The context of a passage of Scripture is critical to understanding what God is saying. It is context that clears up perceived contradictions. It is context that clears up misunderstood verses. It is the context of Scripture that keeps us from getting into apostasy. Hi, church. Today is lesson eleven of a 20-part video series on Bible study, and today we are covering chapter 7 from the book we have been working through, Understanding the Bible for Yourself, trying to help us understand and keep the Bible in its context. What does that even mean? Well, if you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench. I am a pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and I recorded this whole series of videos over a year ago for an extension ministry of a Bible college. So I just hope it is a blessing to you and helps you grow in knowing Jesus better. With that, let’s get into today’s lesson.
The Rule of Context
One of the main points of Bible study is that we avoid false doctrine and false teaching, and that is why we are putting so much effort into Bible study and into looking at the context. This is lesson number eleven in Bible study, where we just want to focus our attention on looking at the context of a passage before diving into certain individual words. I want to talk about this rule of context, which states, almost, that there is nothing more important than context. We want to make sure we are getting the interpretation of a passage in its context, partially because the Bible is a self-interpreting book. We can look at the Scriptures, and the other Scriptures around them, to define words, to look at what is going on in the passage, and then to pull the theology from that passage. Without context, without looking at a passage before and after, and looking at the broader passage of the entire book, without looking at all of that together, you can almost make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. We have looked at some of the silly examples in the past, but that is exactly where a lot of the false teaching comes from. That is where a lot of the cults come from. They might focus on just one minor passage of Scripture and ignore the greater passages of Scripture. So we want to be really, really careful with any of these false teachings that are going on, and we want to examine the false teaching, because some of what they say seems to make sense. There is one verse they will pull out here, and one verse there, and in isolation those verses will sometimes seem plausible. Their explanations might seem to make sense, and you will go, “Oh yeah, I see that now. That kind of makes sense.” But a careful examination of the whole passage will usually reveal that that is not actually what the text is saying. So we want to approach a passage in its context, not coming to it with our own predetermined meanings, but wanting to understand what the Scriptures have to say.
The Context of the Whole Book
We have looked at a couple of different ways this works. There might be the larger context of the book. We might understand a passage based on the entire look at what is going on in the book. Ecclesiastes might be like that, for example. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, taken in its context, then we are understanding the big picture of the book. But when you focus on one little aspect of Ecclesiastes, life under the sun, then man’s wisdom starts to make sense. I mean, in the point of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher goes through life and starts looking at what his life is. If we derive meaning from life apart from the revelation of God, just like the Preacher did in certain seasons of his life, then it looks like life is meaningless. It looks like life is vanity. Life is empty. Life is pointless. What is the deal with this? The Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, we might as well just eat, drink, and be merry. Why do we not just live it up? Why do we not just have a good time in this life? That is kind of what he is getting at, because he says, “Man, when I am looking at the narrow point of life, man’s death is no different from a beast’s death.” I mean, we all just die and turn into dust and go back to the way life is. Our body just rots. So in his mind, by narrowly focusing on life in that aspect, better not waste all this time doing good, and better not hurt too many people doing evil. Maybe we will find a middle ground. So the narrow idea is, well, what is life? It is just meaningless. It does not seem like the dead know anything. It does not seem like there is an afterlife. It does not seem like I can know anything beyond what this life is. And yet we know from the broader context of the book of Ecclesiastes, and the broadest context of the Scriptures, that there is so much more to life than just this sliver of life under the sun. We know there is life after death, and we know that when a person dies, he is not just asleep. His corpse does not just rot and fade away into nothing. We believe there is a God, and at the end of the book of Ecclesiastes the author comes to that conclusion, when he says, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” So the context of Ecclesiastes helps us understand that there is a life worth living here, even though it might seem to be mundane and seemingly full of chance. Sometimes people will say, “Well, there is no point to life,” but the author realizes, “You know what? Let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. There is so much of a reason for life, because we can fear God, we can live according to His commandments, and He gives us meaning for life.” So I love the context of a passage, in that it gives understanding.
