How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Dec 30, 2001
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/482622391730

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

A few kind of house cleaning things. One is, I think about two weeks ago, you asked the question, why is the Jewish calendar got these numbers? It's like 5,700 something is about the current rate. And I checked into that because that was a good question.

And what it turns out, that's their time since creation. But the guy who put it together apparently made some oopsies. And for example, there's about 180 years between the time of Alexander the Great and Cyrus the Persian that he dropped out. So there's a few places like that where he dropped out. So that's why if you take the date from adding up the numbers from the book of Genesis and some of the genealogies, you get a number just slightly over 6,000. years, like 6,005 years, something like that, and they're a few hundred years short of that because their calendar has a few gaps in it. But they all got locked into it and so nobody can stop. It's got a momentum of its own.

So anyway, that's the answer to your question. Yeah, I think after a while we won't care what all these calendars say, but for now it's somewhat helpful as long as we don't get confused. So anyway, that's one item. Another thing is last week's handout had a date for the invention of the printing press, I think 1440. And one of the things you'll find is historians argue back and forth as to when it was actually invented because it was sort of an iterative process. Actually, it turns out the Chinese had come up with it several centuries before and we got it from the Chinese and then improved on it. Anyway, that's one thing.

Another thing that I wanted to hand out, this is just for you to take a look at. Frankly, I've got several copies. If you are interested in keeping a hold of it, you can certainly do so. And if we run out of copies, I can always make some more. I'll pass a couple extra along. What this is, this is both sides.

This is a copy from the Geneva Bible, which was the Bible that was first printed without verses, but by the time they started printing subsequent editions, they put verses in. And so this is a copy of the earlier pages. My brother, for Christmas, sent me a page out of an old Geneva Bible. And this is the first three chapters of Ephesians.

One of the things you'll notice, and it was a pattern of those times, Jesus is not spelled J-E-S-U-S. It's I-E-S-U-S. And the original King James is also that way. I-E-S-U-S. And there's a lot of other variant spellings. You'll also find it's a little hard to read. And one reason is just because of the print style and some of the lettering. Some of the S's look like F's and things of that sort. A lot of it looks more like the old German script. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe a little less strange to you. But yes, in that print. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a little getting used to, but that's what they were accustomed to. Yeah.

So anyway, if you want to keep a copy after others have taken a look at it, find If we run out of copies and people want to keep more, I'll print some more. And then you have this handout there that's got this, I think, was it Bertha called it a disease? Anyway, yeah. Harmonetics is the term that you hear, kind of the technical term for what we're studying here, what we've been doing for the last few months.

And this was written by my son, Randy. And I thought it was pretty good. It reflects a little bit of his humor here and there, too. So what I thought I would do, this kind of ties a lot of the things that we've been doing together. So what I thought I'd do is just kind of hit some of the high spots. And frankly, I went and marked up a copy of this thing.

And I think I may have distributed it somewhere. Yeah, you ended up with it. This has got all the red underlines in it. I'll trade you. That way I know what I'm doing, sort of. As Randy points out here, it's like Herman U. Tix. That's how you pronounce this.

And all it is is just what we've been studying. How do I interpret the Bible? How do I study it? How do I interpret it? What this was, he prepared this for an adult Sunday school class a while back and so just sort of as a one-shot deal. But I think it's a good summary and it's worth going over. It runs, yeah, we run in our family. One of the things he points out here, which I think is critical, a lot of people will say that learning how to study the Bible is for some kind of experts or something. The truth is we use hermeneutics all the time.

One of the illustrations that I gave some time ago was we use hermeneutics when we look at a newspaper. We don't read the classified section the same as we read the front page. We don't read the letters to the editor the same as a news article. And we certainly don't read the comics the same way we read the front page, right?

So we use hermeneutics all the time. And one of the points here is if you've read this far in this paper here, you're already using hermeneutics. We begin interpreting things around us. And the truth is, we all do it. And the truth is, with different kinds of things, we all learn how to exercise hermeneutics. If I look at a comic book, I'm not going to interpret it the same way as I do Newsweek. Hopefully not anyway.

