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At the conclusion of our last lecture, we were noting that if one does not go through steps one and two in order to get to step three, there are one of two things that will happen. On the one hand, there are those texts that will stay in the first century and simply never become a word from God to us. For example, in 1 Corinthians, if we have no one in our context who is struggling with the problem of whether or not to join his pagan neighbors at the feasts in the idol temple, then the text there will have nothing to say to us. Or if we have no one who is denying the bodily resurrection, or if our culture does not insist on head coverings, or if we have no one drunk at the Lord's table, or if we have no one in our churches shouting Jesus anathema, Jesus be cursed, then the epistles merely become historical interests to us at this point or at these points, but they scarcely address us.

Now, if those words are going to somehow move into our situation, the only way they can do that is for us to listen to what was being said back there and then move. As I said, the other possibility of course is that the word never never belongs to the first century is immediately transferred into the uh 20th century through our grid. Words mean certain things to us already when we come to it. Especially this is true in in English be true in those who are French-speaking uh is simply you already have the meaning of words is already fixed by your culture and context then you bring that meaning back to the word when you read it and immediately make a transfer that sometimes leads us to make texts mean what they don't mean.

There is, for example, in 1 Corinthians 11:26-27 the word that says, "If anyone eats or drinks of the cup of the Lord unworthily, he eats or drinks damnation to himself." I spent a great deal of anxiety in my childhood uh at every communion as to whether or not I should partake. uh I had in fact accepted Christ but I wasn't always living that and uh it says whoever eats or drinks unworthily which means you can't do it with sin in your life uh lest I come under damnation and be doomed to hell I passed up the communion many times that was really rather unfortunate because that was precisely what I needed was the communion I was out of touch and I needed God's grace graciously extended to me precisely where it is tangibly so done in our communal experience of the reception of the Lord's supper where by faith once again I experience his forgiveness and receive the ministry of his grace well the text does not mean unworthily equals sin in one's life what the text means is that if anyone eats or drinks in an unworthy manner it is in a context of people who are being glutton in a meal that precedes the Lord's table and who are actually being drunken so that when they come to the Lord's table, they are not in any way able to appreciate what is going on at the table of the Lord. It has to do with the manner in which they're eating and drinking. It doesn't have to do with quote whether you got sin in your life. Now, let a man examine himself. That means let a person sit under the judgment of God as to what these these items these elements in the communion are all about and in that manner let him come and eat and drink. But those who are his are precisely the ones who are invited to that table. And in fact if it took worthiness none of us is there anyway are we? That is that's precisely where we're all left out is uh whether or not we're worthy. So the point is that that text is very often transferred into our context without listening to what the what the word of God is. You see, and that's the thing that we need to wrestle with and keep from doing.

Now, what I ordinarily do at this point is to illustrate all of this by taking a piece of text and working through it. But we're going to uh do that in a kind of negative way at this point. uh because I'm going to save uh that material until we come to it in in the course of the lectures and they that will be uh tomorrow morning but the text that I have in mind is chapter 3:10-17 it is an absolutely perfect place to illustrate this at the present moment in fact I am grading a group of 135 papers from a class at the seminary in which their assignment was to to uh deal with the structures of the Greek in this paragraph and uh sort of put this the Greek out in a way that you can see the flow of the argument and then out beside the Greek text that they are now rewriting to write the uh to write in English the argument trace the argument in terms terms of what you see going on over here in the Greek text. I felt that it would be a perfectly good kind of ex exercise that would cause them to be able to see what the text means without having my tell them. But I've already read some of those papers and uh I am amazed absolutely amazed at uh one paper in particular out of 14 that I've read so far. He starts the argument in verse 10. "According to the commission of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and another man is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it." And he starts the argument by saying what Paul is talking about here is the fact that he has laid the foundation for the Christian life. And now he says this this student is arguing let each one take care how he builds his life upon the foundation that that has been laid namely Jesus Christ. And then he spends the rest of the text arguing that even though he builds his life badly, he's going to be saved though as by fire. Now my suggestion to you is that the text never meant that. It never will mean that. It if it ever has meant that, it has only meant that because you have totally blown the text. It simply doesn't mean that.