The Immediate Context
That might be a whole-book movement. It might also be the context of an immediate passage. It might be that in order to figure out what this verse is saying, you have to look at the verse above it, or a few verses above it, or maybe a chapter above it. That will show up in words like therefore, wherefore, above all, nevertheless, what then, that, or so that. Those kinds of words will be trigger words that you need to flag and pick up on and realize, “Okay, why is he saying wherefore? Why is he saying so that? So that what?” So sometimes we focus on a verse: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” That is a wonderful verse on prayer, and we do need to focus on that verse for the topic of prayer, but the word therefore is in there. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.” Therefore what? What is the therefore there for? Why do we have that word in this text? The verses before that expose to us that, man, we have access to God’s throne because we have a High Priest. The Old Testament had a priest who gave the Israelites access to God, but we have a better High Priest, who gives us direct access to God. Only the high priest used to be able to go into the holy of holies, once a year, but now we have access to the throne room of God directly, anytime we want to go, and He is inviting us to come boldly unto the throne of grace. So the context of a passage makes our prayers that much more powerful when we understand them in their context. Context itself is really, really important for understanding a passage. It can be a whole book; it can be a narrow passage.
Context Defines Words
The context itself will many times define words. Sometimes I will be reading along in my Bible and do not always understand what a word means, but you read a little bit further and understand, “Oh, okay. From keeping on reading in this passage, I understand the definition of that word.” Many times a word will be defined by its context. The Bible itself is very self-interpreting. Second Timothy chapter 3 says, “That the man of God may be perfect,” and some people go, “Oh man, I have got to be perfect. Does that mean sinless perfection? I will never sin again?” Well, no. If you keep on reading: “That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” So many times the verse itself defines what the words themselves mean. Perfect just means that I am maturing in order to do good works to please my Saviour. I want to be fully equipped to do God’s will. That is what perfect means, and we realize that from the context. In 2 Timothy 2 there are words like “profane and vain babblings,” and we can do some historical research to figure out what that might mean, but you might just read the passage and see: what are profane and vain babblings? Well, they are things that are contrary to sound doctrine. They are things that produce confusion instead of clarity. They produce bad fruit. There is bad and evil living in the people who are teaching these false teachings. They are things that are harmful to the Christian life. So you just look at the context of 2 Timothy chapter 2, and you see what profane and vain babblings are. There are “foolish questions” in the book of Titus chapter 3. What are these foolish questions? Well, you can just read the passage and see what he means by talking about these foolish questions. Sometimes we accuse our kids: “Oh, stop asking me dumb questions. You are just asking me foolish questions.” Well, that does not necessarily have biblical support, even though the words foolish questions are in there. You need to understand from the context of the passage what foolish questions he is actually talking about in the Bible. So context can define those words.
Context Explains Difficult Passages
Context can explain those difficult passages. I am not pretending that I understand everything in the Bible, and I am also not pretending that everything in the Bible is immediately easy to understand. There are some passages that are a little bit confusing, that bring some misunderstanding sometimes. You might read something like, “All things are lawful for me.” Oh man, does that mean a Christian is allowed to do whatever he wants? There is no law he cannot break? I mean, we are saved, and God forgives us of our sin, so does that mean Christians can do whatever they want? We realize from the context: no. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” They are not helpful. They are not good. They are not glorifying to God. In the context there he is talking about being able to eat meat or not eat meat, and some people were having questions about that, so we need to understand the context of a passage. How about the verse, “No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation”? Well, what does that mean? We understand from reading on, because the very next verse talks about holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” It was not their own interpretive writings they were doing, but it was the Holy Ghost moving them along and giving them words to say. “If we sin wilfully”: what does that mean? “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” Well, that is the rejection of God in that specific sin it is talking about. Working out your own salvation: what does that mean, in Philippians chapter 2? Well, we read later on that it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” So working out your own salvation is just working according to what God wants you to work. It is just exercising your salvation, exercising and doing good deeds according to your salvation. The context itself will define some of those passages that might seem confusing. Philippians 3:11 “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” is talking about serving the Lord and following Him, not trying to earn your salvation, but working within your salvation and striving for the prize.
Context Clears Up Contradictions
Okay, so context will clear up some of those muddy passages or confusing passages, or passages that sometimes seem contradictory. Well, what about “perfect love casteth out fear”? “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” And then another verse, Hebrews 12, talks about how we should serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear: “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” One passage says cast out fear; one passage says we should fear. Which one is it? It seems like there is a contradiction. Well, you look at the context of each passage. There is a fear of God’s judgment, and we do not have to live in fear of God’s judgment, the ultimate fear of going to hell and being judged for my sin. When we have faith in Christ, we realize, “Well, I do not have to fear. God has taken all that judgment away from me.” But then serving God in the fear of God is a healthy kind of respect and reverence for God, and the passage in Hebrews explains that as a healthy kind of fear. So context clears up what seem to be contradictions. James and Romans: there have been age-long debates over whether James is preaching a works salvation, because it says things like, “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” But wait a minute. You realize the whole context of James chapter 2 is working in light of your salvation. If you have a real faith in God, it will show in works that love to serve the Lord God. So James chapter 2 is all about acting and serving as a Christian, and doing things, and guarding your tongue, and pleasing the Lord, and acting by faith, and having patience, and being a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. The whole context of James is an active faith, whereas Romans is teaching that we are justified by faith alone, and that is talking about your salvation. That is how to become saved, or justified: by faith alone. So the contexts themselves clear up those kinds of questions.
