophet. And he said, well, that's not what it means, or something like that. And knowing, now watch what David knew. Knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne. Did David know that God had promised to raise up the Christ from the dead to sit on David's throne someday in the future? True or false? True, yeah. True or false? Twitter, if you know. You know, some people get mad at my true and falses on Twitter. True or false, Barcello should stop true or falsing on Twitter. It's like, you get mad? It's just Twitter. I'm trying to get you to think. True or false questions can actually get you to think a little. True or false, some of you need to think a little more. So when Peter says this, these words that I just quoted, he's alluding to 2 Samuel 7, 2 Samuel 23, and Psalm 89 at least. Okay, the preachers are going, yep. These texts promise a son to David who will build Yahweh's temple and rule from his throne. Peter is interpreting this great event in light of the Old Testament, not casting new meanings on old texts, but drawing out what was always in those texts. Who taught him how to do that? No, not you, Isaac. Jesus. How about Acts 3? We're not gonna do Acts 3. Take a break or go to 9.30, Jim. Okay. He does the same thing in Acts 3, and we'll get there after the break. I'm going to pray. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to think through these issues. I ask that you give us clarity. We know that the word of God is produced by God, preserved by God, and has to be taught by God. That inner work of the truth taken by the spirit and brought home with power and clarity to our minds, that has to happen or else this morning has been in vain. Do that invisible work in our hearts, we ask your blessings. In Jesus' name, amen.
