How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · May 12, 2002
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 32
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262242514082

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

I'd mention from time to time is these, you know, computer concordances where you can put in phrases. There's truthfully a lot of things you can do without computers. And a lot of things I could do with computers, I don't do. I mean, I just, you know, things that people have computers for, I just get the books out, you know. Why don't you give them the computer class? Well, that's a different deal. And maybe that's not a bad idea. do a special thing on that.

But what I want to just show you is how the one thing I think computers are really good for is when it comes to in a concordance so you can look up individual words. It's great for looking up phrases. And I found it to be real powerful. And what I've found is I found patterns about combinations of words that earlier commentaries, even of 10 years ago, just didn't even include. So I felt like I've been able to gain some insight on things like that just because of having that available. It's doable otherwise, but a lot more laborious.

So I thought I'd just give a quick example of here's how it saves some time. And this is something that you'll be seeing more in the next service. So it'll ring a bell. Hopefully, it's a good bell anyway. And here, for example, down from heaven. Okay? Something comes down from heaven. So what will happen? It will go ahead and put that phrase in there instead of the individual words.

And I can pick the Bible that I want, New American Standard, King James, you know, whatever. And then you can even tell it certain ranges, like just New Testament, just Old Testament, the whole Bible, or just a certain book, or a certain range of books. Yes. This is a specific Bible program, but most of them out there will do that. So this is something that's handy. This is just an example of one that I did, and so then after doing that, what happens is, here's all the listings, and it highlights that phrase in each one, and then I can click on each one and get the context, which is real handy.

Could you do this manually with a concordance? Yes, you can. And in fact, a concordance is only an invention of the late 1800s. Imagine before that it was a big job. Or you can imagine even before that it was in the middle 1500s that they came up with verses. And around 1200 they came up with chapters. So before that it was, hey, remember this?

You'll even see in the New Testament, and a common phrase among the Jews would be, it says somewhere, because there was no way to refer to anything. So what you end up with is, if I were to look up this phrase, down from heaven, the manual concordance approach, I'd look up down, and now I have 1,157 listings. Or I could look up from, and here's 5,001 listings, Or I could look up heaven. There's 463.

So that'd probably be my easiest approach, right? Whereas I do this computer approach down from heaven and I get 19 listings and they're all right there. So it does narrow it down quite a bit. Don't go out and go into debt for a computer. Don't recommend that. And if you don't have a computer, you're still going to go to heaven. It's not the point, but they are useful. They are useful.

Now, We've been talking the last few weeks, well this is the fourth week now, about John chapter 3. And we looked last week, which was our third week into this chapter, we looked at verse 2. And we're not done with verse 2. Ran out of time. So here we are back in John chapter 3, verse 2. And we've looked at all kinds of things. We've spent basically two weeks on verse 2. What have we not looked at yet in verse 2? The rest? Somebody else said something. What? Oh, okay.

One thing we haven't looked at is Remember when we were going through the Complete Word Study New Testament, verbs have a particular tense and voice and whatnot, and that's one thing we haven't looked at. We haven't really tried to study the grammar. Now, admittedly, the grammar in these two verses is not complicated. that's not really complex. But there is something for us to take a look at. Somebody read verse 2 for us.

Go ahead. The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God. For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Now, what do you notice there about, what is the verb tense that Nicodemus is using in talking to Jesus?

The present tense, right. And he talks about the things that you do, right? And one of the things that comes out in the Greek is that the present tense unless you use additional words to modify it. The present tense means right now continuing to do. So Nicodemus in making this statement wasn't just saying you used to do these things or you do them once in a while. He used the tense there that says you have been and are now doing these things.

And so this is ongoing. It's not like you did that for a while and we know that got our attention. This is something that's ongoing. We know that you are doing these miracles. And you could use the word continually in there to help get the English sense. No one can continually do these things that you do, are continuing to do, unless God is with him. So you get the sense there of what comes out in the Greek? It may seem like a small point, but it's Nicodemus' perspective that he is sensing that this is something that is ongoing, that from any expectation he has, Jesus is going to just keep on doing this.

In the nature, I think, if you listen to our conversation, we've been having a conversation anyway. We're two of us together. Most of the time we talk only about things in the past that are going to happen in the future. We very seldom talk about something happening right now. Two of us are together.

