How To Study The Bible?

That may be the literal translation, right quickly, the boy ran. That's awkward. We don't speak like that, we say the boy. The boy ran quickly. Now all the parts of speech are there, you follow, It's just we communicated those parts of speech in a way and in a syntax that makes sentence, that makes sense, It makes sense to a native speaker of whatever the receptor language is. Okay, So essentially literal translations do that es V NASB King James, new King, James. You know, these are essentially literal translations. There are other kinds of translations. These are more sort of They're called dynamic equivalence, okay, dynamic equivalents. The most common example of a dynamic equivalence translation. Is the NIV. Okay, the n I V is A is a dynamic equivalence translation. What that means is n I V is not as concerned with getting all the parts of speech there as it is with getting the idea across. Okay. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, Okay, unless so, For example, if you're translating, if you're translating for someone in in in in kind of an informal setting, right, you you take someone you know you take me with you are our Tonga speaker, takes me somewhere where they speak Tonga, and they don't understand me. I don't understand them. But it's an informal setting, just kind of a you know, a chat. Dynamic equivalence is fine, right, you want to get the basic idea. You want to get them the basic idea of what I'm saying. You want to get me the basic idea of what they're saying. But if you're a diplomat and you're translating as a diplomat in a diplomatic meeting between two countries who are trying to peace treaty, dynamic equivalence is no longer sufficient. Now every word matters, and you have to do an essentially literal translation. Even the tense of the verbs matters. And when you're talking about ego language, Okay, why is that important? Because when we're doing serious Bible study, every word matters, every part of speech matters. I don't want the dynamic equivalent when I'm doing serious Bible study. I want the essentially literal translation. Okay, all right, now, having said that, any questions about that so far? Yes? Yeah, So she's asking, what is a good study Bible there, And you're right, there are many good study bibles. For me. There's a number of things that I look for. First of all, let me say this, I don't really use study Bible. I know how that sounds right telling us to use study Bible. He doesn't use study bibles. And when I say I don't use study bibles, I don't mean you know, I'm so fantastic that I don't need any No, no, no. I use electronic sources. So I use either logos or accordance. I use those sources, which means I have a bunch of study Bibles available to me and a bunch of other stuff available to me that you really can't get in one study Bible. Right, So I use that. Having said that, I do have a number of study Bibles. My preference is the study bibles that are more factual and less devotional. Okay, So for example, if it's like the Men Study Bible or Women's Study Bible or Youth Study Bible or whatever, then that means it's more devotional and it's trying to give you information that's catered very specifically. Right. I don't want that. I don't want people to tell me. Uh, I want them to give me the information that I need in order to know what the author said, right, I don't want them to go beyond that for me. So if I want something devotional, I will get something devotional. So, you know, good study Bibles are going to be Bibles that that that are more catered toward giving you commentary type information as opposed to devotional type information. Okay, And again, I mean there's so many out there that that that are that are good and are helpful. But for me, I'm always going to go with the electronic sources. It's just you know, you can you can have so much more information at your fingertips with the electronic sources. And again, that'll make more sense as we go into into this as well. Yeah, the questions. Okay, all right, good. So here's what I want us to do. I want us to talk about Bible said. I want to use it an illustration. There's a number of different sources that use this illustration. Uh, but it's the illustration of two towns. Right. There's there's one town over here, and this is the the the town of the text. Right, here's the town or the village of the text, and then over here, there's the town or the village that you and I live in, right these two villages. And what we have to do is. We have to get the information from this town or this village into this town or this village. I want to talk to you through five steps, five steps for doing this, and there's a great resource that can help you with this. It's called grasping God's Word. I'll talk to you about some other resources as well, but there's five steps to going from there to here. Let me give you those steps and then we'll sort of walk through them. Step number one, grasp the text in their town. Grasp the text in their town. That's my first duty, my first responsibility, to grasp the text in their town. Again, I'm gonna explain these, I'm just giving them to you. Secondly, measure the width of the river to cross. Okay, how why. Is that river? Thirdly, cross the principalizing bridge, the principalizing bridge. Cross the bridge across the principalizing bridge, and I'll explain why they call it the principalizing bridge in a minute. Four, consult the biblical map, and in five, grasp the text in our town. Let's look at these in turn. Okay, First, grasping the text in their town. So many times when we read the Bible, or when we do a