Now, here's one of his points in the second paragraph He says the statement killer chicken could mean several things. It could mean the chicken is poisoned or the chicken is on the loose and it is a lethal chicken. Or the third thing, the chicken is so good it makes you want to practice gluttony. You see the thing we've done there is now you've got this phrase and it could mean several different things.

So how do we figure out which one it is? We do that by context. We use hermeneutics. Otherwise, everything that anybody said would always be disorienting. Wouldn't it? It would be strange if we didn't use hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, and this is the third paragraph down, hermeneutics defines how you view the entire world around you.

Let me venture to say this. We have been spending the last couple of months bombing Afghanistan. Why? Essentially what's happening is Osama bin Laden and the folks of his mindset, they have hermeneutics that interpret the world around them. And those hermeneutics force them to draw the conclusions that they do. There's absolutely nothing that we can do to change that. It's like this is said in their mind. Hermeneutics is simply, this is how I interpret something, whether it's the world, whether it's a document. So what we're doing is just zeroing in on the Bible and saying, okay, how do I specifically interpret the Bible?

Good one. Would that be considered application? Yeah. Yep. Good point. This is application. And yes, we are chasing a killer chicken. He's very good at running and flapping and all such things. And he only squawks via video lately though. Yeah. Here's an example that he gives there, about three quarters of the way down the page, where he says in 1 Timothy 5.23, No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. Now, that's just right out of context, isn't it? So if I don't understand it, it may be some sort of statement taken, you know, all Christians are supposed to drink wine.

Or, you know, I look in the Old Testament, here's a command to build a temple. I might think that the most important thing on planet Earth is for me to go out and start building a temple in Jerusalem. Now that's going to create real havoc, because there's some people over there that really don't want me to, right? But if I don't look at the context, if I don't understand how to interpret the Bible, I'm going to get commands out of it that are not intended for me, right?

Now, my son, Randy, pulled a trick here. He says, application? He only put that there to get your attention, to see if you were reading. He's saying, first we're going to observe. That's the first trick. On the second page, he goes through seven points. I think there's value in us stepping through here so that we get a sense for, here's how I go about this.

The first point that he has there is one of prayer, because isn't it possible for us to go through the whole process and have it be non-spiritual? You can find books, entire volumes on the New Testament written by unbelievers. Lots of things by unbelievers. There is absolutely nothing spiritual in what they write, but they've done their interpreting, right? point is critical, that ultimately we're approaching it with a different intent. That's why we need to begin with prayer, because our intent is what is God saying, not just what does it say. Then the next part he has on the list there is the big questions. These are what we talked about.

Remember the three steps and he addresses them Three steps, observation, interpretation, application. And what you're going to do is begin by asking a lot of questions. Good answers start from asking good questions. You see that? That's the connection. So we're going to begin, once we look at it, asking lots of questions. And this is what the observation step is all about. We're going to be looking at each verse, each word.

You might look at a phrase and say, well, he might use a pronoun. Well, who is he? And even something that may seem, that's so obvious I'll just jump over, may very well be worth looking at. Even when it says Jesus Christ, in our inclination, that's just the same as Vern Peterman, or just the same as your first and last name.

But we can look at each one of those, and each of those has a meaning. So we can look at each individual word. We can look at how the words go together. We can ask these questions that he puts down here. Look for key words and phrases. Let's take, for instance, we've been going through the book of Revelation. What are some key words or key phrases that have come up in the book of Revelation?

Yes. He who has an ear, let him hear. Seven times. Must be important. Every single church gets that message. Good one. Some other ideas? I am? Okay, yeah. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Just as simple as that. I am. That seems so simple. You're just going to bypass it, right? No. It ends up being very significant. Any other thoughts on that? OK. OK. Yeah. After these things, that's something you just pass on.

