1. Preparation
2. Exegesis
3. Chrisocentric Interpretation
4. Significance
5. Homiletic Form

You are to listen to the text.

• Pray for an open and receptive heart
• Pray for spiritural discernment to see Christ in the text
• Be conscious of submitting your opinions and presupppositions to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Bible's only true interpreter.

What does it mean to pray with an open and receptive heart?

• Do not come at the text defensively with your guard up.
• Make yourself vulnerable to the text.
• Tell yourself, "Wherever the text strikes, I am going to let it strike and speak for itself."

We have a biase when we come to the text. But our bias should not be to prove that Adventism is right or to win an x number of souls. Instead, our bias should be to see Christ in this text.  (Random comment but he said it here and that is that "intuition is spiritual")

What does it mean to be conscious of submitting your opinions and presuppositions to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Bible's only True Interpreter?

It means you will dismiss all your preconceived ideas and let it speak to you for itself. Ask the Spirit to help you and subject yourself to the text. The salvation power is in the power of the text, not in you or your delivery.

It brings people into the church because you are "right" but it makes people hard because they haven't met Christ so they are critical. They haven't been touched by Jesus. The power to touch people is in the Word of God.

• Read the passage broadly.
• Ponder and pray over the passage and its meaning
• Apply the meaning of the text to your own life
• Avoid formal treatment of the passage (commentaries, Bibe diccionaries, EGW) Let the passsage speak for itself.
• Produce informal notes on your initial impressions.

How do you read the passage broadly?

Read from a variety of translations. Read the text in it's context of chapter and book. Read related passages. This is the beginning of your Exegesis but it is the informal part.

Ponder and pray over the passage and its meaning; leave it and return to it for further contemplation/revelation.

Let it speak to you before you start speaking it to others. Apply it to your own life.  For example: You are asking yourself "am I really in harmony with the Sabbath? Is it in my heart or is it the rules I keep on a certain day?"

At this initial stage avoid commentaries, Bible diccionaries and even EGW. Let the passage speak for itself with no interpreter but the Holy Spirit. The last time you come back to it, let it be just before your bedtime and in the morning you will have some new ideas. It will sink in overnight.

Just produce informal notes on your initial impresions and compare them later with other sources for verification, modification, or elimination. Then get it out later to see if you were verified by other people commentators. Maybe you will find your first idea was way off base.

1. To rightly divide the Word of Truth
2. To make sure our interpretation is Christ Centered

1. It literally means to "pull out" (from beneath the surface) (In class you will be graded on how deep you went into the text.)
2. The opposite of exegesis is eisegesis which means "to put in"

It means "to interprete". It is the principles of interpretation, i.e. the rules, methods, principles or theory governing the process of interpreting the author's meaning in Scripture. It is sometimes used synonymously with Exegesis. Hermeneutics is the overall term, while Exegesis and siginificance (application) are two aspects of the larger task. Hermeneutics includes

• Exegesis
• Christocentric interpretation and
• Significance (application)

The Bible is put together in units that go from large to small. The best way to do exegesis is to start with the smallest unit and work up as that makes for less chance of error.

• word
• sentences
• verses
• paragraphs
• chapters
• books/letters
• whole Bible

Isolate the passage: delimit the unit to be studied, i.e. select the passage based on the natural divisions of the text.

All hermeneutical methods are informed by the interpreter's pre-understandings or presuppositions.

Although there is diversity in interpretive presuppositions, two basic world views underline all approaches to the interpreratation of the biblical text. "Open universe" verse "closed universe"

Events and texts including the Bible can only be understood according to their historical, this-worldly, context.

Implication: There is no possibility of divine intervention or final reveltaion breaking into the natural laws of cause and effect. There are no miracles.  If it can't be explained it isn't reasonable then it isn't real.

The past is understood through human experiences in the present.

Implication: Jesus can not be viewed uniquely but rather as homogeneous with present human experience. This is the background of the Jesus Seminar. The past must be analogous to the present. So Jesus is a nice guy making pithy statements who simply lives and dies on earth. In this mindset science and philosophy is religion but it is not based on Scripture.

Our understanding of the past is never absolute and always open to revision. We never understand anything. In Christianity we have closed those debates as to whether Jesus was divine etc. But for people who believe in a closed universe, there is No closure ever.

Implication: All knowledge (including Scriptural) is relative and tentative.

Revelation: God has broken into human history in general revealing himself through nature and specifically through the word written and made Flesh.

Implication: God is sovereign but not limited to this world. Human understanding of reality is open to divine intervention and interaction. I am able to see things that are beyond the limits of nature through God's revelation.

Illumination in the Open Universe World View

The Holy Spirit is active in the present process of Scriptural interpretation. John and Paul did not rely on anyone except the H.S. The H.S.'s illumination is necessary to understand truth.

• The Bible is the inspired word of God
• God is the Author of the Bible and inspired persons as its writers
• Scripture is an indivisible union of the Divine and the human (incarnational)
• The authority of the Bible is the authority of God
• The cannon of the Bible includes the OT and the NT
• There is unity of the OT and the NT
• The Bible is its own interpreter
• The bible contains normative truth (for all generations all people)
• The spiritaul interpreters pre-understanding can be derived from and ramin under the control of the  H.S.
• Scripture can only be interpreted properly based on the abiding illumination of the H.S.