Bible study, I hate to even call it Bible study. Oftentimes, you know, we'll read a text and then we'll go around the room and have people comment on, you know, what the text says to them. Right, So newsflash, I do not care what the text says to you, like, not at all. I care what the text says. Period. What the text says to you may be helpful or maybe the worst thing in the history of the world, Okay, but what I want to know is what the text says. What did the author communicate to his audience. That's what I'm trying to get to. And oftentimes we skip this text and we try to read the Bible as though it's a modern text and as though it's just sort of, you know, right here, right now, communicating to me type stuff. But you got to go from their town to ours. So step number one is to grasp the text in their town. Here's the question, what did the text mean to the biblical audience? We're doing observation, observation, and we have to start with observation. We can't just run straight to interpretation, right, which is often what we want to do. We read a text and then we want to interpret it, or we read a text and then we want to apply it. Eventually we have to interpret it. Eventually we have to apply. But before we can do that, we have to observe. Okay, what does observation look like? And here's where that study Bible stuff comes in handy questions like this, who is the author? Who is the author? Who is the audience? By the way, that matters. Who the author is matters, Who the audience is matters. What's the setting? What's the setting? What are the conditions under which the author wrote this to his audience? What type of literature is it? This one is hugely important. What type of literature is it? Is it? Is it law? Is it narrative? Is it poetry? Right? Is it apocalyptic? This is very important because we don't interpret those things the same way. Right. You can pick up a document. Let's say. Someone has passed away and you know you have to you're you have to go when you're responsible for getting all this person's you know, belongings and everything else. Well, if you pick up this person's will and you pick up a letter that they wrote to their wife or to their children. You're not going to read these the same way. One of them is a legal document, and you read a legal document with a certain kind of understanding and with certain assumptions. The other one is a personal, intimate document, and you read that in a very different way. In fact, there could be words used in both documents that are the same word but have very different meanings because of the type of literature. Okay. What this means is you don't go to the Book of Psalms and find a word there, and then go to Genesis and find the same word there, and then go to Revelation and find the same word there and say that they all mean the same thing, because one is in the law, one is in poetry, and the other one is apocalyptic. Okay, So we've got to know what type of literature we're reading in order to interpret properly. What's the time period? We need to know the time period. Keywords are phrases that the author uses, theological terms, what's the cultural context? Okay? These are questions that we have to ask in order to understand what the author's intended meaning was. What did he intend to communicate to his audience. Now that's what I'm going to interpret, and that's what I'm going to imply. I can't just say he said this, therefore that's what he's saying to me. No, he said this in a particular place, at a particular time, and in a particular context, and it had a meaning. I need to understand that meaning before I can do anything else. Okay, that's observation. Secondly, I got to measure with of the river to be crossed? What are the differences between the biblical audience and us? Okay? Because first, what have I done. I've discovered what the author is saying to his audience. Secondly, I need to discover what differences, if any, there are between me and his audience. Okay. A classic example of this would be, for example, of the levitical law. So I read something in the levitical law that's the word of God. But do I just read that in the poltical law and say, okay, fine, I just take that over automatically. Well, not necessarily. What if it's part of the ceremonial law that has been fulfilled through the person and work of Christ, all of a sudden, I'm going over trying to find turtle doves to sacrifice. When right, there is a difference. You don't just go, hey, there's that and drag it over. Much much of cultic theology is rooted in this error. Many of the cults, what they do is they'll run to you know, especially in the law books. They'll find something in Deuteronomy, or they'll find something in Leviticus, and they'll say, see, right there, it says it right there in the Bible, and this is the Bible right, And so therefore we need to be doing this and not taking into account the different types of law, moral, civil, ceremonial, not taking into account old covenant, new covenant. It's just there, it is. It's black and white. Therefore, no, you got to measure the width of the bridge to be crossed, which means means that we have to understand the differences between us and them. Another example of this is the civil law. Right. God gave certain laws to Israel as a nation in the ancient Near East, and those laws were for them and expired with them. However, those laws do have value for us because they're rooted in timeless principles, So understanding the difference between us and them helps us to grasp that. So in this we're doing analysis. So we've gone from observation to analysis. Observation is just taking it in. What