Context Clears Up Misused Verses
Context clears up misused verses. Have you heard somebody say, “Well, the Bible says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” So you cannot judge me. You cannot point your finger at me”? But wait a minute. You read the context, and it is actually saying, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” So it is in the context of actually making sure your own heart is right with God, but we have every right to judge righteous judgment: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” You just read the context, and you see that these passages that are oftentimes misused get cleared up when we see them in their context. Some people would say Luke 21 is talking about not studying for sermons. Luke 21 says, “Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.” So, “Man, do not study for sermons. Just open up your mouth, and God will fill your mouth.” And yet the context is not talking about that. It is about when you get put in prison for the Lord’s sake, and God will be with you in those times. We see from other passages of Scripture, and we see from the context of Scripture, that it is not saying do not study. We see that Timothy, as a preacher, was told to study, and study diligently, and give himself to study and be able to have an answer. So by seeing the context, we clear up some of those misused passages. Some Pentecostals will say, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” “That is for us today. We still have got to do these miraculous works, so we are going to perform on-demand miracles.” And yet we realize the context of that passage in Matthew chapter 10 was Christ commissioning the apostles and sending them out to do miraculous works in His name, to verify that God was bringing about something new and miraculous, and the apostles had these sign gifts. But those are not evidence for us still today. So we need to understand the context.
Interpret the Obscure by the Clear
Another idea in context and interpreting the Scripture is that we need to be really careful about taking theology and doctrine from the obscure passages, especially when there are a whole bunch of other passages that are much more clear. So let’s take our doctrine from the clear passages, and use the clarity of the clear passages to interpret those passages that are not as clear. There are many, many passages that clearly define things like the purpose of the Sabbath, the gospel, the purpose of the law, the restoration of Israel, Christian giving, the nature of tongues, the use of tongues. We do not want to take one obscure verse, especially when there are all these other verses on those particular doctrines, and we do not want to focus on what God is not focusing on. So let’s use the clear passages to interpret the less clear passages.
Progressive Revelation
Then let’s understand the Scripture, like we talked about last time, as revelation that is progressing through Scripture. We understand that the Bible progressively unfolds like a flower. It is a progressive revelation, in that the Bible’s teachings fit together over time, and what they understood in the Old Testament was a little bit less clear than what we understand in the New Testament. They did not fully understand all of the significance of what was going on, for instance, in the sacrificial system, and then Hebrews was written as an exposé, as a way to expose what was going on in Leviticus, and it was a fuller understanding. There was a better sacrifice, a better High Priest. Everything is better in Christ. So there is a better understanding as we move through the Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, unfolds over time. There are hints of it in Genesis 1, and in Genesis 11:6-7: “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” There are hints of it in Psalm 45, where it says God has a God: “Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” In Proverbs chapter 30, God has a Son: “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?” The Father, Son, and Spirit are there in Matthew chapter 3, at the baptism of Jesus. So we see really clear statements of the Trinity in certain verses, and then an unfolding of that doctrine throughout the course of Scripture. So we can use all of Scripture together in a beautiful way. Then there is the doctrine of Christ that unfolds. We see hints of it again in Genesis 3, the seed of the woman: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Throughout Scripture we will see it unfold, and we will see Christ at various points throughout the Bible. So we need to interpret the obscure passages, and we need to understand that things will come more and more to light as we study all of Scripture together.
God’s Dealings with Man
That does not mean God is changing. He stays the same, but the way He deals with people has changed throughout Scripture. He did not deal with Adam the same way He dealt with Noah, or the same way He dealt with Abraham, or the same way He dealt with the New Testament Christians. In every era, every age, every movement of Scripture, as Scripture unfolds, and as man’s responsibilities to God unfold, things change, and the law is given in more and more detail over time. We understand that God has not changed, but the way He deals with mankind changes. At one point He was dealing with the world through Israel, and now in this time He is dealing with us through churches, and it is a beautiful new way. There is still a future, and there are still prophecies that will come true in the future, and God will deal with us differently in the end times, and that is going to have its own set of God’s dealings with us. We see in Revelation that Jesus is no longer the patient One, the One who has come to forgive and show mercy and grace. He showed that through the cross, and now we have the chance of accepting Him. But man, we see Him as different in Revelation, as the God of judgment, the God who is bringing judgment. Jesus Himself is now doing the judging. He has already shown the mercy. So the dealings of God with mankind change as we look at them throughout the Scripture.
