0:03
so um I put up on the board the you know the chicken or the egg question which came first um but there's a there's a
0:14
fairly obvious reality to the Bible both Old Testament and New Testament that we really don't think about very often but is incredibly
0:26
significant and that is that the the act of Revelation of Revelation in both Old Testament and New Testament began and progressed quite a
0:37
bit before any of it was written down now that's that's kind of obvious you know creation happened before Moses wrote it you know we we know that but
0:48
that's not that's not really salvific creation is is one thing that we will talk about creation but the abrahamic Covenant happened oh I don't know 600
1:01
years before Moses came along and and then the Exodus and all of that happened before Moses wrote it down we know that the prophets didn't
1:13
start writing until quite a bit later after the divided Kingdom for the most part um now of course David is called a prophet uh so so yes him but the the the
1:26
the typical prophets that we think of are going to be um post divided Kingdom and then post exilic so God has revealed himself to his
1:38
people before anything was written down now we think okay that's just the Old Testament we don't really care about that because we have the New Testament we have Jesus Christ but the reality
1:49
continues and that is that the Revelation and the faith of the community and the spread of that community and the teaching of
2:00
Jesus as the Christ the son of the Living God actually all occurred before any of it was written down James might be the first the earliest New Testament
2:12
book um Thessalonians might be the earliest Pauline letter Corinthians is fairly early none of them are are thought to be
2:22
earlier than the mid 40s most 50s and then even the gospels are often considered to be later than
2:32
the Epistles so we have a phenomenon uh phenomenon uh that Wayne Meeks who who does a lot did sorry he did a lot of study uh he passed
2:43
away last year uh he did a lot of study of the early church and early church doctrine but also just early church life and how the community lived in that first few hundred years and he says that
2:56
the Christian Movement existed once without the Canon which later became constitutive of it is of it is a fact
3:07
whose Heron excuse me hermeneutical significance has not even now fully impressed itself on our theology put it simply uh we we think of
3:17
the Bible we 2 Timothy 3:16 it's it's inspired it's God breathed it's profitable for uh for instruction for reproof for all of those things but of
3:27
course when Paul wrote that to Timothy there was no new testament there was no Cannon of scripture in fact the scripture that
3:38
he's referring to is undeniably the Hebrew Bible what we call the Old Testament so we're we're faced with as I I mentioned last week a desire to read
3:49
the Bible especially the Old Testament as the disciples read the Old Testament we're faced with this um weeks uh Meeks excuse me considers it a hermeneutical
4:00
principle meaning it has impact on how we study our Bible and that is the reality that Christianity predates the
4:11
Canon right in fact True Religion Judaism and then Christianity both predate their respective cannons in other words the Canon did not
4:24
create the create the church the Canon did not create Judaism the actual religions that we consider as among world religions were
4:37
not actually created from their book their book was created from their Community does that that make
4:49
sense okay now that's not to say the church created the Canon we're going to get into that next week right that's something completely different but we are looking at it from from one angle this time
5:14
is now that that sounds ecumenical okay and so I I stop right there to explain how I'm using the word faith community okay I I do not mean that next week is going to be taught by a Muslim the following week by a Buddhist monk uh
5:26
that's not what I mean what what I mean is both the Judaism and Christianity how was Abraham considered righteous by his faith okay so he he is
5:40
a he is a father a forefather of the faith community taking faith in the truest sets but the faith community then
6:05
then guided and guided and governed so there's something that happens before the cannon of scripture
6:16
in both Judaism and in Christianity so this is kind of what I meant when I said last week that we need to learn how to read the Old Testament the way the
6:26
apostles the disciples read the Old Testament and that is without the New Testament okay so from this we're going to look at two
6:38
principles or two hermeneutical approaches okay first read the New
6:55
Testament as the disciples did I'm sorry not the New Testament the Old Testament cu the New Testament around so read the Old Testament the way the
7:07
disciples did now that's not easy to do in fact it's it's incredibly difficult I was thinking about that phrase present to
7:20
us the challenge for me is when I read it is is trying to Envision the culture of that t time
7:37
frame yes uh understanding or trying to Envision the culture in which the uh the people lived and wrote that's actually a very essential part of biblical theology uh biblical theology is fundamentally
7:50
historical uh but that's that's not necessarily new because especially in reformed theology but but generally in conservative Christianity we follow
8:15
grammatical hermeneutic and and that means that we we read the texts within their historical setting and we also pay attention to the syntax the word usage
8:26
the the um the genre the apocal itic versus the the um proverb versus The Poetry versus the prophecy versus the
8:36
history okay so that's the historical grammatical and I'm not in any way detracting from detracting from that but what I think you're getting at
8:47
is is really deeper than this this this flows
9:01
into how we interpret the passages we're reading ex reading ex Jesus and again that's incredibly important biblical important biblical theology is bigger than
9:12
that instead of trying to just uh determine for example what was Isaiah's situation in life that's ex Jesus that's the
9:24