do I see? Right, I see this word several times. I see a comparison here, I see a contrast there, I see and if then clause I see just asking those questions. But now we're analyzing. We want to know the historical context. We want to know the theological context, we want to know the covenantal context, and we want to know the redemptive context. Okay, what is the historical context? I've talked about this many times, and it's I do so because it's a classic example, and that's you know, Jeremiah twenty nine. We all love Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. Right, I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord plans to profit you and not to harm you, to give you, oh in the future. Right, And we run there and we rip that verse, kicking and screaming out of its context. Right. And now all of a sudden, we've got a verse that we think means that only good stuff's going to happen to us and not bad. But the verse is written Jeremiah twenty nine eleven is written in the context of Jeremiah twenty nine. Jeremiah twenty nine is a letter that was written to people from Israel who have been taken off to captivity as a punishment by God. So Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven can't mean that God won't let that bad stuff happen to you if it was written in a letter explaining why bad stuff was happening. Hemen. So the historical context, the historical context is important. The theological context. We talked about that also three. Crossing the principalizing bridge, not just crossing the bridge, but crossing the principalizing bridge. Question, what is the theological principle in the text. What we're bringing over is timeless theological truths. Okay, timeless theological truths. I can't just run there and bring something completely out of its historical context and PLoP it into my context. I have to ask, what is the timeless theological truth? Because that's the thing that's going to be the same in their town and in our town. What is the timeless theological truth? Okay? So this way I can have something that's part of the ceremonial law or the civil law or whatever, and I can still bring over a timeless theological truth. For example, when I read in the law that you know, if your ox goes someone, you're you're you're you're liable and you may have to pay a fine. But if you're ox gorees someone and kill someone and your ox has gorged someone before, now you're guilty of murder. Well, okay, we don't have oxen, right, but is there a timeless principle there? There is a timeless principle there timeless principle there is about negligent homicide. Somebody died because you were negligent. That means you're culpable. You're culpable, right, And many modern laws still hold that same principle because it's a timeless principle. Okay, So we want to bring up what is the timeless theological truth that we bring over. Okay, this is when we're doing interpretation. What doctrine or doctrines are we addressing in the text. This is an important question when you do in Bible study. What doctrine or doctrines are we addressing in the text? What do I know about these doctrines, and then finally, what are the key passages that give me information about this doctrine. The reason this is so important is because sometimes you'll you'll be reading a particular text and you'll make an interpretive decision and you'll say, this must mean this, But then you have a doctrinal problem because it contradicts what we know about a certain doctrinal truth. There's this is this often happens, for example, with the person of Jesus. Right, and so you know Jesus, Jesus, Jesus does something, Jesus knows something, Jesus doesn't know something, and so we say, well, this must mean that Jesus would No, no, no, no, we don't do that. We don't come to one text that tells us something that Jesus did or experienced and say from this one text we now derive our Christology and our understanding of who Jesus is. No, we take our Christology and all the things that we know and to understand about who Jesus is, and then we bring that to bear on our interpretation of this one thing. Okay, again, go the other way, and we end up in trouble. Right four consult the biblical map. How does our theological principle fit with the rest of the Bible. How does our theological principle fit with the rest of the Bible. And here's a good rule of thumb. If your Bible study has led you to discover something that no one has ever discovered before, you're wrong. Amen, somebody right. First of all, you're not that smart. Amen. None of us are right, none of us none, None of us is that smart. But again, that's just dangerous territory. Right. And it's a great rule of thumb. If I'm reading a text and the result of my study in this text is something that no one's ever come up with before, my automatic assumption is I'm wrong. The other thing is, if I'm reading a text and I've come up with something that has been condemned for thousands of years as heresy. I'm wrong. I'm I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna hold on to me having to be right on that one. Right, I'm just not. And there's much cultic theology that falls into this category. We've talked about some of them, you know here in the past. You know the Aryan heresy about Jesus being a creative being. That's something that's been dealt with and condemned over and over and over again as heretical, and yet there are cults that still hold on to it, and they hold on to it because of some very specific Bible study errors that they commit, particularly here not consulting the biblical math right, not allowing the whole of scripture to interpret