It's kind of interesting that this is a point here in this particular verse. Yeah, I think that's a valuable thing, just to recognize when you see that present tense, to think through that, because you're right, we frequently overlook the verb tense issue, and the use of the Greek, their thought was, unless you specify differently, and you can look up like in a concordance, you'll see the word now in the New Testament, Frequently, if that's there, or now, or right now, because there's a word that is added to the sentence to indicate that.

But the natural Greek sense, if they use the present tense without that modifier, was it's now, but it's continuing. It's going on with the expectation that it's going to go on into the unforeseen future. But it's going on now. So it wasn't just stuff you do like you've done a few of them. It's the idea of, well, you're doing it now and you're continuing to do it. And that's an ongoing thing.

So that was Nicodemus' time perspective. Would it be then the same when it says come from God, and normally it would be who came from God, but it says come from God. And that's an interesting way to put it, isn't it? Yeah, that is very awesome. What does the Complete Word Study of the New Testament say? You've got a copy, Donna, where it says come from God? You have to. Come from what? Come from God, the PFI. Okay. The PFI is... Ah, a perfect tense is a past completed action, right? But then it should say, have come from God. Yeah, yeah.

If you look at it, a lot of our translations are really weak in conveying the sense of what's in the Greek. Even just adding the word continually or continuing a couple places in this verse would give you a better sense of what the Greek means. Yeah, and that perfect tense means it's a completed past action ongoing results. So, if I keep that in mind, that's just a quick indicator.

You're correct. It would be better to say, have come from, as a completed past action. And the results of having come from God are continuing now. That's the use of the word. That's what was intended to convey in the original language there. So that's where we've pointed out a lot of things already, haven't we? But this is one we've skipped over.

The truth is those little verb tenses in there add something to what Nicodemus is saying. You have come from God, completed past actions. It's not like you're continuing to or you're partway. It's done. And the results are continuing. And you are continuing to do these things. Now, so we've got a sense of what Nicodemus is saying. Let's ask some other questions here. Nicodemus says, we know that you are come from God. What did Nicodemus think Jesus was? Who did Nicodemus think Jesus was? Probably he might have known he was from a plant, but he wasn't totally sure. He doesn't indicate it in his question or statement.

He might have been wondering or pondering that, but he doesn't indicate it in the question. I mean, seeing a scholar like he was, he probably had looked at the Scriptures. So he'd kind of noted some things, like the signs. He didn't explicitly say, hey, you are God. He didn't say that, but he says, you come from God. So it's like he's approaching the truth. How about the signs? What were the signs supposed to indicate? If you look up the Old Testament passages, the signs say this is the Messiah.

Zechariah is amazing. Let me backtrack. Acts chapter 1. Jesus ascends into heaven and what do the angels tell the disciples? that he's going to come back in the same way that he left. You look in Zechariah and it talks about the Messiah touching his feet down on the Mount of Olives. But what's amazing is that it doesn't say the Messiah is touching his feet on the Mount of Olives, it says God is touching his feet on the Mount of Olives.

So here's this whole sense that Nicodemus isn't quite there yet. It's like he's recognizing there's something different about this guy, but he's not got the full sense. You're doing these signs, but instead of saying, no one could do these signs unless he's a Messiah. He says, no one can do these signs unless God's with you. You're from God. So he's not there yet. So he hasn't gotten it.

Now, we are going to go to verse 3. Big sigh of relief. Finally! Okay, verse 3. Yeah? Yeah, I have one observation. Oh, good. There might have been another sign, but just what's recorded in Scripture, there's only one sign. So far. Okay. And maybe that was enough to convince Nicodemus there's something different about this. Okay. It turned water into wine. Alright. Let's take a look. Well, you're onto a good point.

John is the author of this gospel we're reading now, right? And towards the end, he says Jesus did so many things that if everything he did were written, what? And so what we're seeing is a sampling, isn't it? And that's why Nicodemus, he didn't just see this one and say, that's pretty impressive.

It signs plural. So you've got a good point. There's essentially a sampling that we're getting here. I would suspect that even the conversation that we're getting is really a sampling of the whole conversation. Now it's your turn. Verse 3. Take a look at it and I want to take some time, look for observations and questions that come up into your mind both right in the verse as well as things that might tie to something that's outside the verse. Take some time to look at that and see what you come up with. And if you've got that copy of the verses with the lines, go ahead and write those down because we'll want to remember those. It is answered and said in English. Wow! Why this doubling up of answers? Amazing, huh? It stretches it. In the end it becomes a little latent. Thank you. What observations and questions are you coming up with? Wayne?

