When My Ox Gores My Neighbor: Using Hermeneutics to Travel from Mt. Sinai to Mt. Zion

Copyright © 2017 Josiah Nichols.

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Author Credits: BA in Bible and Preaching Ministrty

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV® Text Edition: 2016

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-8253-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8254-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8252-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905320

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/11/2017

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: Sinai Thunders

Chapter 2: Cut through the Ox Manure

Chapter 3: Study the Passage

Chapter 4: What Do We Do with It?

Chapter 5: What Can I Learn?

Chapter 6: What Does Jesus Change?

Chapter 7: Kill the Ox

Chapter 8: Come to Jesus

Bibliography

Great Resources for Further Study

Acknowledgments

I want to thank God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ for creating me and saving me by the blood of Christ. I was a miserable wretch before I came to know and love my Savior. God knew I was worthless, yet he sent Jesus Christ to die for me anyway. I have been purchased by his atoning sacrifice, and now I live for him.

I want to thank my parents for raising me in a godly Christian home. If not for your living for Jesus Christ and sharing the gospel to me, I would be lost. You have always stood with me, supported me, encouraged me, and pointed me to Jesus in all things. I want to specifically thank my father for his advice and discipleship. You have grown me in Jesus Christ tremendously. I want to specifically thank my mother for nurturing me and caring for me; even when I was a scoundrel. You have fought many battles for me, and I am deeply grateful for your love and support. Thank you both for reading this book and encouraging me to publish.

I want to thank my sister for always being there for me and for correcting my grammar. You have been so helpful in getting this book together. You corrected this entire book and still encouraged me to publish. I love you dearly. You have been my great supporter from day one. I have not always been the best big brother to you. I am sorry for that. I love you. I am glad that Christ has changed me and has helped me see what a great sister you are. You have a great husband, and I thank him for being a great encouragement to me as well.

I want to thank my church family. You have been a great help and encouragement to me and my family throughout our time together. I want to thank our pastor for always pointing to the Word of God in his preaching and his life. I want to thank our associate pastor for all the help he has given us in counseling and life. I want to thank everyone to whom I sent the book for giving me great advice on what to do.

I want to give thanks to Andrew Rappaport for reading this book and helping me with the finishing touches. It would not be as well written without your help. Thank you very much for writing the forward and being an encouraging brother in Christ. You have a wonderful ministry. Striving for Eternity has helped many people get a better understanding on interpretation, theology, apologetics, and evangelism. Anyone who reads this book should go to http://strivingforeternity.org and check out the Striving for Eternity Academy. It teaches hermeneutics, systematic theology, and how to apply it in everyday life. Andrew Rappaport also has a great book on systematic theologies of major world religions called What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Major World Religions also available at strivingforeternity.org.

I thank my wife, Cassandra Nichols. You have been so supportive of me in all things. You were supportive of me when I was a pastor. You supported me when I lost the pastorate due to circumstances that were not our fault. You supported me when I started writing. You have shown me nothing but love and the power of a godly wife and mother. You are my rib. I love you more than anything in this world. You are my second love, with Christ being the first. You are the best.

I want to thank my daughter, Lydia Dawn Nichols. You are so precious to me. The reason this book was written so quickly was because your mother and I were expecting you. I wanted to finish writing before you got here, when I would have no more time. You are so precious. We love you, and we hope you grow into a godly, Christian woman. I love you very much.

Foreword

By Andrew Rappaport

Founder and President of Striving for Eternity Ministries

I was raised in a Jewish home not just to hate Jesus but taught that Jesus was Hitler’s God. I did not know anything about Christianity. When I was converted at 16 years of age, while still in my parent’s home, I hid my beliefs. My only knowledge of Christianity came from reading the Bible because I did not have any teachers. However, when I went to college, I latched onto anyone that could teach me about Christianity. The problem was that I was not aware that all teachers could not be trusted. I did not know that some that claim to know Christ do not know Christianity. I believed many false doctrines of the prosperity gospel.