Look at what immediately precedes and follows a given unit of Scripture.

If it is a Letters, poetry, proverbs, prayers, sermons, allegories, history, biography, drama, apocalypse, stories, parables… Eastern poetry doesn’t rely on rhyming like it does in English. Apocalyptic points forward as well as backwards.

• How the word is used in this specific context

• How this author typically used the word
• How biblical writers typically used the word in other places (by other authors)
• How was the word generally used at that time.

• The meaning of a word is not determined solely by its etymology (i.e. the root meaning of of a word).
• A word means what it meant when the author used it in context.

• Identify the original author, audience, date, occasion, purpose (ssiues, problems etc)
• Reconstruct the author's life setting which includes geography, habits, customs, practices, religious, political etc.
• Treat the author's thought word (OT - Near EAstern NT  - Greco Roman) The end is "how does this text expose Jesus Christ." History is interesting but use it only to expose the meaning of the message. The power is in the text.

Delimit the passage. Identify the natural boundaries.

Read the passage in context. Relate your text to the broader literary unit which it is a part and to the immediate passages which precede or follow it.

Conduct literary (including word study.) and historical cultural exegesis.

Identify the genre o the passage

Identify the subject. State in rough fashioned what you think the Biblical writer is talking about. (Thematic statement, Big idea.)

Identify the complements. Determine the major assertions the biblical writer is making about the subject.

After 1844 the group split into three groups. What were they?

1.  This group split split with Joshua Himes believed in second coming but thought date was wrong and irrelevant.

2. Spiritualizers: God had come in an invisible coming. They were now sinless and didn't need to work. Crawled around on knees like babies etc. Fanatical.

3. Forerunners of SDA church. Said date was right but event wrong. It was beginning of judgement not second coming.

They became combative and prideful. They lost Christ-centered focus. We have the same gospel as other churches but we have a greater revelation of Christ through the additional doctrines that have come to light.

1. John 5:36-39 "Search the scriptures because they are they that testify of me..."

2. Luke 24:25-27: Jesus became with Moses and the prophets and explained everything that was said concerning himself" (Jesus)

3. Acts 10:42,43 "And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins.”

4. I Corinthians 1:20-24, 15:1-5 ^...but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks, foolishness but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God...15:1-5 according to the Scriptures,and that He was burried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.

When the expositor accounts for the saving reality of Jesus Christ in the Biblical text, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit

GW 156 They are argumentative but destitute of the saving blood of Jesus and resemble the offering of Cain

GW 160 EGW says that the science of Salvation is to be the burdened of every sermon, the theme of every song.

What was Jesus trying to convey on the road to Emmaus with the disciples?

David and Goliath: David was insignificant of the sons of Jesse, He was not into war. He is not intimidated by the giant. He can't put on human armor....Jesus was a nobody. He was annointed of God just as David was annoited by God (And by Samuel). He was not into war, but was intimidated by any giant. He only put on a "Thus sait the Lord" and not human armor etc.

David symbolizes Jesus....and Jesus can slay the giants in your life as well.

1. Birth of Christ. His personhood his incarnation

2. Preaching about the ministry of Christ, his deeds.

3. Death, cross, atonement, righteousness by faith.

4. Resurrection and exaltation of Christ, he is the victor.

5.  The HS is still with us and will teach us.

6. The soon return of Christ, signs, end of time, literal second coming, wanting people to trust and obey God.

Associate the significance of the issues raised by the text for what areas?

1. Society or culture you live in

2. Church denomination and particular church culture.

3. Individual culture (List possible obstacles. You must prepare textual responses to their questions and raise the answeres in advance to them asking the questions.) You do not want the culture to influence the interpretation of scripture but it will take culture into acount when deciding how to apply the message.

Premodern Era: Ancient Midieval

The Moden Era: Science as truth

The Postmodern Era: Relativism

Premodern Era: Believe in rationality of a created universe first century to the 17th century. There was a general believe  in the rationality of the university.

• Teleological principle: purposeful process from God leading back to God...life had a purpose and world is created.
• Correspondence theory of truth: an objective reality exists; perceptions may be true or false. There is a correspondence between what is real and what I can't see. There is a reality outside of my understanding.
• Belief in the supernatural: There is a God and demons and they are involved in our lives.
• Theology was the queen of sciences. There was no thought of contradiction between science and the Bible. The Bible was a part of education.

• Nature as a machine - mathematical geometrical models
• Scientific view of reality - the heavens do not declare the glories of God, they speak the theorems of calculus.
• A new Epistemology (theory of knowledge...how we know what we know). Any proposition that is not based on empirical evidence is non-intellectual and inferior. Scientific method is the trump.
• Dualistic concept of reality - matter and spirit (matter and non-matter) What is real is what you can see in the natural. What is spiritual is really not real. God isn't a fact as you can't prove him.
• Natural Science: Science independence from church authority; rejection of Victorian values
• Scientific methodology -Deliberate omission of God
• Critical rationality exalted above faith: Knowledge is virtue. Reason can explain all thing.  (Example Star Treck dream)