Now when one comes to verses 16 and 17, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?" That surely seems to justify that former interpretation. But in fact, that is precisely the text that causes us to be sure that that was the wrong interpretation of verses 10 to 15. Now, I'm not going to give the answer to that. That's my way of making sure that you come to class tomorrow. No, not really. But we will we will take that up.

Now the reason for using this particular piece of text as an illustration is that what we would do that what I ordinarily do then and we're going to do it tomorrow. We're just going to go through these steps and show you what one has to do in in in in coming to grips with a piece of text and that it doesn't take expertise in Greek ordinarily. Now in this instance it does help to know a little bit about the Greek language because of the plural singular you uh that it comes out in English. That's not true in French. I suppose that in French they wouldn't have made that mistake, but in English it's a very easy mistake because of the singular and the plural you is identical in English and not so in Greek and that would have come out clearly. Although not necessarily. I know people who run right past those singulars and plurals in the languages that do have them and still make the same mistake. But at least it's that's a place where a little Greek, you know, never hurt anybody as it were. But uh uh we'll have to take note of those kinds of things as we come to them. But the point is we want to find out what is God saying. And the the the problem in this text is that the very thing that God is saying to us in that text. It isn't the only place in the New Testament where he says that, but it is the only place where it is said so beautifully and so well and so powerfully. And when we miss what God is saying, we have taken a piece of the Bible and simply laid it aside and never hear what God is saying to us. Now, I'm concerned about that. We're going to listen to what the text says. And so one has to start at step one.

Now, as I said, we're not going to do that right now, but we must say some things as to what is involved in step one. And that's what we're going to lay out now before us for a few moments in this lecture. That is what do we do? What do we do at step one at exegesis? And then secondly, we'll say some things about step three, which is the area that concerns me greatly. Now about step one about exegesis. Good exegetical questions are of two kinds. They are questions of context and questions of content. Context and content. And all the exegetical questions can somehow be brought under these two large questions.

First and always first are the questions of context. We want to know two kinds of things about context. One is the historical context. The historical context tells us about things that aren't immediately in the text. That is we want to know all about Corinth. We want to know about the ancient world into which Paul is speaking in the church in Corinth. We want to know the, you know, the the, if you will, the geography, the topography, the economics, the sociology, all of those things that make up first century Corinth and what kind of people they were, the historical context. And we're going to come back and say a few things about that right here in a few moments.

The second content I mean contextual question has to do with the literary context. That is the context in which any passage is found in the document itself. That's what you ordinarily think of when you say context. You mean what is it you know what is it saying in its immediate literary context. But there are two levels of literary context. There is first of all the context of the whole letter. And that's the other thing we're going to do this hour is to spend some time talking about the whole letter. What's going on in the entire letter? Because it's important for us to have that before us. And that's why the assignment was given read the whole letter through at one sitting. You start by reading the whole thing through before you go back and start reading carefully one. And is you don't study a document by starting with verse 1:1 and then spending a lot of time doing careful exegesis of 1:1, 1:2, 1:3 and you spend you start by reading the whole document getting it in front of you having a feeling for some things about that document and then in that context go back and you make some provisional oh judgments make some provisional judgments about what's going on in the letter and you're not suggesting you know all the answers but you have some feelings about where it's going and what's happening you want to have a sense of the tone of the uh you know what kind of letter it is all of those kinds of questions and we'll come back to those but that's the whole letter and then in that whole letter there is the second context which is the immediate context the immediate context and the basic question in the immediate context is what's the point what's the point I keep asking you over and over and over again. What's the point? It isn't enough to hear, oh, he said this and it means this. Yes, I understand that's what it means. Now, what's the point of this? Given that he's already said this and he was making this point. Now, what's the point of this paragraph?

