How To Study The Bible

Let's see, as we're proceeding through how to study the Bible here, it's interesting. Apparently, some different editions of this have come out. Some folks tell me that the version they have is about two-thirds the thickness of this one. I hope they haven't made the print any smaller, because it's already a challenge. Anyway, we'll be proceeding with that.

However, I did want to bring up Joanne brought up a question yesterday, and I appreciate her pointing it out because this is something I am seeing as an issue in a number of different realms. She was looking up in the dictionary. This is this is this larger volume here. She was looking up in the one right in this one.

And under ekklesia, which is the Greek word for the church, right? And there is some commentary added in the dictionary that is not in the abbreviated dictionary in the Word Study New Testament. And they start deviating from providing insights into the Greek. to adding their own little extra, and frankly, I can't make any sense of it. Here, for example, it says there, ìOwing to the growing hostility of the Jews, it came to indicate opposition to the church. Ecclesia, therefore, at once suggests the new people of God, the new Israel.î That little phrase is a mistake, theologically, because what it's doing is saying that The church is somehow just replacing Israel. That's a huge error. Yes? That's right.

I mean, there are massive catastrophes that come from this theology. And that is just one of them. Millions of Jews have been killed, justified on the basis of this replacement theology. And you know, it's been going on for centuries, not just in this last century. It's been going on for centuries. The idea, well, you know, God hates you people, you know, and therefore, yeah, let's get rid of you all. And it has been going on for centuries. A number of different, you know, political groups, you know, kingdoms and whatnot, persecuting the Jews on the basis of this theology.

So anyway, I'm exceedingly disappointed, and I'm going to be contacting them about how that got in there. The thing that is difficult to figure out is that the notes that I have, and I'll be interested to look at the updates, the notes that I have in the Worth Studying the New Testament talk about a pre-tribulation rapture, which is inconsistent with this. The only theology I can think of that is willing to mix the two is what's called progressive dispensationalism. And they believe in an already, not yet. It's the sort of thing where you can believe things that are mutually exclusive.

And that's frankly taken over at a lot of schools. It's taken over pretty much entirely at Dallas Theological Seminary, where it used to be a pretty solid place. Dr. Leitner, who was at the conference I was at last month He just got let go from Dallas Theological Seminary because he objected to this teaching.

And they just said, that's enough. You've objected one too many times, you're gone. So they won't even let him voice an opposition to it. So at any rate, beware. I think there's still a lot of very good materials, but keep your eyes and ears open because apparently something has crept in. I'm going to be asking. is even asking about, you know, sometimes doesn't do much good. There's a website that gets lots of access, lots of use, and I've questioned them several times on this and some other things that they've been coming up with, and they don't seem to want to even bother to answer. So anyway, keep your eyes open. Be careful. Look for what is providing insight into the Greek language, and that's our intent here.

Where they start going off into separate theological systems and things of that sort, then you've got to be careful. Thanks for bringing that up and asking the question. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, don't believe anything I tell you. Don't believe anything the book tells you. Yes, absolutely. We'll make sure it gets on the record. Okay, with that as a scandalous backdrop, let's go ahead.

We started on Ephesians 5, verse 1. And last week, there was a handout, and I had some extras here. How many are short the handout from last week? Okay, maybe I can ask you to share some with somebody. You folks didn't get one either. All right, so we were looking at the beginning there, and as we were talking about last week, you can look up, these are the grammar codes, those letters, okay, that you see in front.

And some of the things that we noted, you can look up what place in grammar that word has by those letter codes that are in the handout. And then the dictionary in the back of the Word Study New Testament contains those words that are bolded. For those that are not bolded, you will have to have the complete dictionary, which is a separate piece, in order to look up every single word if you want to do that. And so between those, we can find the grammatical structure of each word. We can find the meaning of each of those words.