historical grammatical realize when it was Isaiah lived and when he prophesied and what was going on in in the kingdoms and who was powerful and who was weak
9:34
all of that is part of understanding Isaiah biblical Isaiah biblical theology looks back at more where does Isaiah fit in the Arc of
9:48
Revelation it takes a broader view of the entire scripture as a revelation of God of himself through his creation through his people people and then
10:00
ultimately through his word but the the point of this is that his work and his calling his election his calling of a
10:11
people in both cases preceeds the actual word being word being written what mind is that these
10:24
people disciples or even Jewish Believers before yes when the document came across Matthew Isaiah they knew this is
10:38
something yes they didn't just They didn't accept everything that come they knew certain ones more well that's exactly what we're
10:49
going to get into Lord willing next week that's the whole idea of Canon um because as I as I've said before especially since the enlightenment where the Western mindset is to try to
11:02
scientifically establish anything that is to be believed within religion we have tried very very very vigorously to find out
11:13
just how the Old Testament came to be the cannon of Hebrew scripture and just just when did the New Testament finally come to be the Bible that we have and I
11:25
I mentioned and we'll talk about it next week but the council or the of Jamia in ad90 um but also the the Council of laia
11:35
in I'm sorry yeah ad90 ad 367 Jewish scripture on the one hand Christian scripture on the other um we just we really want to know when did
11:46
this happen when when would when did the church say this is the Bible and nothing else uh actually you're a lot closer to the truth and that is there's just something about something about it and that something about it was not
11:58
just not just Abe it was Abe plus the whole community and and so there there's something in there's something first of all in the culture of the second temple
12:11
we've talked a lot about second temple Judaism especially in our Pauling study because that was the world and that that's that world was the intersection
12:21
of three different worlds obviously the Jewish world but then also the Greek World which had been brought in by Alexander 300 years earlier but the
12:32
Greek language and Greek philosophy the Greek New Testament I'm sorry Old Testament was the primary Bible of second temple Judaism so their not only
12:43
their language which was very rarely Hebrew it would have been mostly been Aramaic and then among the learned it would have been Greek and some of us
12:53
tell us that Jesus spoke Latin but you know we don't uh friend and acquaintance of Abigail was convinced a Catholic young man who
13:03
went to well I guess he's doing his Doctorate at St Andrews he convinced that Jesus spoke Latin but you know some people juggle people juggle geese but then the third of course is
13:15
Roman and the the influence of Roman law uh Roman technology but really more than anything biblically Roman oppression Roman the the the Romans um
13:29
epitomy and and perfected the idea of the Empire I mean they they were they were Emperor Palpatine they were the they were the empire in fact that's where it all comes
13:39
from that whole genre of of Science Fiction basically comes from the concept of the Roman what what does the Empire have it has a senate you know in in Star
13:50
Wars so it's like we don't have any imagination at all um so these three worlds come together and and that's what makes you the culture very important but there's there's another
14:02
culture that that first of all um overarches the culture of the actual time but then in Christ invades that
14:16
culture and this is the culture of God's self-revelation through his work through his creation he was not just bored and thought I need a hobby I'll create now
14:30
creation is all about revealing the nature of God to his glory and so up until the Advent of Christ that that
14:40
overarching culture of a a one God who is the creator of all things and sustainer of all things had only one point of contact in the world and that
14:54
was Israel okay but then with the Advent of Jesus Christ God himself invaded that Godless rebellious
15:04
culture and then from there that new culture the culture of a new creation is now like Levan working its way through
15:15
the entire loaf of human history that's biblical theology in a nutshell okay so biblical Theology and this is where I I mentioned last mentioned last week that it it was somewhat
15:26
disconcerting to me to find out in in getting ready for this class how many different views there are of biblical of biblical Theology and I and it's even more
15:38
disconcerting that the vast majority of them that I read I thought were absolute bunk absolutely worthless why even bother most of them coming from out of
15:49
um Enlightenment German Lutheran theology um but not much better in in England not much better in the United States the idea of what biblical
15:59
theology is most a lot of people think bibl biblical theology is just doing exegesis biblically or making sure that your theology is tied back to the Bible which
16:11
is the most common form of biblical theology called proof texting can we find enough proof texts to defend our Doctrine okay that's not
16:22
biblical theology at all it's also not biblical theology as opposed to non-biblical theology non-biblical theology biblical the and I don't know if it's even I I think um actually Bard Childs
16:33
has a better view of it he calls it canonical Theology and I'm probably going to shift into that more as we talk about the Canon but instead of putting
16:59
here and to put things in perspective and week four is going to be devoted to the com comparison of biblical Theology and Systematic Theology if Systematic Theology does not come from the exegesis
17:11
of scripture then it cannot claim to be biblical and much Systematic Theology does not come from the exegesis of scripture it comes from some
17:22
philosophical a priority so for example Armenian soteriology does not come from the Bible it comes from the philosophical premise that Man's Free