And this morning we'll be taking a fairly long look at after these things. Because what may seem to be mundane may, in fact, be very profound. And you could take something that may at first glance look to be mundane and spend a long time digging into it. How is this word used? How is this phrase used? Well, it seems like the letter's a synonym. Since he's coaching him, it switches back and forth between the profound and Yes, yes.

And even with that, you know, you've got to ask all the questions. Like I say, really good answers come from really good questions. And so that's why we want to focus on asking really good questions at the outset. It's not a step to be skipped over or slipped, you know, past quickly.

And the things that may seem to be just real plain and regular are the things that you really need to stop and take a look at. Don't let the kind of, you know, oh I already know this, you know, idea slip into your head. asking those questions sometimes the means of digging up some deep things out of the Word.

Look for lists. What are some passages you can think of that have lists? Gifts of the Spirit. Genealogies. Genealogies are frequent both in the Old and the New Testament, primarily in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament. Where do you see them show up in the New Testament? Right, in the Gospels. Genealogy of Christ?

Yeah. Okay, and then Helmut mentioned gifts of the Spirit. Here you have a list. Where are some other places you've got lists? In Galatians. But in Ephesians is also the heavenly armor, right? There's a list. If you go through Scripture, there are places where these lists are given, and those lists are frequently helpful because you can look at those words, and the idea is here's a collection of something similar. And here's something that's kind of under a theme. Yes, excellent. 1 Corinthians 13. Hebrews is another list. It's kind of the hall of faith.

Yes, there are numerous places and we're going to see more of those even in the book of Revelation on Sunday mornings as we go through that. So there's lots of places. Look for those lists because those lists give you items of a category and it frequently is either a fairly extensive example or sometimes it's the whole sweep of all that category of ideas. So look for lists. Those are helpful.

What's another thing there? Look for contrasts and comparisons. We brought up Ephesians, the last four chapters of Ephesians. If you go through and underline the word but, B-U-T, if you underline that word, what you'll see is, we mentioned a list, it is a list of contrasts from chapter 4 through chapter 6.

You'll see that word show up again. So what's happening, and this is common not only, but frequently, with Paul's writings, he will say, this, not this. This, not this. Don't be foolish, but be wise. Proverbs is another example where you'll see those kinds of contrasts. And frequently those contrasts are real helpful because then you're seeing, okay, it's not just a bunch of things not to do, There's not just a bunch of do this and this and this. But you're seeing the contrast. This, not this. This, not this.

And it's those contrasts that help you get a picture for what's the full message that's being portrayed. Suppose somebody just gave you, you know, a list of here's a whole bunch of things not to do. Does that tell you what to do? No, it lays out a lot of not to do things too. Yeah, yeah. A rock cannot do something, right? Because it's very passive. Oh, yeah. Yes. The comparisons and the contrasts are real helpful. Look for expressions of time. Now this is something where people sometimes get in a real puzzled mode. Example, we went through Revelation chapter 2 and 3 and the very last part in chapter 3, the message to Philadelphia, talks about you'll be kept from the hour of testing.

Now does that mean 60 minutes? No. They had calendars they thought were important, but not clocks. That's right. The hours were time periods. The hour is a phrase that we will use even now in a figurative sense. This is his hour. We don't exactly mean 60 minutes, but this is a particular period of time. and it may be flexible.

On the other hand, if you study very carefully the days in Genesis, a literal understanding of that and studying how it's used in the rest of the Bible, you'll come to the conclusion that that's intended to be a 24-hour period. So getting a sense of what is the saying time-wise is critical because the truth is, while we're here on planet earth, time does matter. One of the reasons I'm convinced that the Lord had Greek instituted throughout the culture of the time as the common language was, with regards to time, it is highly specific. And so it helps us get an understanding. If it says, you have been seated with Christ, and very explicitly puts that in an entire past tense, then I can, quote, take that to the bank. I can work with it and learn something from it and not just dismiss the time tense. So that's something to look at as you're looking through Scripture and especially in the New Testament where the language with regards to time is very specific.