Something else that we noted was that there are differences between Greek and English. And one of those is that in a lot of places, there will be an article, a definite article. We would translate the. in Greek, but it doesn't always get translated into English, because sometimes that gives it a different sense. But we'll be taking a closer look here, because I think, as we'll find, this book and the things that go with it offer us some resources, without studying Greek, to still get a great deal of the insights that would come if one were to go in and learn New Testament Greek. That's our purpose for taking the time in this class. Hopefully you can see that a little better. One of the other things we noted is that Greek verbs contain the pronouns along with them. We get hence, voice, mood, person, and number are all built into the Greek verbs. By tense, I mean future, past, present.

Voice being middle. Active, middle, or passive. Active meaning the subject of the sentence does the action. Middle meaning the action comes back on the person. You do it to yourself. Passive means the action is done to you or to the subject. So you've got voice. You've got person. That's first, second, or third person. First person meaning I. Second person, you know, you. And the third person, you know, he, she, or it. Okay? Let me see. And then number. You either have singular or plural. It doesn't tell you how many, you know, beyond that. But you actually have all those built into the verb. So here, they'll translate be ye, and you notice There's no code above ye.

And it's because it's built into that word in the Greek. As an example, I think I gave last week, I would like to eat it is all one word in the Greek. Because all that is built into the one Greek word. We look for the things that modify the word in English. In Greek, They'll go and just bury one letter. And that one letter will give all the information you need.

Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Even the it? The it will be implied. It's also implied? Yeah, the it will be implied. That's the moussage. I mean, you could eat the cat or you could eat... They could, if all I'm doing is leaving it to that, then I could just, I could leave off the it and it would still be implied. If I wanted to say, you know, I wanted to eat the sandwich, the horse, whatever it is, then I could add that word to it to be more explicit. It would be implied if I didn't say what it was, then it would be an implied it.

Non-specific. Okay. Now, here's what we want to step up to. The next step is let's walk through this first verse here. OK, the first thing, if we were to look up that where it says B. All right. Now we're going to do. If we look that up in the dictionary, in that dictionary, because it's bolded, the code above it is bolded. That's the number code you see is the Strong's number. Over a century ago, this guy named James Strong, have you heard of Strong's Concordance? He went and assigned numbers to every single Hebrew and Greek word. And so people have just kind of used that in the last century as a standard. And that's what that number is, okay? And guess what? You don't have to go around memorizing the numbers, okay? Because you can just look those up. Isn't that nice?

Anyway, the word B, what's translated B there is actually It's the Greek word ginomai. And again, you don't have to learn the Greek to begin to take advantage of it. But here is the insight that I'd like us to get from it. It doesn't mean to be right now. Because what the Word talks about is becoming. Begin to be.

Do you see the difference there? He's not saying right now 100% You know, totally, you know, this is the way you are to be. The word means to begin to be or to become. Do you see the difference? We're talking about saying that you may not have had this happening in the past. This is something I want you to start doing. Do you get the difference there between a statement that just says be and now begin?

There's something else if we go back In here, look at these letter codes next to it. P-I-M. What does the P-I-M stand for? Present imperative. Now, in the Greek, the present means not just a statement of right now. It means right now continuing. Right now continuing. That's the strong sense of the Greek present tense.

And then, you mentioned it's not just present, but it's an imperative, okay? Which, as we talked last week, in English, we don't build that into the verb. We either say it with tone of voice, or we put another word in front of it called, we'll say, must. Okay? In order to communicate that imperative. So, where it has be, therefore, It's really become, okay? It isn't all of a sudden, right now, 100%, boom, you've got to do this. It is to start now. Become. Get the process going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Now, but it's really saying become. And then, you know, it's the present imperative, so let's do it this way. Become right now, okay? Sorry about the squeak there. Become right now, continuing, and what am I leaving out? You and what else? OK, therefore, we haven't got to yet, but you're right, we haven't we haven't put that in yet. The must. Right. I'm going to put that here and I don't have much room.

Where it says B, that's the fuller sense of what it's trying to tell us. You see the difference there? Instead of just a statement, be ye, it's telling you, you must become right now, continuing. In other words, he's not trying to tell you, do this right now, but five minutes from now, don't worry about it. It's saying, do it right now, but with the sense that it's going to continue. So you must become right now, continuing, and we've only gotten to the first word. Those senses, are in that one Greek word. You must become right now continuing, okay? And that's the first word.

Now, then the next thing that Cheryl pointed out, we're missing the therefore. So what's the therefore therefore? Okay. It turns out that the therefore really, if you look it up, it has basically the same sense that we would have in English. There isn't some, you know, massive insight to be gained from it. Paul just put in therefore. All right. And then the next one, the King James has followers.

Do any of you have different on that for the next word? Imitators. OK, what what that is, again, if you look it up in the dictionary that's with this, it's the Greek word mimitēs, and we're going to be looking at that in the main service this morning, looking at that same word. It's where we get our word mimic. It's to imitate, it's to copy. This is how this one is doing it. Do it similarly. Okay? So I'm going to put it this way. You must become right now continuing, therefore, to be imitators. Imitators of who? Of what? Imitators of God. OK.

Now, notice you don't have any you don't have anything above here. And then you have this this little code A.R.T. above God. And when you see the A-R-T, what that's telling you? There's a definite article. Definite article in the Greek that doesn't show up in the English. Remember last week when they put the definite article in front of the Greek word for God? What's the difference there between that and the word without it?

There are some exceptions in the way that New Testament Greek is written, but generally speaking, they put the God, it means the God of Scripture. Because the Greeks had a whole bunch of them, right? So if they just said God, they just meant one of their gods. And so to talk about the God, the one and only, they put the definite article in front of it.

The of is built into the definite article. and that's why you don't see a code in front of it. It's indicated by that A-R-T in front of it. Of the, and they will modify the noun to fit the article. So here's the way this would come across. Of, and we're going to put in brackets there, the God. Because that's the sense that the Greek draws out. imitators of the God, okay? And this is extracted from the dictionary there on God. In many instances, when the definite article, this is Paul, occurs before theos, God's particular reference is made to God the Father.

Interesting. Okay? And we'll see, does that make sense here? Now, the next one. As dear children. Now, what if the sentence stopped right there? Be ye therefore followers of God. Nothing else. Yeah, sounds like it worked to me. One of the things is, how do I follow God? And he's trying to give a sense, what is this? What are you trying to do? Why does this imitation make sense? And so he adds this last part onto it. Excuse me, let me get that on the screen. He adds this last part on it, as dear children. And this, this as, if we look up the word, this is in what manner or way, okay? So we'll translate this, in the way of, or you could say in the same way as, okay? In the Same way as, that would be another way of putting it. In the way of. And then, it doesn't say just as children, does it? It is translated as dear children or beloved children.

And you look at that word, agapetas, now what does that sound like to you? It sounds like agape, and guess what? It's not just some kind of beloved, it's a special kind of beloved. It's those who are agape loved. Do you see that? That's the message there. It's not, God loves us, But it's not just some general vague kind of love, it's a specific kind of love that he loves us with. It's that agape love. He loves us, and what's the characteristic of agape? It's not dependent upon personal love, it's unconditional. Okay? In the way of... unconditionally loved.

And then the last word, 503, technon. That sounds like technical, right? But the Greek sense there, it actually means born ones. And that was their kind of general word for children. Children, offspring. So that's the sense. Children of God. These are not just children in the sense, but when you put those together, and it even references that specific passage.

And here's where I think this particular tool is helpful. It can give you specific indications. Is that what it means here? Yes. That's exactly what it means. as unconditionally loved children and the implication, by putting these together, of God. All of this is the difference between singular and plural. It is the sense in the way that the New Testament uses it. Because the New Testament uses words. In other words, if you were to ask some guy out on the street in the Greek speaking world, what does this word mean? He would not say, oh, it means this in that full sense. But the New Testament authors used words rather consistently in ways that the rest of the Greek-speaking world essentially had to be taught to think of.

They did not think of the word agape as the way the gods loved them. So Christian believers in those days had to learn that that's what that word means. They did not think of God in the way the Bible describes God. Because they have this pantheon, right?