17:34
Will is Will is inviolable okay once you establish that premise which is not biblical you then build a Biblical
17:45
Doctrine on that unbiblical non-biblical premise so the the point being is that throughout the history of the church Systematic
17:57
church Systematic Theology has typically been the top dog of the curriculum in any Seminary certainly any reformed Seminary the the
18:07
core of that seminary's curriculum is its Systematic its Systematic Theology classes okay but I have come to
18:30
inverted that and and and a lot of that has come through just kind of meditating on the whole concept of dogmatic Theology and that term I mentioned last
18:41
week Evangelical scholasticism and for years I what what drew me to the
18:53
reformed theology was its rigor its biblical rigor and I think that's what draws most people to reform theology is just the sense that these people are
19:05
using their Bibles right and yeah they they've got their proof texts and they and they're building their systems biblically but when you get into the the
19:18
culture of reformed Christianity you find that what actually happens once you get to this point is
19:42
the um the doctrine comes from the cation and the and the classification of biblical texts but then what we have to do is we
19:53
have to collate and classify the doctrinal texts doctrinal texts into a Systematic Theology or a Creed what we believe or a
20:05
confession and then now if you become um for example just an example if you become an officer in a Presbyterian church or really most reformed churches
20:17
if you become an officer of any sort in that church you have to um you have to give aent to what to the teachings of the Bible
20:29
the Bible right no to the system of Doctrine as represented by what the Westminster Confession of Faith okay you
20:41
you you have to uh you have to I I won't well actually you are swearing Allegiance it is a vow okay so you're swearing allegiance to the product of
20:52
systematic theology which was hopefully a product of biblical exegesis but you're several Generations removed now from the biblical exites okay and then the overall
21:05
discussions at General Assembly or in the various books that you buy about Doctrine are really
21:16
scholasticism there arguments one Theologian arguing against another Theologian about how to interpret a particular Doctrine with different Bible verses and
21:27
that frustrates a lot of people when you when you try to get into things and you read the textbooks and you know and you you think well that sounds right and then you read you know it's what the proverb says one man's story sounds
21:38
right until you hear the other guy right well this guy is using scripture well so is he so how and then this is something that the unbeliever throws back at the
21:48
church why do you have so many denominations why do you all use the same scripture but don't agree on what they mean okay that that is a problem that we face as Believers in the real world and so what happens then is what I
22:03
called scholas I'm sorry Evangelical scholasticism where we're we're really not much different than the medieval theologians who spent all their time
22:14
like like Thomas aquinus arguing about um Aristotle's influence on on Christian liturgy okay nothing to do with the Bible at all so this progression
22:40
this this progression was um honestly it was it it kind of became somewhat of a caner in in my
22:51
own profession of reformed theology realizing that my reformed Brethren were highly polemical and that the Articles
23:05
written were very Scholastic and and not always terribly biblical and the positions taken were
23:15
very rigid and the HW heretic used quite frequently okay and and and I I've shared this story before um but the last
23:28
time I was invited to preach at Chapel at the Seminary here locally that I graduated from I actually took up that issue and I kind of chastised the
23:39
reformed Community for being so quick to hurl the epithet heretic uh against somebody when it really was a situation that they were
23:49
not saying shth the way we want to say shth they were either saying shth or shet but they weren't saying it quite or shalet or whatever ever they were doing they weren't saying it quite right and
24:03
so heretic and you know nobody's inspired anymore none of us are perfect the fallibility factor is is probably varying but we all have pretty high degree of
24:14
degree of fallibility and in a world that is that is um just going pel Mel toward paganism it did it did seem to me that
24:25
arguing over some of these things was rather foolish rather foolish and and so in thinking about that and this was um I can't remember the last time I preached a chapel but I was a
24:35
much younger man at the time it was quite a while ago so it's been a long time and the more and more I read of late 20th century some writers who were
24:48
read kind read kind of abandoning that the the popular academic practice of dividing up Deuteronomy or the Pento into the five
24:58
different um elohist and yist and Priestly and Deuteronomy and whatever the other was and the three or four Isaiah and all the redactors and finally all that stuff even among that same
25:11
crowd they began to realize you know what what we have is the Bible in fact what we've always had is the Bible what the Jews had in the time of Jesus and of Paul was the Holy
25:23
scriptures that are essentially with with only arguable difference and very minor at that the same as we have in our Old Testament okay and in
25:34
the New Testament the same thing is true by the middle of the 2 Century it was pretty well set what the books were long before anybody got together to say what the books were we all knew okay and and
25:47
who wrote Ephesians and who wrote Colossians everybody considered Paul to have written them so there was a group of theologians in the latter part of the 20th and into the 21st century who I
25:58
think finally realized that all of this stuff is very silly it's very academic it's very Scholastic and has absolutely no profit no profit whatsoever and reading
26:10
them finally took me back me back beyond the realization that what we're dealing with in in scripture is not