scripture, but instead finding isolated things and saying, aha, here's a new doctrine. Okay, So in this we want to make sure that we're asking what the implications are of what it is we believe we've just what are the implications of what it is we believe we've discovered. Now, having said that, let me put this caveat out as well. We also don't want to assume that everything that everybody has told us is right. Amen. We also don't want to assume that everything that everybody has told us is right. This, by the way, is how some of you got to your reform Baptist convictions. You were in some other arena and perhaps and I know some of you were in some cultic arenas didn't know it, but it was through study of the scripture that you came to realize that there were huge problems and inconsistencies with the things that you were being taught. Now, when that starts to happen, we do need to pay attention. But what we need to pay attention to is not just ourselves. Remember what I said earlier. If you've come up with some kind of interpretation that no one has ever come up with before, you're wrong. On the other hand, if you're coming up with an interpretation that people in your circle disagree with, but people in the historical Church for thousands of years have agreed with, that's a different problem altogether. That's a different problem altogether, because remember what our goal is. Our goal is to know what the scriptures truly teach. That's our final authority. Okay. Five, Now, we got to grasp the text in our town. So we've taken that timeless principle and we've brought that principle over. Into our time. Now, how should individual Christians today or how should I live out this theological principle? That's the question that we're asking, and that gets us to anybody. Application. Yeah, that gets us to application. Okay, But again, what I'm applying is the timeless theological truth that's what I'm trying to get to. All right, questions on that before we move quickly to our last piece. Yes, no, maybe we get those five steps. Okay, again going from the town of the text the time of the text, or to our town to our time, bringing over that main theological principle. All right, A couple of things I want to look at more specifically. That's kind of general, right, So the first general thing is what we're going to be using, So we want to have good study Bible that meets those criteria. Second thing is those five steps that we're going to be taking. And now thirdly, I want to look at some sort of real practical rubber meets the road stuff. How do we do this? Let's first look at reading sentences. Okay, let's look at reading sentences. We have sentences in our Bible. How do we read them? How do we how do we take these five steps and apply them at this sentence level? Several things you want to look for. Number one, you want to look for repeated words. You want to look for repeated words if you see a word repeated several times in a sentence, in a sentence, even if it's repeated twice, right, if it's repeated at all at the sentence level, that's significant. Okay, saying something more than one time in a single sentence makes it significant. Look for contrasts. Look for comparisons. Okay, this is like that, This is not like that. Look for lists. Look for lists. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentlenes, self control. Right, look for lists. Next, look for cause and effect. Look for cause and effect. Okay, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's cause and effect. If then, okay, look for figures of speech. Look for figures of speech. These are important. Look for figures of speech. Look for conjunctions, the big one being but right, but God, you see something like that, look for that. Take note of that. Right therefore, take note of that. Look for verbs. What are the verbs? What action is taking place? Look for pronouns. Okay, these are the things that we're looking for at the sentence level. And again, notice how different this is than what often passes for Bible study. You read something and then basically ask how did that make you feel? What did that make you think, right, Like, what what do you think about this verse? This is very different? Okay, we're actually doing observation here at the sentence level. Look at Romans eight five. Romans eight five, Romans eight five. For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. For those who live according to the spirit, set their minds on the things of the spirit. Okay, repeated words. Come on, what's that flesh? Spirit? Right? Each of those are repeated. Good? What about contrasts? You see contrast? What is it? Right? Those who live according to the flesh and those who live according to the spirit. There's a contrast there, right, comparison you see any comparisons? What's that. Inside over here? Come on, I see you. That's a contrast. What's the parson? Okay? All right, so yeah, those who set their minds on the flesh, or or set their minds on the flesh, or set their minds on the things of the flesh, are compared to those who Okay, what about cause and effect? Okay, no, we're just looking at verse five. We're just looking at verse five. I'm like, wait, mine doesn't say that. What translation do you have? What you said, uh, yes, that's cause and effect. Yes, yes, living according to the flesh, the effect seging the mind on the flesh, living according to the spirit, the effect seging the mind on the spirit. Okay, all right, And then what do we look for? Look for conjunctions, right, yeah, and that that conjunction would point us backwards right four. But then but right in the middle. Okay, all right? Now, Also