And so, Christian believers had to learn that when they say, you know, the God, when they would say that, that that means this specific God of the Bible. And so, once they were taught how are these words used, then yes, that would mean that. But not until then. Good question. Well, if you look at it, we are told to love and the word is agape.

But it's only told of believers. Yeah, actually, we're told to love one another, and the word is agape, so it is Because we're believers, that makes sense. For an unbeliever, given the way the word agape is used in that Christian context, it's not doable. Unbelievers are never told to or even expected that they would agape love somebody else. No, those are good questions.

And I think it's important to understand Some of these understandings are uniquely Christian understandings, that they are ways that the words are used among Christians, and that the average Greek-speaking person out there wouldn't necessarily use them that way.

Example, and this is just to kind of build on your question, we have the word apostle. The word apostle did not explicitly mean some follower of Jesus Christ who was specifically appointed. It meant, in the general Greek usage, it meant a special messenger, someone who was sent. So when Paul would say, Paul the Apostle, only in the sense that they had been taught to understand what that meant in the Christian context did it make any sense.

Another one, because it's relevant, is talk about, if I ask you, do you believe in the second coming? Well, you know what I'm talking about because we're talking in a church context. But in some other context, you don't know if it means the pizza man's here again or what. It is context that helps us understand that.

And when these writers are writing, they're writing in the context of usage that was understood among those who were trained as believers. As you're looking at these words, that's important to keep in mind, because that's the insight and understanding that these people have because they're believers and because they've been reading the New Testament text.

The word agape is actually used of unbelievers in certain places. It gets complicated because their usage of it, they did have a particular area of usage of it. I think it's used in the Gospel of John, if I recall right, in one instance where it's actually unbelievers. It's talking outside between believers. It would typically look at there is a value in the thing towards which this agape is expressed. In other words, they would see a value in it.

But it was not because of a returned benefit. It had a particular category of use, but it was not thought of among the common people who were not believers. It was not thought of as, this is the way God loves me. It was not used in that sense. So what happened is it was a word that was adopted for Christian use and has a specific meaning among Christians.

In the same way if I say, do you believe in the second coming, you know I'm not talking about the pizza boy. It is within the context of Christian teaching that they would learn that the word means actually something different. the meaning of this one line, Be ye therefore followers of God with your children.

Do you get the sense there? What we can learn from this is there is a fuller meaning behind the Greek text than immediately comes out in the English if we're just looking at the English. Period. So this is where we can We can look at the Greek text and get this, you know, like right up to here. That's be, okay?

Therefore, basically translates the same. The imitators, see followers, that might be a little bit vague. Why does the imitators make sense? The imitators make sense because have you ever seen little kids copying their parents? So that's why he puts it in that. Here are these beloved kids, and they copy the parents.

Something else we should note, and it doesn't immediately come out in the dictionary here, and it's a cultural thing, it was unusual for a father in those days to have a love relationship with their children. The usual context is the father's life was very externally focused But he had a sense of, you know, he would have a wife and she wasn't someone with whom to have a relationship with. There wasn't a love relationship with the wife necessarily. I'm not saying that there never was. I'm just saying it wasn't typical and expected. And the kids were not someone with whom he would spend a lot of time. So to have a father that loved you was unusual and special. and very dear. So that's why 1 John 3, 1, Behold what, and I'll use a little Greek here, behold what quality of permanent love the Father has undeservedly given unto us.

That's the parallel verse to this. Do you see the importance of this? That's why when he says this, this isn't just, okay, I'll do that, and he goes on to the next verse. This is stunning words. These are shocking words because they're so special to the people that are hearing it.

Oh! Beloved children. Not just children. Beloved children. Children that are loved with that special agape love that says, I love these kids just because I love them. Not because. For instance, and we'll continue to march through this. Here's the Jets. that is in the original language that, without learning Greek but just getting some insight into it, I've been able to draw out of the verse. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord Jesus, we do give you thanks that you indeed love us, and you love us dearly, and you love us with a love that is unfathomable. And we just pray that we might be becoming, that we might indeed be learning what it means to be those imitators, those followers of you. And we ask that you would teach us now. In Jesus' name, amen.