Periods of Transition
Then we need to understand that there are periods of transition. The Gospels themselves, for example. We could say we do not pull all of our theology from the Gospels, because the Gospels were a period of transition. When Jesus came, He was a faithful Jew, an observant Jew. We would look at Him almost like an Orthodox Jew today. It is not exactly the same, but He was very observant of many of the Jewish laws. So when He came, He presented Himself as Messiah, as One who was submissive to the laws of Judaism but had come to fulfill the law of Judaism, to fulfill the Old Testament law. When He started presenting Himself as Christ in the Gospels, we see a great rejection of Him. We see the Jews rising up to try to kill Him and saying, “No, we reject You.” They rejected the Baptist and had him thrown into prison and beheaded because of his messages. So Jesus, in this period of time, was trying to show that He came as a Jew, as the Messiah of the Jews, but it was not until chapter 16, after being rejected by them, that He says, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is when we see the institution of the church started, as He introduces it. He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” So much of the Gospel writings were written and directed toward Israel, but they were in this time of transition. In the Sermon on the Mount there is so much about the Old Testament law, but what Jesus was doing was using the law, in the Sermon on the Mount, to expose our own need for a Saviour, how we break the law of God, how we fall short of the law of God. So He was showing, “Look, the law is not the gospel. The law is exposing our need for the gospel, for a Saviour who can come and save us.” That is why He said, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” So He is not saying that we as Christians are supposed to observe the law. He is just saying what Paul said later in Romans chapter 3 and Romans chapter 5: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” That is where the Gospels fit in. After Jesus’ resurrection, He goes all in on establishing the church, teaching the church, building the church, and preaching the gospel. It is all about the gospel going to all the world, and not just the Jews. It was to the Jew first, but also to the Gentile, and they were to proclaim the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is all about Jesus Christ and the gospel. And yet we see things in the Gospels about signs, about looking for signs, about these miraculous things, and all of those were to establish this new message. When we go into the book of Acts, again, this is a transition. After Jesus Christ leaves the earth, we need to understand that this is a transition time. Things are changing from God dealing with the world through Israel to God now dealing with the world through His church. So the book of Acts is transitional, away from Israel and now through the church. The Jewish believers were still wondering if they needed to hang on to their old Judaistic practices, circumcision and the Sabbath and all of that they used to do. They were wondering if that was still true and valid, and so there were divisions in the churches between Jewish believers and Gentile believers. There was this big wall, and whole councils were set up, as we see in Acts chapter 15. Peter was given a vision from God, saying, “Look, this is a new direction we are taking here. This gospel is for everybody.” So the book of Acts is helping us understand that we are transitioning away from that. During that transition there were these miraculous signs that the apostles were given to validate and verify their message to the Jews. These signs were given to the Jews to help them understand that this church is for everybody. The apostles were there to lay the foundation of the church, and they were given miraculous signs. They were given the miraculous ability to speak in tongues, to use languages they had never learned before, and we see that several times through the book of Acts. But Acts 19, I believe, is the last time we see the use of tongues, and every time we see those tongues, they are used in the context of the Jews, in connection with the Jews. So coming at context, or observation, the bird’s-eye view of what we are doing in Scripture, we need to understand that certain books of the Bible cover transition times, and we need to look at them in their context, not only the context of the whole book, but also the context of the movement of God through history, how He deals with His people. So observation, looking at the bigger picture before diving into one verse here and one verse there, will really, really help us. Let’s be really careful with context. Next time we will look at some other approaches to interpretation in the bigger picture, but today was mostly just about context. We will see you in the next lesson. God bless you. Well, thank you for watching this video from our 20-part series on Bible study. I realize this kind of content, or our Baptist perspective, might not be for everyone, and I do not want to waste your time, but if you did find it helpful or enjoyable, would you subscribe to our channel? We are releasing videos every Monday at noon Pacific Standard Time, and I just want to help you bring the Bible home. So we will see you maybe in person this Sunday at our church. That is it for now. God bless you, church. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