Okay. Look for terms of conclusion. What is a word that signals that you're drawing a conclusion? Therefore. So one of the things I can look for in Scripture is words like that that are a clue. Ah, I'm drawing a conclusion. If I see a therefore and don't look ahead of it to see why it's there, see what it's there for, If I don't look ahead to see that, then I missed out on why the conclusion is even being drawn. You have to look back. Those kinds of clue words, if you're going to get a good understanding of the passage, force you to look back and say, okay, what points did he make to come up to the place where he says, therefore. It ties a set of logical steps into the passage. So, look for those conclusions, look for those answers. Yes?

It is finished. Good one. It's finished. And then, what's finished? What's finished? Yes, that's right. As simple a statement as, it is finished, you could go all the way back to Genesis. Right? Couldn't you? I mean, here you've got three words. Yeah, here you've got three words and all of a sudden I'm chasing through the whole Old Testament. What's finished? Who? Who said this? Who did he say it to? You see all the questions you could start asking? So something as simple as that, just by asking questions, good questions, will lead you to some really good answers. Good point, I'm glad you brought that up.

Because it's one of those things, boy, it's simple, but boy is it profound. Okay, let's keep going. Interpretation. First, the leading line there is determining what the text means. Now we've asked some good questions. Now we've done some good observing. Now we're going to say, okay, now that I've asked lots of good questions, I'm looking for some good answers. That's going to be the next step that we're going to follow through on the passage.

Looking for these good answers. Ultimately, We're going to be asking the question, what did God intend to tell us here? What did God say through these words? Lawyers study hermeneutics. They look for loopholes and nailing something down. We have a whole different intent even though we're studying hermeneutics too. Our intent ultimately is what is God saying? Because everything we're reading in God's Word is inspired by Him, word to word. Okay. Some key points there, turning on to page three, top of page three. The headline sentence there, try to look for what the verses around a verse say.

Sometimes we can get so myopic, focused on what does this say, and we back up, and oh, that's what it's talking about. If I come up to you and just kind of out of the blue say, he put it in the car and it's gone now. Huh? Out of context, that just has all kinds of questions and it doesn't really tell you anything, does it? All it does is it leaves you kind of puzzled. But, in context, that might be just exactly the answer you're looking for. And that's just the point here. we must look at things in context to understand what it is that's being said. Now, I'll give you a sneak preview.

This morning we'll be looking at Revelation 4, 1 through 4. And one of the big questions, and boy, scholars have just written piles and piles on this, is who are the 24 elders in Revelation? They're mentioned about a dozen times. They keep coming up again and again, and from the start of the tribulation period to the end, they keep showing up. Twice, individual elders talked to John. We're never given their names. Who on earth are these guys?

And one of the answers, and we'll go over it this morning, but one of the keys to an answer is, what was the context? What was the context? Because an awful lot has been written about who those elders are, and I can tell you a lot of it has gone way off track because they didn't ask the question, what's the context? They just started grabbing and reaching, and I think this, and boy it sure would be nice if it were that, instead of saying, what's the context? And so we'll be taking a look this morning as we go in there at the context.

The next paragraph down, remember the scripture never contradicts itself. I do a lot of looking on the internet. There are lots of websites that are devoted to trying to undermine scripture, quite a few. I've looked at some of them, even emailed back and forth with some of these guys. comes out is they're looking for things that look like contradictions. The truth is that a great many of their contradictions that they come up with reveal that they haven't studied hard enough.

They haven't looked closely enough. One will say, here's Jesus in one gospel and this event takes place when he's coming out of Jericho. Another gospel says he was going into Jericho when this took place. Well, there's an obvious contradiction The Bible is wrong. It's not without error. Sounds like a problem, doesn't it? Must be a contradiction, right?