Now, this is one of the reasons you understand why any Bible, be careful here, but it's true. Any Bible that gives you scripture every verse a paragraph is an anathema. It is a curse. And the reason it is a curse is because it destroys the contexts in which those passages are written. And the moment you destroy the context in which those passages are written, you're no longer listening to the word of God. Paul didn't write it that way. In fact, he would look at your versification where every verse is a paragraph and he'd say, "I wrote that." And he'd come glued. It is simply not the way it was written. Now, it might be convenient for you for having a quick eye to run through and find 1 Corinthians 7:26 in a hurry, but so what? I mean, I would rather take you five more seconds to find 7:26 and find out that 7:26 is in the midst of a paragraph in which Paul wrote rather than being able to quickly find a a verse that isn't even a sentence necessarily in Paul. Now, that is a destruction of the text. Paul wrote in paragraphs. He wrote in large blocks of ideas. What's the point in this having said this? Now, what's he trying to say to us? And you've got to start thinking that way. If you don't start thinking that way, you're really going to do it in and you can do that. That doesn't take any expertise. Just start to think paragraphs and listen every time you come across a verse.

Now, one of the reasons we've done that is that we have allowed ourselves in our devotional reading of scripture to uh to read scripture with a kind of uh where's a word from God for me today, you know, approach. That's okay. But what happens is we read and and we're not after what's being said. We're after some catchy sentence or catchy phrase. And once we find the catchy phrase, God has spoken to us today. Quite apart from what God means or what the context is, some catchy phrase really turns us on. Now, that's okay. That that's permissible. But don't let that become the meaning of the text. And don't let that be some kind of substitute for Bible study. I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not convinced that it's any more the word of God to us and any more sacred if one puts his finger down on a text and you have a certain combination of words and because it's in scripture, those combination of words are some kind of a magical word from God for you today. I mean, one might as well put his finger down in Milton. Milton says some good things, too. and God can just as easily address you from Milton uh out of context putting that words can get into a certain collocation and you know a certain syntax and arrangement and can really speak to my situation but that's not a word for that's not the word of God you know the other the the obverse of that of course is that the is to use that as a way of really finding out the will of God Judas went out and hanged himself go thou and do likewise you know, it's it's really not the nature of uh hearing what God is saying. Or like the fellow that went to Morocco because he opened it too soon and it said Morocco leather and that's how he I mean just because it happens to be between the pages doesn't mean that that kind of nonsense somehow makes it God's word. God's word is what God is intending to say to us. That's what God's word is. And just a happy combination of words and a phrase completely out of context. You know, it it's what I call promise boxing the scripture. Now, it's quite true if the if the if the promise is there, and it is a promise for all times, then take it out and put it in your box, if you will. But you probably ought to think context even then. So, what's the point? contextual questions.

Now, the second set of questions are content. And here, very frankly, uh many times you're going to need the help of the experts. Now, that's not a bad thing to say. It's simply a recognition that God has given a variety of gifts in the church. There are those who have taken the time to learn the original language and to wrestle with the syntactical, grammatical, philological questions have to do with how the Greek, you know, what the Greek means. But they're the content questions. Content questions will have to do with the meaning of words. What does this word mean? It will have to do with grammar and this kind of thing. Is it's going to make a difference if Paul says something in the plural or in the singular with regard to that text in chapter 3.

Now, let me just say a word about words, the meaning of words. It's one of the worst and easiest ways to do the Bible in what I call the concordance study. Now, that's again, that's not a bad thing, but it can be abused. uh one can take the idea that a word has a meaning and that once a word has a meaning that it always has that meaning. Now what you need to hear and I don't know how to emphasize this any more strongly than I will do. Words only have meaning in context. Only in context. A word by itself doesn't mean anything. Now do you understand that in the dictionary a word never means anything. All a dictionary does is to give you the possibilities as to what it might mean in a given context. But a word only has meaning in context. Now to how many of you does the word "mad" mean anything? Just a vowel. She knows. Well, what if I were to say "Mine is a sweetheart"? Now, that may might make you begin to have some awareness of the word.