do you see this is why I said earlier, when we when we when we get a good study Bible, if you're going to be using a physical study Bible, you need something with good margins and good spacing, because what we would do is each one of these would be marked in a different way. Right, So when you circle, when you underline, when you put in a box, when you use your yellow. Highlighter, when you use your orange highlighter, when. You use your and what I encourage you to do is to develop your own system, right, because here's what that does. If I always mark verbs a particular way, right, then when I'm going through my Bible, and anytime I look at anything that I've that I've gone through with deeper study, I know what my marks mean. But if today I'm underlining them and then next week I'm circling them, and then a month from now, I'm putting the square around them. Now, when I'm looking through my Bible, I have to remember what my system was that day in order to right. Does that make sense? So I recommend that you that you find something and that you stick with it, because what that'll do is that will that will help you develop these skills more, okay, and it will help you do better observation, all right. And again when you do this, I don't know about you. I'm I'm a visual learner, right. So for me, when I when I see things, I mean that's that's when I get them. That's when it makes sense to me. I can read over something again and again and again. And you know, we don't necessarily have time today, and I didn't project, but what I can show you is for me, I always start with a diagram, like a basic diagram of the text, like a basic sentence diagram. I always start with that, whatever my passage is, past my passage for today, you know, get that, dump it into another document. And then diagram it. Don't ask any questions, don't make any decisions, don't do anything. Just diagram it and then after I diagram it, now all of a sudden, and again my diagram also includes my colors. Right, so you know, I'll have the diagram which has the important things out to the left and the less important things out here and the other important things out there, and. Right, my diagram gives me all of that, don't I see it? Now? My colors right, if a different person is speaking, I use a different color, and now I can see a pattern in the in the discussion that I didn't see before. Now it's like, wait a minute, this goes blue green, red, blue, green, red. Right, I wouldn't have seen that, and I didn't use my colors to, you know, to sort of do that. So these really help you in your observation and making a commitment to doing this helps to prevent you from doing what we said earlier that we don't want to do, which is read a verse and immediately run to interpretation and application. Right, you read the verse and immediately you want to start saying, therefore, I need to do this. No, therefore, you need to observe first. Amen, You need to observe first, because there's always so much more work to be seen. Okay, speaking of verbs, we have the verbs here live set their minds the pronouns. Okay, we we get that. Let me do questions on that before our race through. Yes, figures of speech, how do we look at those? Because we'll figures of speech also sometimes sit nicely a certain language. Yes, I have a figure of speech in my language, and interpreting another language, then it doesn't missus the whole point. Yes, but that's the remember she's so Remember we talked about grasping the text in their town and then grasping the text in our town. Figures of speech. Is one of those things that we have to do that with because if there's a figure of speech that's used, I have to understand that figure of speech in that context and not in mind. Right. The other thing about figures of speech is that oftentimes the figures of speech are more visible. Sometimes they're only visible in the original languages, right. Sometimes sometimes you only see them there because they don't really translate as well when you when you translate them, especially in the Hebrew language, word pictures and things like that. But those figures of speech, we have to treat them as figures of speech and not just take our best guess at what they mean. Oftentimes with a figure of speech as well. That's what it's important to know who the author is because the author may use this figure of speech in a number of places, right, and it might be difficult in this context. But then if he's used it in. A couple of others writings of his right, then we put all three of those together and that can help us to understand what that figure of speech is. So, okay, I'm going to do this really quol Yes, let me do this really quickly while he gets the microphone. The next thing is reading paragraphs. I remember I told you that the smallest natural division in the Bible is not the verse, it's the paragraph. The Bible was not written with verses. We've only had chapters and verses for a few hundred years. Okay, the only natural division is the paragraph. Therefore it's the most important division when it comes to doing serious Bible study. So what do we look for? Things to look for in paragraphs? General and specific. Look for general things and specific things. Look for questions and answers. Right, what shall we say? Then? Right now? Where's the answer? Look for dialogue one person speaking in another person speaking. Look for purpose, end result statements. This was the purpose, This was the result. Look for means and ends. Means and ends. Here's the means that God provides. Here's the ends that God brings about. Okay, look for conditional clauses again, if then