26:20
something from which the church came and not something that the church came up with neither of those and it
26:31
seems like it has to be one or the other right but it's neither okay the the Bible is not something that the church came from you
26:41
know that we we came up with this book like the book of The Book of um of Islam the Quran and and this tells us what to do in fact it doesn't and in fact we
26:53
were already doing it before any of that was written so we're all in agreement there historically chronologically the Bible didn't come first either in the Old Testament or the new the faith
27:03
came first the revelation of God and the election of God came first okay but then the other error that that that we fall into is to say that okay it was the
27:15
church that declared the Canon of scripture well that is also historically untenable okay there there's absolutely no possible way that you include either
27:27
in Jud M or in Christianity that their Canon of scripture was determined by some authoritative Edict of the powers that were they weren't okay so it's neither
27:40
the one or the other which means that we have something that really has a life of its own we might even say it's living and
27:53
active but I think that phrase is taken um you know we might actually say that we're dealing with something that is really totally different than any
28:06
other written document or written body of documents that mankind has ever experienced and this is what the the later 20th century theologians were
28:16
realizing is you know we can do what we want we can parse it and divide it and do what we want but the fact is the power of the believing Community both in Judaism and then of course Jewish
28:27
Christan Christianity and then Gentile Christianity as it grew the believing power was a body of books that everybody recognize were
28:38
recognize were Canon without anybody saying so the high priest never said so none of the Jewish kings ever said so no council up until it was already a foregone conclusion in
28:48
the middle of the 4th Century ever said so this is something different it's not just a religious book okay it it it predates or it postdates
29:01
the actual faith of the religious community but it predates their official recognition of its canonicity meaning it it has an identity
29:14
of its own and a power that is commensurate with that identity its identity is the self-disclosure of almighty God who cannot
29:26
be put into the um the council the ciliar edicts of either the the Senate of Jamia or the Council of laoda or nia
29:37
or any other Council God cannot be put into that but that's what we want to do we want to be able to point to something and say we believe that these are the 27
29:48
books of the New Testament because this is when it was determined but don't you realize that that would actually diminish the authority of those
30:06
to um to fall into a form of scholasticism now you know that we at Fellowship Bible Church the the elders have resisted the concept to confessionalism for many years and the
30:18
result of that has been largely to isolate our church from the rest of the reformed Evangelical community in Greenville because that is the c quanon Fellowship among reformed churches is
30:30
that you are confessional we we can't even join the uh Alliance of confessing evangelicals unless we confess a confession what if we confess that we
30:43
have sined by not what if we confess the good confession that Jesus confessed before Pontius Pilate can we do that can we hold fast to our confession of
30:54
Faith No we can choose whatever stinking confession we want okay we can we can take the the you know the bubbl links of of Romania and they came up with some
31:06
type of confession and if they wrote it down and we say we adhere to the bubbling confession of 1682 we can join the the alliance of confessing that's all we need I read it we can take
31:16
whatever we want now what is what is ridiculous about that you can have whatever confession you want as long as you have one okay well I understand if I
31:27
go to basketball Robins I got to choose one okay but what if I just don't go okay and and and that's where we've been and the reason that we've been there is because um I I think it has been a major
31:45
um and a a fellow by the name of George Gilbert uh wrote a an article on um biblical theology back in 1895 and he says the movement of and this this must have been a pretty
31:56
astounding statement at that time but he said the movement of the reformers was soon paralyzed on its biblical side doctrinal discussions carried on in the
32:07
spirit and with the apparatus of scholasticism absorbed the attention of the theologians and it has been that way ever since that that is what you will
32:19
experience if you go to a seminary you will listen to some of the most innan arguments about what about whether the decrees of God are infralapsarian or
32:32
superal that was one of the ones that broke my camels back sitting I am sitting here listening to this garbage and I actually made the comment do you know nobody in your congregation
32:42
is ever going to care about what you're talking about and there's allegedly training pastors for the ministry no they're not they're training Scholastic theologians to argue with one another and defend the
32:54
pure reformed faith of the Westminster Confession that's what they're doing and that's scholasticism and so um that has
33:05
engulfed Western Christianity to the point that even the the the part of western Christianity that we think is is doctrinally sound well maybe it is but
33:16
maybe it is spiritually dead you know the Scholastics didn't get everything wrong aquinus himself didn't get everything wrong you can still dig some
33:27
gems out of of of that Heap um I never found as much as RC's huh temperature pressure carbon
33:40
yes yes thank you um so when we look at the the how to actually do this and that's where we're moving is how how we going to do this because um I can't
33:52
remember who it was it's it's quoted somewhere in the notes biblical the ology doesn't really have a
34:05
methodology and the reason it doesn't it doesn't have a methodology because to to to give it a methodology means to give the Bible a framework and that's what everybody tries to do everybody tries to find the
34:16
central core of a Biblical message the central core is Covenant right or the central core is the dispensations but that's those are just the two most modern ones but it's as
34:27
soon as you try to give the Bible a central core or a Guiding Light or a guiding framework you you immediately force it into a an academic channel that has been
34:40
dug by dug by men you you force it into the faculties of reason and not everybody's reason works the same way so you also immediately
34:53
cause division within the body as to those people who think think in the direction that will align itself with Divine sovereignty and Covenants as
35:04
opposed to those who think of God's love and that'll lead them more towards the the the ways in which God has tried to convince man to be obedient
35:15
dispensationalism now they're they're both false both false paths dispensational dispensation is actually a Biblical word as his Covenant Paul talks about in that passage you
35:26
were reading the dispensation of God's revelation of God's grace that's the word it's really just the word economy economos okay so it's a Biblical concept
35:37
now the now the dispensationalism dispensationalists dispensationalism dispensationalists have not done biblical things with it covenants are obviously biblical but is the Bible actually oriented around a
35:47
string of covenants I don't think so and and as I said last week I don't really think I mean if we were going to find one theme that runs through the
35:58
Bible in terms of here on Earth it seems to me it has to be the revelation of the seed of woman but I think that's not even enough
36:08
because even that is the manifestation of the glory of God to all of creation including the Angelic host okay so what is the what is the
36:19
theme that holds the Bible together God but that doesn't really help us in a practical outworking of biblical theology I do think that the analogy of
36:29
the tapestry is a better one that there are definitely fibers of of strength that run all the way through the fabric creation is one of them Exodus picks up
36:41
a little bit later but it is also one of them Exile is very early we don't think of Exile early do we because the Exile didn't come for the northern kingdom until the 8th Century BC right but what
36:54
was Cain was he not exiled from the presence of God Adam and Eve well yeah right Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden so Exile the concept of Exile is actually quite an early one okay the
37:06
idea of Exodus is really the reverse of Exile in a in a in a corporate setting but these they they're somewhat they're definitely related but they run through
37:17
the scripture and all the way through both Testaments I would love to see a theology develop entirely on the concept of wilderness yeah well I think you could oh no I think Wilderness is
37:29
actually um again you go back to Cain um I will wander and who whosoever shall find me shall kill me okay and and that idea of wilderness and they're just and
37:40
these I think though these are the tones of echo that you not only hear in the New Testament but you hear them as you read the old as well you start to hear them when you read the Psalms when you
37:51
read the prophets whether they're pre-exilic or postexilic you you you hear the the Echoes of these themes that God wrote Into the original music of his
38:03
self-disclosure and they continue on it's it's that it is again that Symphony that you know the the apostles had in their earbuds when they were writing
38:14
when they were explaining when they were teaching and training the Disciples of this of this not new religion but of this fulfilled Judaism in Christ the
38:25
Jewish the Hebrew Messiah so um so that's what we're we're we're trying to attempt how do we do this again borrowing from uh Richard
38:38
Hayes he refers another statement it's actually a title of one of his
38:52
books the conversion of imagination now I just picked this book up um during this study because it was ref referenced by an article um and it's it's very very
39:03
helpful it's actually his defense of his earlier book The Echoes of the Old Testament in the writings of Paul in the letters of Paul so he had already introduced this concept of Echoes he had
39:16
a whole backlash of scholarly opposition to it and then he writes this this book on the conversion of imagination but if if you've taken the polling studies especially the first one we talked about
39:28
Paul as a Jew Paul as a Greek scholar Paul as a Roman citizen but all of that culminating to Paul on the road to
39:38
Damascus and you you may remember we talked about that that after he had that experience of of being in the presence of the Risen Messiah and being then indwelt by the
39:50
Holy Spirit those two markers of the new age that Paul understood from the Old Testament the resurrection and the giving of the spirit he has
40:01
them now he goes off and creates a new religion no and and all of the modern idiots in the AC in the in the University who have came up come up with
40:13
that ridiculous notion clearly have never read never read Paul they' come up with it entirely on their own as they think he did with Christianity no he reoriented all that
40:27
he he had ever learned he reoriented now to the to the the one who came what was one written about the
40:37
coming one he now reorients to the one who came okay the Messiah has come what was prophetic is now
40:48
fulfilled and and so it he underwent in a sense a conversion of imagination now the word imagination bothers people you know it sounds like it's not it doesn't have any basis in uh fact right um but
41:03
how how many of you have seen or or even even more how many of you like impressionistic art anybody Monae for example okay I
41:14
frankly think or even van go okay um it's not a photograph is it but is it based in fact oh yeah it's
41:24
imagination isn't it but it's okay because it's art all right no um Picasso that's not okay that's weird dadaism CU cubism okay that's just drugs
41:36