So you look into it and it turns out that there were two Jericho's. There's a Roman Jericho and there was a Jewish Jericho. And you had to go out of one and into the other. And so this event took place. when he was going out of one Jericho and into the other Jericho. So it looked like a contradiction until what? He studied a little more carefully. So if you find a contradiction, all that is is an invitation to study a little deeper.

There are long lists of all these different things that people, oh, isn't this a problem? There's one proverb that says, answer not a fool according to his folly, and the very next proverb says, answer a fool according to his folly. Whoa. You look at it carefully and it's the exact same words, with the not in one place and not in the other.

And you think through each one, they both make sense, but it's because it's It's intended to be something that causes you to think and to think through what the verse is saying. Ultimately, we need to look for consistency and we need to understand it in terms of consistency. And then one of the other points there, interpret and understand obscure or difficult passages in the light of more understandable passages. Ever run into a passage and you're kind of scratching your head? What's that say?

Well, there are other passages that are much more clear or thorough on a subject, and that explains it in greater detail. 1 Corinthians 15, 51 and 52 give us a brief description of the rapture. It doesn't give as much detail as 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18. It gives more detail. If I were to look at the 1 Corinthians passage, I might say, well, I've got some questions. If I look at another passage, the 1 Thessalonians 4 passage, it will help give detail to explain and fill in where the other passage doesn't give it. One other point.

Last paragraph under this before it says application the second time. One of the things that happens, because our language includes a lot of Greek terms, one of the things that people will do is they will take our English word that's based on the Greek and use that as some kind of an illustration and use that to help interpret the Bible. And it can create some problems because, as we know, language changes over time. The Greek root for our usage may in fact be different than what it meant originally.

An example that Randy gives here is dunamis. I bolded it there. Dunamis is the Greek word for power. It's also where we get our word dynamite. That doesn't mean that when you see the word power in the Bible that it means dynamite. You see the difference there? So sometimes you'll see people go off this way, and I've actually heard preachers go, boy, this is the power of God, this is the dynamite of God. No. Dynamite blows things up. Is that what you want? No. I don't want to be like those guys that are walking around over in Israel, walking into buses and bars, blowing themselves up. That's not what God intends. Yes, it has the same root, but don't get them mixed up. One of the key areas, let's switch over to page four. And the very top line, he focuses on the word repentance.

And I think ultimately, because you look at, Paul writes to Timothy and he talks about what Scripture is valuable for correction and for reproof and training in righteousness. Scripture is intended to turn us around. Scripture is intended to change our course.

And I have to say that there have been a number of things that I look at over time and I say, yeah, yeah, my thinking has been changed on that. And a key point here is that repentance comes from a change in perspective and values. It is not fundamentally how we feel. Our feeling is a response. But fundamentally, repentance starts with our thinking. It's an appeal to the mind. Because whether or not we feel badly about something isn't the issue. The intent is to change our thinking. The intent is to change our thinking so that we have an orientation for changing direction.

All too often, people will feel real badly about something and go right back to it. And that's not repentance. So we need to keep in mind when we're applying Scripture and looking for repentance, you may even have seen this where somebody gets really distraught and disturbed and cries and yet they go off and do the same thing. The intent is to change our thinking and our perspective and our set of values and therefore have a change in our behavior as opposed to just getting us to feel bad about something.

You see the difference there? The scripture appeals to our mind. That's one thing that if you go through scripture, you'll see the word mind, thinking. It's getting us to think differently, not just feel differently. The feelings may or may not come, but there's a tail end of the train, not the locomotive. Now, Things to watch out for.

Cultural standards instead of biblical standards. What are some things that you can think of that Christians have tended to adopt that are more cultural than biblical? Yes. There are pendulum swings in our culture, aren't there? And one of the pendulum swings more recently is to, you know, okay, let's have women doing this and that. And so what's happened is a great many churches have just fallen prey to this cultural pressure and said, okay, we're going to go ahead and have this, this and that take place in the church based not on scripture, but on culture.