When I discovered that not all Christians believed in some of the teachings, it was like a light bulb went off. Many things taught me that did not seem to match with a simple reading of the Bible. A dilemma occurred. How can a person know which is right? Is a simple reading of the Bible enough to know the truth or do people need to rely on trained teachers and alone have the truth, as the priests of the Old Testament?

These questions started a four-year full-time study in a branch of science called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation of literature. I have never stopped studying hermeneutics and teach it to this day. Hermeneutics is a great importance because it is the only way to determine the truth of Scripture. Many people claim to teach the Bible, but when they violate the rules of interpretation, they do not have God’s Word but man’s word. The difference between following the rules of interpretation or not is the difference between truth and possible error; between God’s Word or man’s opinion. The topic of hermeneutics is the difference between truth and error or more so the difference between the truth and the almost true.

Striving for Eternity Ministries (SFE) has developed a ministry teaching people the proper rules of interpretation and to use that over personal experience or systematic theologies. We cannot underestimate the importance of this book. SFE has felt that the topic of this book is so important that we provide 20 lessons free on YouTube in our School of Biblical Hermeneutics.¹ We travel to churches to teach our Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar.² The unfortunate reality is that too few churches are teaching their people how to handle the Word of God correctly. The need for this book is its great importance in the church among, not just the pastors and theologians, but more so among the congregation.

Most books on the subject of hermeneutics written are for the seminaries and scholars. The writing of this book is for every Christian in the church. Even the unbeliever can learn the rules of interpretation and how to apply them correctly. This book is not for the scholarly alone. The reader will learn how to use the rules of hermeneutics and watch them applied throughout the book. Not only will the reader of this book learn the rules of interpretation they will see them in action.

Postmodernism argues that we cannot know the truth, but that is in direct opposition to God, who called His Word truth. We must contend for truth, and if you disagree, my question would be, do you believe that is true? The issue is what our basis for truth is? Is it personal or by rules? We need to follow the rules of interpretation, not our feelings or thinking. Biblical reliability is of much importance and under attack by many who did not know or study textual criticism. This book addressed this as a precursor to how to interpret because one must now the Bible is the truth before then can interpret it as the authority that it is.

This book uses the example of Exodus 21:28-32 about when an ox that gores a neighbor as an example through the book to see how to use the principles of interpretation. This style provides the reader not just with the rules of interpretation but to see how to follow these rules. The author provides exercises at the end of each chapter making it an excellent tool for small group studies. This book walks the reader through the steps of interpretation with an example from an Old Testament passage that could be hard to understand by some. The author uses this book and text to explain the gospel to unbelievers, making this book an excellent evangelistic tool not only to explain to unbelievers how they are misinterpreting the Bible but also what the gospel is.

Introduction

Why I Wrote When My Ox Gores My Neighbor.

I was in high school when my father started driving a truck. It was then he started listening to Way of the Master Radio by Todd Friel, which was later changed to Wretched Radio. He introduced the show to me, and I fell in love (not with Todd Friel—that would be gross—but with what he had to say). It featured a guy who loved the Bible, theology, church history, and—most important—the gospel. I loved and still love to listen to his TV and radio program. He had a DVD product called Herman Who? that helped the layperson understand how to study the Bible. This helped me fall in love with this subject. Hermeneutics is the useful and logical way to study the Bible. Its goal is to get the reader to understand what God originally intended in the scripture and apply it to their lives. I would promote the right way of studying scripture and the gospel because of this program. It didn’t make me any friends; in fact, lots of people got angry at me. I would hear all of the time that the Bible was just written by men and that it was full of errors. I was called a homophobe, a Bible-thumper, judgmental, a closet homosexual, and all other kinds of offensive things. All that did was draw me closer to Christ and encourage me to share the gospel more.

In this day and age, we often hear there are a million interpretations of the Bible, so it doesn’t matter what we believe about it. That is