In our last episode, we talked about the cultural and historical differences that exist between our modern context and the context out of which the Bible was written. Now we turn to the next step in our interpretive journey – crossing the principlizing bridge.

1. Step 3: Crossing the Principlizing Bridge.
a. Key Question: What is the theological principle in this text?
i. In this step you are looking for the theological principle or principles that are reflected in the meaning of the text you identified in Step 1.
1. The principle should be reflected in the text.
2. The principle should be timeless and not tied to a specific situation.
3. The principle should not be culturally bound.
4. The principle should correspond to the teaching of the rest of Scripture.
5. The principle should be relevant to both the Biblical and the contemporary audience.

In our last episode, we talked about the difference between reading the Bible and studying the Bible. We emphasized the importance of making observations of the text. The grammar, the language, the context, the original language, etc. As good students of the Scriptures, we are to look, look, and look again at the text before we can begin to draw conclusions. Now we must be armed with the right tools to look at the historical and cultural context of the Bible. The Bible was not lowered down from a cloud, free of cultural influences. No, it was written, read, and understood in the context of culture. This is not good or bad, it just is. With this in mind, we need to move to step two of the interpretive process, measuring the width of the river.
1. Step 2: Measuring the Width of the River to the Cross.
a. Key Question: What are the differences between the Biblical audience and us?
i. “The Christian today is separated from the Biblical audience by differences in culture, language, situation, time, and often covenant. These differences form a river that hinders us from moving straight from meaning in their context to meaning in ours.”
1. The width of the river varies from text to text.
2. Some passages have lots of differences between us and them, and some passages do not.
ii. This step is focused on looking for significant differences between our context and theirs.
1. Important questions to ask in order to identify differences between our culture and theirs: Who was the author? What was his background? When did he write? What was the nature of his ministry? What kind of relationship did he have with his audience? Why was he writing? Who was his biblical audience? What were their circumstances? How was their relationship with God? What kind of relationships did they have with each other? What was happening at the time the book was written? Are there any other historical-cultural factors that might shed light on the book?

As we’ve mentioned many times, we are in a time of transition. The search team is in the process of finding the next senior pastor of Trinity church. But before the next senior pastor comes, we are following conventional wisdom to bring in an interim pastor. This past Monday, Bill Patterson made his way to Holdrege Nebraska where he will serve as our interim pastor. He joins me this morning to serve two purposes: first, to provide a “get to know you” platform for the church, and second, to discuss his role as the interim pastor.

Bible reading plans are everywhere. Every January we feel the pressure to start a year-long plan, yet many of us lose momentum toward the end of the month. Maybe many of us even continue those plans and have read the Bible cover to cover. But how many of us have not just read the Bible but studied it. We intuitively know that those two are not the same. Yet, we may not know what it looks like to study the Bible as contrasted with merely reading it. In this series, we will explore the four steps to study the Bible.

Allie Stuckey is known by some as "the conservative millennial." She, like many, weighed in recently on how our country, in particular Christians, are responding to the riots occurring in some of the major cities in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Officer.

Here is what she wrote,

"What we hear is that black Americans are targeted by white police officers. That there is systemic racism in teh police system. That, as Lebron James said, black people are being hunted by white people. And Christians repeat these talking points because we want to be empathetic. We want to "mourn with those who mourn." But compassion at the expense of truth is not compassion. You are not loving people, you are lying to them. This is a sin (Colossians 3:9)

Colossians 3:9 says, "Don't lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds."

As the nation begins to reopen one of the challenges many are facing is trying to find the balance between acting responsibly vs. acting out of fear. I think this is an incredibly important topic for us as believers to be wrestling with as we are now trying to flatten the fear curve.

In light of this new curve involving fear, I wanted to invite a group of guys to join the podcast today to think through the question – How do you know you are being fearful vs. responsible?

If we can have church online, why should we gather? Is church the worship music and
the sermon? If so, we can easily “go” to many churches all across the United States and beyond. Yet many of us may be sensing that something is missing. This has caused me to ask myself, “what is the purpose of gathering?” Philip Jenkins comments on how this crisis will affect the church by thinking through the idea of secularization,

“Do recall that secularization does not necessarily mean a decline or destruction of faith or belief as such. Rather it means a decline of religious institutions, and a decisive shift in religious practice to individual and privatized forms. It means the loss of belonging, not necessarily believing – although in the long run, it is very difficult to maintain the one in the absence of the other.”

The crisis has not caused the thinking that faith is private, it has simply enabled it. This is was what John Stonestreet called a “preexisting condition” of the church before Covid-19. In order to shift back to the values of believing and belonging, we must recapture the purpose of gathering.

The Day of judgment is when Christ will judge the quality of His servants’ work (2 Cor. 5:10). It is not a question of salvation which is a gift (Rom. 6:23), or a matter of individual deeds (Eph. 2:8-9), but of service which is judged on the basis of quality, not quantity. Considerable apparent success can be had by hint of human effort and wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 2:4), but unless it is empowered by God in accordance with His plan it cannot last (Ps. 127:1).

It seems whenever there is a global catastrophe, a political movement, and many kinds of large-scale events, Christians begin wondering if this is the end times? This is the study of eschatology (Two Greek words: eschatos, “last,” and logos, “the word,” meaning, the doctrine of the last things.) As Jesus says, we are to keep watch. Other than the fact that Jesus will return, Christians disagree on when and how He will return. These various views affect the way Christians approach suffering and how they interpret world events.

Passage: Matthew 24:42-44

Christians tend to swing between two extremes; to credit all bad events to the direct work of the devil, or to explain bad events through natural causes. The current pandemic has brought those two extremes to the forefront. The enemy is very much at work in the world right now, but we may struggle with how much credit to give him.