I think that's not the conversion of imagination that's the perversion of thought there there's a distinction so we can have a conversion the what we read in novels and even in in
41:48
non-fiction what we're reading is Imagination isn't it the author has put together this historical material in a certain way that no one else has done by using his or her imagination and yet
42:00
it's still based in historical fact the documentation is there the footnotes are there so to say that Paul's imagination was converted simply means that the
42:10
manner in which he imagined what God has now done in Christ founded and rooted in what God had always done in the Old Testament
42:20
that process that imagination was converted by the spirit of the Living God and by the reality of Jesus Christ and I'm saying that conversion is what
42:32
every believer every believer needs and I don't think it's necessarily something that comes with conversion I think the ability comes
42:43
with conversion because it comes the conversion comes with the Holy Spirit and he is the one who converts the imagination but we also know through um
42:53
so uh human human studies that we can stifle the imagination of a child right we know I
43:10
mean children certainly have native what we would call imagination right and obviously we need to temper that imagination as they get older with reality and fact okay but we
43:21
can also get to the point and and I think um James have youever you ever heard of James
43:33
his son but he is ultimately to blame for his son his son's name was John Stewart Mill okay um if you don't know John Stewart Mill listen to Monty Python
43:45
um John stort Mill was was a was a uh card carrying atheist of of the of the deepest H but James Mill his lovely father uh pretty much determined that
43:56
John Stewart Mill would know no imagination that everything would be nothing but hard scientific fact okay but when you read the biography of of
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Einstein you realize that this was a man with tremendous with tremendous imagination that it was much of his imagination that came up with the theory of relativity in the first place there's this idea in the in the post
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Enlightenment especially postmodern mind that imagination and rationalism are two different Realms they're not okay rationalism and our reason should
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guide our imagination certainly but our imagination is what gives life to our reason so Paul in using the word con uh converted imagination this is not he he
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became something other than he was it's that he understood the same things other than he than he did and much of how he did understand
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things was not correct but most of what he did understand was but now everything that was
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prophetic was fulfilled all that God had promised to do he had done in Jesus Christ all that he had promised to bring he had brought in Jesus Christ which meant all that God had revealed him
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himself in his holy scriptures now has a completely different frame of reference and he by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of the Holy
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Spirit reoriented his imagination to that new referent Jesus Christ that's biblical theology that's what we can do as we
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read our Bibles beginning in the Old Testament that we can reorient away from covenantalism away from dispensationalism and rather toward the
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overall revealing of God of himself or by God of himself through all that he's doing and when we do that we've realized it's not all about me and what whether I
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you know whether I go to heaven when I die that is not what it's about at all and it's not even about man and it's not even about creation
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imagin well because I I think imagination is a better word than understanding because part of our understanding does come from our imagination for example when when you when you taught when you teach atomic
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theory are you able to show your students actual protons neutrons okay and electrons no obviously
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not um besides there are a bunch of morons so they wouldn't then you get to Quantum right you get to Quantum model OKAY a whole
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different world isn't it because what's happening particles units of matter are now behaving as if they are packets of light right and what do you need to
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understand that you need imagination right that there's nothing this is the Revel I mean even that is part of the revelation of the Majesty of God I think when you when you look into
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an atom and you see um and I I've often F I've been fascinated by the fact that protons Stay Together when when all everything tells us that that positives positive positive repulse
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but they all stay together and these tiny little electrons of a negative charge 10,000 times smaller than the proton that are all bunched together in the nucleus and these are all out there
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all by themselves none of them fly into the heavily positively charged Neutron or nucleus they don't why because they're all held together by the word of
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his power but I can imagine I can imagine the electron being Zapped by a photon of light and being energized to a
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energy level too I can imagine that going up that ladder I mean you've seen the ladder diagrams right that's imagination imagination actually works toward the understanding it is not