Well, the first question I had, I'm assuming it ends in verse 2, except God be with him, that that's kind of the question Nicodemus had in his mind. And when Jesus answered him, if I were reading the King James, it says, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

How does that answer that question? It seems like it doesn't make sense. This is back to Helmut's point. What kind of answer is this? And how can you answer something when Nicodemus made a statement? There seems like, from a human standpoint, it appears at first blush to be almost a disconnect between what Nicodemus said and what Jesus responded with. Okay, now that's something else to take a look at is, is there a pattern in doing that where the response is not in accordance with the question?

That's a good point. Let me point out a related kind of thing. Someone will see, here is a first coming verse, and then right next to that, and maybe even in the split in the same verse, will be a second coming prophecy, right together. And someone will say, well how can that be? And what you find is, as you go through the Old Testament, a great many of them are like that. Where the first and second coming prophecies are right together. and you have to give the Jews at least some slack here, they could easily have missed that, that those were two different events.

He did that same thing with the woman at the well. That's right, the woman at the well, next chapter. And this is another point, is that right within a particular author, the same book or the same author, you will frequently find a similar pattern of word usage and conversation. So that's a good point, right? In the next chapters, where's the woman at the well, and the conversation there, Jesus doesn't answer in direct correspondence to what she says. So, good point.

What else? What's that? The Greek says, born from a mother. I mean, that would make it a little more And we'll talk about that in a minute, because that's one of the things that you would observe, that as I look at it, I get born again, born from above. What gives here? Which one is it? And we'll talk about that in a minute. But good observation. Anything else? What else do you see? Ah, okay. So you're saying, what is the kingdom? Okay.

Yeah, Nancy? Unless one is born again or from birth, he cannot see the Kingdom of God that dwells with Christ. He's making a very similar statement, but significantly different. Unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter. Okay. That's interesting to show the comparison between those. Here's something else.

When he says, see, does that mean you won't get there to see it? Does it mean that the Kingdom of God is somehow invisible to people who aren't born again? What's it talking about? What does he mean by see? I'm sorry, what? You can't understand unless you see. Okay, is seeing mean understanding? Good question. Yeah.

I think it never happens before to talk about being born again. I mean, this idea was totally new to Jews. And that's a good question. Where is this born again thing? If I look, here's the word couple again where I can put in more than one word. If I put in born again, do I find that anywhere else in scripture? Does it help me indicate what that means?

So these are some kind of questions that arise. What else do you see in the verse? He kind of expects that being a better lawyer he's going to get his reward. And so Jesus is kind of, it's a little bit of a put down here I think. In terms of saying back to Nicodemus, kind of one for one where he's called him rabbi and teacher a couple of times. In other words, trying to establish equality with Jesus. I'm kind of puzzled by you. I mean, Jesus is kind of turning the tables around here and saying, hey, here's a brand new thought for you to think about if you're going to get on and get your reward.

And you brought up this good point about He's one of the Pharisees, right? What do the Pharisees look at as going to be their salvation? What does the Pharisee look at and say, this is what's really going to make it between me and God? What's the substance of it with the Pharisee?

The law. And the law relates to what? Stuff you do. This body. And now here's Jesus coming, and here's this guy who's like top echelon, Cream of the crop of the Jews. If anybody's thinking is to be counted among this is the very top among thinkers is the guy. And what does Jesus do? All this stuff that you do in this body isn't what counts.

How about that? Stunning statement, okay? Stunning statement. And to think of it, to the Pharisee, every possible thing that had to do with their concept of salvation had to do with what I do in my body. Period. And keep that in mind, because we'll see that is important next. Cheryl? Was Nicodemus then trying to make points by saying what he... Yes, was Nicodemus trying to make points?

Hmm, okay. Good one, all right. What else do you see? Ah, okay. And what could you do to kind of check out that pattern of, what's this truly, truly thing? How could you check that out? Okay, something important, okay. Yes, you could look through a concord, just look up truly, because even if you had just a paper concordance, you could look up truly. And just look at everywhere where it shows up twice. And what you end up seeing is this pattern throughout the Gospels. It's amazing that he uses it twice.