I mentioned some websites for those who are skeptics and atheists. There are also websites I've seen, entire websites devoted to interpreting scriptures such that homosexuality is fine. And I mean, they really go into it. And if you are not careful in discerning, it looks pretty good.

But it's wrong. And one of the things that's happened is they've taken something that's kind of in vogue culturally, and then they've begun to interpret Scripture based on that, rather than asking the question, what does Scripture say? And leave it at that. And then say, now, from that, from what Scripture directly and clearly says, then that's going to impact what we believe about what's moral and what's right. Applying a passage to biblical truth without it really being a verse on the subject, and this unfortunately is a real common one.

One of them that I brought up earlier is I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Does that mean I can go out and lift my car? Does that mean that I can do something that is otherwise wrong? Do you see that? If I'm not careful, I can use it as a justification for any morality I like. And that's a problem. Yeah. That's a good one.

One of the things where that has infiltrated a lot of churches is that it's government by vote. Everybody votes. If I look at it, there's nowhere in Scripture where that's laid out. It has the church shepherded, under-shepherded, by elders. That's a good point because we have inculcated in our culture this sort of democratic idea and we just pull it right into the church. Well, no, it's not biblical. It's not there. I won't find it in Scripture. Good point. This applying passage to biblical truth.

Here's another one that's the flip side of that. Things that people think are in Scripture but are not. What are some things, some almost sayings that people come up with? The love of money is the root of all evil. Is that right? Is that what Scripture says? Yes. They say money is the root of all evil. Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Okay? Good. That's one. What's another one? Ah, okay. Where did that come from? Who came up with that? Who came up with God loves those who help themselves? I think it's generally credited to Benjamin Franklin. which obviously is many, many centuries after Scripture was written.

And in truth, we'll find a great many biblical passages that teach exactly the opposite. God helps those who help themselves can frequently be a good justification for the flesh. So anyway, the examples go on and on, but it's either Scripture twisting or adding something to scripture that you've sort of inculcated from our culture.

All right, let's pause there. I'll make one last comment. The last paragraph there has got some, I'm afraid I'll have to tell Randy, he's got some grammatical errors in there. After something there should be a comma, and after you re-evaluate your doctrine there should be a semicolon, but anyway. Now, a couple things to to make note of.

We're shifting next week into the next quarter. We've got the Genesis classes going from Genesis 1 to Genesis Part 2. Romans is finishing up this morning. They're going into position and condition, focusing an entire quarter on those principles. In here, we're going to be shifting gears a little bit, some of these subjects will be revisiting in greater depth.

This next quarter what we'll be doing, not entirely but substantially, will be looking at how do I use tools that are in English only to help me understand better the Greek that's behind the New Testament. There are tools out there where you don't have to be a Greek scholar to gain some tremendous advantages. So we'll be taking a look at some of those.

Then the following quarter, that's into next spring, April, May, June, then it will actually be learning the Greek alphabet. I won't have people going through all kinds of Greek verbs and what not. Learning the Greek alphabet, and the only reason for going that far is that there are a number of tools for doing word studies and studies of the original Greek text, where if you can just identify what the letters are, you can look a whole bunch of things up. So it's not a matter of getting real complicated with the Greek grammar, but it's just a matter of if you can identify the letters and know what the order is, just like we know our ABCs, if you can go that far, you all of a sudden open up a whole world of Greek study tools. Things that are, well they will quote something in Greek or quote a Greek word and use the Greek letters and if you can just look at what those letters are, that's enough for you to have open to you a whole bunch of additional tools.

So that's kind of the direction we'll be heading in the times ahead here. And just so you can kind of anticipate what's happening. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you that you have put, even in what seems very plain and simple and mundane, profound truth. Lord, your word is so rich and so deep. Lord, we ask that you would give us discernment, we ask that you would cause us to ask all the right questions so that we can see all the marvelous answers that you've laid out in Scripture. Also, as we look ahead here, Lord, we just look forward to more of your faithfulness into eternity. In Jesus' name, amen.