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opposed to it and especially when we're dealing with the revelation of almighty God who is beyond our comprehension his ways are past finding out we need
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imagination but we don't need to just simply imagine what we want and that's my point Paul's imagination was converted but it was it never left the
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grounding of the revelation of God in scripture okay he never went into philosophy he never adopted Plato or Aristotle or Zena to to try to explain
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these things he was rooted in the Old Testament before his conversion he was rooted in the Old Testament afterward but how did his understanding
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change but his understanding changed because his imagination was converted now you might prefer a different phrase I'm just using the phrase that that Richard Hayes used and I think it's
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going to it helps a little bit better because as we get into the actual texts of scripture we we I think we've all thought that this or that particular
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reference to the Old Testament was rather imaginative on the part of the author of the New Testament and for example we use this example already but um the one in
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Matthew Chapter Matthew Chapter 2 where um where Matthew writes about Joseph and Mary and and the Child Jesus
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uh coming back from their self-imposed Exile in
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and 15 and he arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt and was there until the death of harod that well listen to this that what
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was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled now M Matthew could hardly make it clearer that he was not allegorizing here he's saying that that
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that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled and what was the prophecy out of Egypt did I call my son well that's Hosea 11 which I
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miraculously just opened to when Israel was a youth I loved him and out of Egypt I called my
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son have you not thought that's a bit imaginative Matthew in fact Hosea is clearly referring to something in the past right when Israel was a
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youth I called him and out of Egypt I called my son what does that refer to what event that is The
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Exodus who would have thought that that verse was also prophetic of Joseph Joseph bringing the Messiah back Messiah back to Palestine out of Egypt it's not even
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prophetic is it it's not prophetic at all in fact it it establishes as it as as God does elsewhere in the prophets including Amos it establishes the unique
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and intimate relationship between Yahweh and Israel right the fatherson relationship between Yahweh and Israel is established in this verse not the
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prophetic coming out of Egypt of Joseph and Mary and Jesus and yet Matthew says that that which was written or prophesied through the L or by the Lord through the prophet
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might be might be fulfilled how do you get from Matthew 2 back to Hosea 11 and then back to
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Matthew 2 that's biblical theology that's that's how that's how we learn to read Hosea the way Matthew did
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which was clear not locked into the words that Hosea used there's an there's an understanding that involved the imagination and that imagination then
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begins to see that everything God did and then recorded in his scriptures
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was typological of all that God was doing so that we we know from other passages that The Exodus is itself typological right and that the
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true Exodus is our deliverance not from Egypt but from the bondage of sin so we understand though because that doesn't come out of Exodus does it when
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you read the book of Exodus the the Hebrews are being brought out from the bondage of pharaoh right there really is no uh hology in the book of Exodus the
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doctrine of sin okay they're not being brought out from sin they're being brought out from Egypt but the bringing out of the Hebrews from Egypt was itself a type of
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the bringing out of God's people through the blood of Jesus Christ from the realm of sin now with that larger picture in mind then he Hosea 11 takes on a broader
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meaning that it is very unlikely Hosea ever intended or understood but Matthew but Matthew did is that is that
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fair is Jesus well yeah but that's that's Abraham see that's going to come later that's Abraham and Isaac that's the other one that's another one because Israel wasn't killed although the firstborn I you might be referring to the firstborn of Egypt was killed but
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but the whole dynamic of The Exodus then becomes typological becomes typological of the firstborn yes the idea of the firstborn um is obviously the and it also it also points to the fact that
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Jesus himself Jesus himself becomes in himself Israel okay and eventually God's firstborn Israel does
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die so it it all kind of you you're reading the Old Testament and everything about the Old Testament every story every movement every every Dynasty
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change and and and whatnot every every success and every failure is now seen in the light of God's completed God's completed Revelation what we're reading in Hosea
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is parts and portions what Matthew Sees In Jesus is his son okay Hebrews 1 we we need to be able to read the Bible like
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Hebrews 1 verse 1 and 2 reading okay these are parts and portions but we don't pick them out and say look at this one put a star put a star in in the margin because this is a m Messianic
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prophecy there's no no actually I don't believe they did this there is a star there's a star in Hosea 11
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verse1 come on that verse that passage was never Messianic that's not fair we I mean that's not fair that's cheating that's looking at the answer key okay I'm fine with you doing that in some of the Psalms but come on you can't
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do that you know that that that he will not let his holy one see Decay go ahead put a star there that's fine but not this one okay that's but that's that's a good one because it shows us how we read
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the Old Testament we read the Old Testament through the New Testament as if the Old Testament readers and writers were reading it through the New Testament but they weren't because it hadn't been written yet don't you think
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the lord gave Matthew that thinking oh he gave us all that thinking exactly that's this he gave us the Holy Spirit I AB he gave Matthew that thinking and
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that's what I said last week I don't think he just gave it to Matthew because Matthew was an apostle he gave it to Matthew because Matthew was regenerate now what particular
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thought yeah but we have to have that we have to have that same thought and we have to be able to think that way you see that thought is not just if it's only unique to Matthew then it's
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not canonical and it's not authoritative it's not just a thought it's true but then we're faced with the how is it true because it's not true when you just when you just look at the Historical grammatical method it doesn't
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fit and so many liberals say well you just look at this they're just playing fast they just picked something it's like something came into their mind and they said word association footall you know they just like Monty Python you
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know they just start saying things well that's a such a cheap view of the of the scriptures that you don't even bother studying it at all well if we don't convert our imagination we're also going to get tripped up on things the prophets
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that the New Testament writers clearly did not like why do we not have possession of the land is dispensational right okay why is the temple not being
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rebuilt yeah we think it should be there that's another point if we if we don't convert our imagination then we get locked in we get locked into either one of two types of hermeneutic and either literalist or
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literalist or apocalyptic and and that seems to be where Christian exites kind of gravitate either either everything's literal or everything is not literal and it's just apocalyptic and you can do really what
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you want with it because in the end God will sort it all out and that's there's no exegesis or hermeneutic of that either so what I guess what I'm trying to say is U yes Matthew was given to
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understand the true meaning of Hosea that he probably realized Hosea never intended or understood but we have been given the
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same light as Matthew through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit Aaron you said this numerous
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IDE Israelites didn't follow the pillar of cloud while it was while Yahweh was traveling through the Wilderness at their head they would simply cease to be part of Israel anymore right they had to
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follow where they were being led and you've related that to the coming of the Holy Spirit and how and and all the Hebrews is written demonstrate is that
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you don't follow where the holy spirit is going there nothing left for you back there right there's nothing left and you didn't I'm not sure if you said this in in the notes I only got part way but
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there was a quotation in there that I wondered if what it was indicating was was something like when the apostles would say it is fitting that
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um I can't remember what the phrase was it was something sort of comp complex but it there's there's times that that the apostles are known to say it is it is
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fitting then that what have you happened I had an example of that and I'm wondering if this agrees with what you're saying um at the Jerusalem
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Council James says um Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name and with this the words of the prophets
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agree just as it is WR this return and rebuild the tent of David Fallen Etc he seems to be putting them in parallel and