In Greek, a lot of our rules of double negatives and redundancy go away because their way of emphasizing things is through double negatives and redundancy. And they could, for example, the verbs you could say, you know, I eat, I wash. But if you really want to emphasize it, there's a word for I, it's ego. We get our psychological term ego from it. So they put that in front of it. So it's I, I. And this is another instance where in the language you could emphasize something by saying it twice. Truly, truly. It's not just, you know, Truly. If you said it just truly, that wouldn't emphasize it. But truly, truly. Oh, okay. I know it. Boy, I mean this is like really emphasized. And then what did he say after that? I say unto you.

And I was wondering, is this just I? Because didn't at some point Jesus use the term I am? And that was what? Well, and when I say observations and questions, that would be one of the things you'd want to check out, wouldn't it? How strong a statement is he making? Something else, we said, truly, truly is a pattern that you might find elsewhere. What about this I say unto you? Is that a pattern you see again? Where do you see it again? Verse 5. There we go. Verse 5. Truly, truly, I say unto you again.

And here is the... mold-breaking thing that Jesus is doing here. One of the things we mentioned is the Jewish ideas to bring something up and to have things in tension and leave them there. There was a joke that I heard from this fellow who was Jewish and he was talking about these Jews were having this discussion and of course, you know, even the discussion itself underscored the point.

These Jews were having this discussion, it was a particular traditional prayer that they would pray, and the Jews were arguing, do we say this prayer standing up or sitting down? And so finally, after arguing back and forth, they came to the rabbi and they say, Rabbi, we have this question, is this traditional prayer said standing up or sitting down? And one of them said, well, we must say it standing up. And he came up with some justification how, you know, you're supposed to say it standing up.

And he says, no, that's not the tradition. And then the next guy from the other side says, well, then we must say it sitting down because, you know, and he came up with all these justifications out of the Old Testament why you say that traditional, you know, prayer sitting down. And then so these guys started squabbling and barking and biting with each other. He says, that's the tradition! See? The point is to sit there and kind of leave things in tension and argue back and forth. That's the Jewish way, see? But for Jesus, just come out flat out.

I truly, truly, I tell you, truly, I mean, emphasize, double emphasis. Truly, truly, and not, you know, this rabbi says this, and this one says this, you pick. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, boom, that's the truth. We just don't do that. Stunning. Jewish men don't behave that way. So this is remarkable, what do you say?

This must have just been stunning to Nicodemus to hear it not just once, but twice. That is a great point, because Nicodemus, up to this point, was assuring himself that You know, he's going to make it. I mean, he's going to be in the team. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody's saying, hey baby, you're not going to make it unless you make this change. All right, good.

Now, I'm glad you brought that point up. Let's think about what are the conflicts just created by the way Jesus responded in this verse versus what Nicodemus was accustomed to hearing from the so-called Jewish wise men. What were the conflicts? He had no choice. Yeah, I just said this is it, it's emphatic, okay? And what else? You mean something's got to happen that's outside of what I do? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What is there, based on Nicodemus' understanding of what salvation is, who God is, how God works with man, what is there at all for Nicodemus to stand on? Yeah.

We read through it and we just kind of buzz over the words. The reality is, this is shocking. I mean, if Jesus had come up and just thrown a bucket of cold ice water on his face, it would have had the same impact. What Nicodemus is hearing from Jesus is just, you know, shake your head. Did I hear you right? Are you kidding? This is earth-shaking stuff.

It kind of goes against the tradition of the church. It's sort of wrapped up in that today. Yeah. What happens is the church tends to fall back into what have we been doing. You wonder what the Lord would say if He could walk in here now, huh? Yeah. Probably Nicodemus was asking himself if what the Pharisees taught or what he had learned was the truth because otherwise he wouldn't have come and asked you. Ah, okay. That's a good point.

Her point was Nicodemus was asking himself, was what the Pharisees were teaching true? The tradition among the Pharisees was the Messiah would come when all the Jews believed the same thing. And to have this disparity that was constantly there was of course incongruous with the Jews believing the same thing.

What else do you see? The teaching method was different. Not just what he was saying, but the teaching method was different. Here's something else. How does Jesus make the point? Is it a positive statement or a negative statement? Take a look at it. What do you see? Does he make it positively or negatively? If you don't see, you won't get it. Yeah, and it's interesting, does Jesus make statements like that frequently? Can you give me an example? The next one is verse 5. Verse 5 is? One is born of water and the Spirit. Jesus made statements like that repeatedly.

Unless you cannot be my disciple. There is a pattern here of putting things in the negative to emphasize the exclusion. Rich man cannot get into heaven. If we simply make a positive statement, it leaves open the possibility that there's some other route or avenue. But Scripture, and Christ particularly, closes that off. There is one mediator between God and man, that's a nice positive statement. Nobody comes to the Father. Nobody, see?

Those kinds of negative statements really underscore it, because it cuts off the avenue of the alternates. And that's exactly what he does here. He makes a negative statement in order to cut off any thinking you're going to get some other route. If you do, you will. Instead of if you don't, you won't. And maybe that do brought out other avenues of the program.

Now, here's something that we're going to look at as we go down because it gets answered, but initially it's a little bit of a head-scratcher. The words that come together as born again, in most of our translations we'll put it that way. Some translations I was looking at have it like born anew. It can just as well mean born from above. Okay? From above. So anyway, we'll take a look at that more. That's not something we're going to be able to nail down today.

What about this other question of the Kingdom of God? What are some different ways, and I'm going to be real broad-bracketed here, what are some different ways that people in Christendom think of that phrase, the Kingdom of God? Just what are some different ways that people think of when they think of the Kingdom of God? They think of, sometimes, it's in heaven.

You're not going to see, then that would come across, you're not going to see heaven. Okay, unless you're born again, okay? And what are some other ways? Cheryl? An earthly kingdom, okay? Okay, when you say earthly kingdom, you mean the millennium. You mean a future time when Christ will reign on earth. So there are people that understand the kingdom of God in that sense. And that's looking that there is going to be a thousand year future reign of Christ. And he's saying that nobody is going to see that future reign of Christ unless they're born again.

Okay, now, how else do people see it? One of the ways I saw it, one of my major denominations, once I was a believer, I was in the kingdom. Ah! And that's why this question, what is the kingdom, is tied to the question, what does the word see mean? You see that? If see just means it's already there, but I can't visualize it, I can't connect with it, than seeing as a sort of an ethereal thing.

If the Kingdom of God is this thing that is right in our midst right now. Any other ideas? The Kingdom of God. You could think of it as the Spirit of God's authority. God's authority in a greater sense. What are some other ways that people have thought of or now think of the Kingdom of God?

Heidi? The church. Yes. Some people actually look at the church itself as the Kingdom of God and if you're not there, Spiritually, if you're not born again, you're not going to get into this church. Or, some even kind of turn that around, as the church is the way to see. So, just that, you know, see the kingdom of God. See the kingdom of God. Five words, and now all of a sudden I've got, whoa, a real variety of understandings. Do you think that Jesus meant all five of those? I think not. Some of them are so distant and different from one another that they're mutually exclusive.

Very good point. And that's a good observation. We don't see Nicodemus question, what do you mean Kingdom of God? What's that about? So, very good observation, because Nicodemus knew exactly what it was. Apparently, it's not even a point of dispute. He and Jesus had a lot to talk about, but that wasn't one of the things that was interesting. And that's a very good point.

And that in itself will help us eliminate some of the different options. Again, what we're doing is we're playing gumshoe here, okay? We're looking at different things, asking questions, and one of the things, just like an investigator in a police investigation, they're trying to eliminate suspects, right? Well, this one couldn't have been because he has this alibi. Couldn't have been this one because that's not the right fingerprints, whatever it is, right? We're wanting to eliminate options, too, so that we can nail down, this is what it's talking about. Okay? What else do you see?

Why don't you use the word see, and not get into it? Well, that's a good point. Yeah, why don't you use the word see? Just to see it, that's not very desirable. I mean, maybe in the first stage. Again, it comes back to the question, what does he mean by the word see? Have you ever heard somebody play this little joke? Hey, let me see this, and you hold it up to them, and then, okay, now you saw it.

That's not quite what he has in mind. You're going to see the Kingdom of God for five minutes? I don't think that's quite what he's saying. So anyway, let's cut it off there. What I'd like you to do is observe ten more things by next week. Ten more things. Ten more things. Ten more things by next week about that verse.

Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you've laid out your truth for us so that we can indeed know what is truly, truly said of you. And Lord, we just ask as we continue our time here, just that you would Open our eyes to what you have blessed us with, and we just thank you for the fellowship that we can share. We thank you for the fact that we don't have the question marks in our mind that Nicodemus certainly had at this point, and that we can confidently put our trust and hope and expectation in you. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.