clauses like before, look for the action and roles of people and the action and roles of God. Right, man does this? God does that? Look for emotional terms. Look for emotional terms, and then pay attention to tone. Okay, all right, for the sake of time, I'm just gonna be able to give you those. Now you're the question. Okay, thank you for that. My question concerns. Passages that have been obscure, where the language is unique, even the figures of speech with the right what the right is the words the writer is using, maybe they only found there. What do we how do we work around that those type of things, especially. In that instance, that becomes an important point, Right, this is this is an important phrase because it's only used here and nowhere else. Right. So that's that's that's gonna be one of my observations, and that observation, along with my other observations, are going to help move me toward my interpretation. Even in terms of that okay. I mean the particular passage I have in mind is in Exodus four, with where we have the record about I think there's twenty four. Let me just read the risk. Mm hmm. Okay, Exodus four of vers twenty four, and it came to pass on the way at the encampment that the Lord met him and so to kill him. Then Zapporah took his stone and cut off the folskin of her son in it and cast it on Moses Moses' feet and said, surely, h it has blend of blood to me. So he lets him go. If you go to the Hebrew the past, it's even a lot more difficult, I think, given in the translation a lot of the. A lot of Bibles, and that's one of those that's one of those passages where even even your main commentators are going to say, there are several possible meanings here, and that's all we can do. Okay, Yeah, that's that's all we can do. If we have a figure of speech or something like that that's not used anymore, what we do is we get the broader context. We get as much as we can from the broader context in order to take our best shot at what this most likely means. But we've got to take our broader context. We've got to take the broader biblical context, put all those things together in order to take our best shot at what that means. But even when we take our best shot at what that means, knowledge that we're taking our best shot at what that means. So the greatest not only the greatest Hebrew scholars in the world, but the greatest Exodus scholars in the world. Right, people who studied the Book of Exodus and know the Book of Exodus better than any other people in the world who studied the Book of Exodus at a passage like that, they'll take their best stab at it, and they'll acknowledge the fact that. There are other ideas. Yeah, there are other ideas. Yeah, So trust me, nobody will be in heaven going. I knew all this already. Yeah, yes, you got a Mike. Here, Okay. I wanted to find out what would be your comment. For example, like you are recommending to say you have this study Bible and then for example, like the way we are looking at Romans eighths five, you'd find the es V Bible will put it in and said that way. The Navy also put it in and said that way, and the new King Gem's vision also put it in a different way. So is it advisive. But to say maybe you have three or four transitions. Of you can, you can, and that's that's that's a helpful thing to do is to use multiple translations when you're doing your study. That's what I said earlier. I like using the electronic sources. I can look at a you know, a dozen translations side by side and and that that can be helpful. But even when you do that, you need to understand the differences. For example, we talked about the fact that you know, when you're looking at es V and King James, you're looking at essentially literal translations. When you look at n IV, you're looking at a dynamic equivalent translation. Well, that's important to know because that's going to help you understand some of the differences as well. That part of the difference is readability, right, So yeah. It's it is. It's helpful to use. Many translations when you're when you're when you're when you're doing that, But when we're. Trying to. Use these tools, we need to be doing these tools in one translation. Otherwise it look at really confusing. So when you get to for example, when you're trying to find out what that what that principle is, what that main principle is. Maybe you know, I'm an NASB guy or an ESV guy, and I've done, you know, all of my work and observation and everything in that text, and now I'm trying to get to this theological principle. Right, Maybe then I'll consult other translations, and maybe then that's the time when a dynamic equivalent could really be helpful because they're trying to get to the gist of the idea, and so the difference between a dynamic equivalent and essentially literal may help kind of spark my understanding of that that key principal. Right, But I'm not going to use all of them for everything. I'm gonna use one. I'm gonna use one when I'm doing my diagram and when I'm doing all that, I'm gonna use one. But when I'm trying to because that would be another step in your study, right, just when you're doing your word studies. For example, when I'm doing my word studies, that's when that becomes very helpful. Right, when I'm doing my word studies. All right, we've overshot a bit. Let's pray, greet one another, and then get ourselves situated for our service this morning. Father, Thank you for this time you've given us. Thank you for your word. Pray that you would grant us grace to be able to hear it, to understand it, to heed it, to obey it, to proclaim it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen,