How to Study the Bible. Language I: Word Meanings

All right. Just to get everybody up to speed, you should have a binder like this. And we're now in the third week. And so it includes language one, word meanings. That's where we're starting here. So that'll let you know. I think Brad covered sort of an overview of how do we study the Bible. And now we're going to kind of look more into the pieces Once having the big picture, now to look at the parts and pieces. How do we look at God's Word and understand what's there and be certain about what's there? One of the things that I've been looking at with a fellow lately, and I've been doing a Bible study over the phone to a guy in a different state, and we're going over this material, and one of the things that I'm telling him, I said, I think God intended to convey a message and he wanted us to understand it with certainty.

That's what scripture lays out clearly. And so that's why we're going through this, not because we want to be kind of scriptural eggheads, but because we want to have the certainty. As we saw previously, John wrote, these are written so that you might know. Know with certainty. not these are written so that you might be wondering. Okay? All right. So let's take a look here. This is the first part on understanding the language and the thing we're looking at here this time is word meanings, particularly word meanings in context.

If I give you the letters B-O-W, what does that word mean? See, immediately you're asking the context and sometimes it doesn't take much additional context to immediately give you the picture. I use B-O-W and if I all of a sudden say Fido, all of a sudden, oh, I know which one you mean. If I say and arrow, you know which one.

And if I say Christmas present, All of a sudden these things quickly have meanings. If I say rain, so it doesn't take much sometimes to quickly tell us which one. And that's one of the key points here is that A lot of times this in-context meaning thing, it doesn't take getting real highfalutin, just the context of scripture may be all it takes to make that real clear.

Here's an example that we have on the page there, Galatians, one that we studied here not too many months ago, Galatians 1.15-17. It says, But when God, who had set me apart from my mother's womb, called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood. That word flesh is a word that Paul uses several times in Galatians. How do we know that he doesn't mean flesh like the sinful nature expressed through Reading that, is that the impression you get? That he means the sinful nature?

No, you don't get that impression. Why? Is it because you looked up some monstrous Greek reference? Yeah, in the context, by the time you look at it, you say, well, oh no, I understand what this is. So that's one thing. What's the meaning in context? And sometimes you don't have to go any farther than just reading the text. Sometimes that may be all it takes.

And in most of Galatians, I would say that that's really the case. You can see, oh, He means this here and he means it somewhere else. Another usage that Paul has of the word flesh, not in Galatians to my recollection, but just this stuff. Particularly when he says flesh and blood here, is he talking about specifically body flesh? He's really saying other human beings, isn't he?

One of the things that we'll find out, and this is a cultural pattern, yes, Okay. Somebody grab part of a handout. If you don't have an orange sheet, maybe, let me go to Doug. Okay. Yeah. Then it's yours. It's yours. It's in the back of yours. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

So this is one thing, just reading the context in a lot of cases will make it clear which one it is. If you're puzzled, then there are some references. But that's kind of the first clue. Can I figure out just from reading it? And that may be all you need.

We're going to find out a pattern that the Jews tended to write in was they would name two parts of something to name the whole. Heaven and earth is a way of saying everything, physical, right? Heaven and earth. But instead of saying everything, they would say heaven and earth, frequently. Old Testament and New Testament. One of the ways that the Jews also spoke to talk about a living human being was flesh and blood. Those were the two parts. That's even how we take the Lord's Table, isn't it? The two parts.

So when you read this context here, it becomes clear, not because you looked up some really fancy Greek reference, but just reading it. That simple. Are we okay so far? Yes? Does Paul usually use flesh and blood? Well, right below there you see also Matthew 16.7, so Jesus used this expression, and then Paul used it here and in 1 Corinthians 15.50 and Ephesians 6.12. Those are the, including these, four places where that phrase is used.

That's alright. That's okay. But what you find is there's a pattern. And by the way, once you've figured out what it means in one place, there's another clue. The Bible itself, in the great many cases, helps interpret, and I would say in many cases, interpret clearly what it means, even before you go somewhere else. Marilyn? Sure.

Yeah, it's just a cultural pattern of using two halves to describe the whole. And that's just what they commonly did. It didn't mean that things that had more parts required being described that way. No, no. It's just that they had a pattern of describing things in two parts. Obviously, with the body, you've got more than those parts. But it was just they had a pattern of describing things with two parts as a common way of doing it, even if you could divide it up differently. And it didn't mean they couldn't think of something that was three or four. Obviously, how many tribes were there of Israel? The two isn't a law and a rule, it's just a cultural pattern of using two halves to describe the whole.

Galatians 2, 20-21, another one we studied recently. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

Does he mean the life that I now live in the flesh, depending on the flesh, depending on the sin nature? Is that what he means? Doesn't sound like it because he says right after that, I live by faith in the Son of God. That's not the sin nature, right? So, context. And it's not one of those things where there's a lot of fancy Greek footwork. It's just context. Just reading it. Understanding the different meanings of the word.

This word flesh does mean the sin nature is expressed through the human body in Galatians 5 and 6, a passage we've been looking at here recently. Notice that, and we have it bolded in this passage, the different uses of flesh. And what we find is in Galatians 5 and 6, both those chapters, Paul sticks with the definition of flesh, meaning the sin nature is expressed through the human body in those two chapters. So he continues with that next definition of the flesh being an expression of the sin nature through the body. And again, how do you know? If you look up the Greek word, it's the same one in each of those places we've referenced it.

But how do you know? You know it by reading the context. Okay, talk to the next page, page 11. Now, a lot of times we said we can just read the English and figure out from the context what the meaning is. or that he means something different. What do you do when you need to look something up and you say, well, wait a minute, I haven't figured this out with context.

Can I get any help here? There are a couple of references. One of them there, I give a link. And by the way, some of these links can get a little long, so if you want to download it and click on it, because it'll be up on the website, that'll get you there too, right? But Vines is online, so you can look it up there. And this Complete Word Study Bible, you can either get it in print or as software.

And those are a couple of ones that give you not just, you know, here's a bunch of things it might mean, but specific to context. In this passage, it means this. In this passage, it means this, okay? So if you run into something where you can't figure it out by context, there's your tools, okay? Now, they indicate the words in context.

Sometimes they don't do it exhaustively. That is, they might not list every place that it's used like that. So in that case, you may have to read it and figure out from the different options in similar verses that are listed what's meant. What I've done here is for this word flesh, here you have printed out in the last half of page 11, and we're not going to read it all.

You can cheer now, it's okay. We're not going to read it all, but just to give you an idea, here's all the definitions, and what I've done is to underline in bold the references to Galatians in there. So he goes through and gives all these different definitions for the various passages, so you can get context-specific definitions. This one is a complete word study Bible. Okay?

This one is on a CD-ROM. You can also get it in print. Either way, whatever suits you. I like it on the CD-ROM because I don't have to retype it all when I put it in here, right? That's nice. Okay, so I'm going to just kind of leave that, but it gives you an idea.

I mean, you look at it, it gives a fair amount of definition, and in a lot of contexts, particularly we've been looking through Galatians and giving examples from Galatians, it seems to list them pretty completely, pretty thoroughly anyway. All right, let's take a look at the top of page 13. Now, a few cautions and clarifications. We have these references. We can read in context. But sometimes if we don't clarify that, we can get confused. Example would be Strong's definitions. Ever look up anything in the Strong's definitions or find that? Here's the deal with Strong's. Strong's will give you true definitions. The problem is you don't know what the context is, and so it'll just list all of them. and sometimes pretty briefly so that it doesn't get you anything specific.

Here is the one sarx for translated flesh. Flesh meaning as strict of the skin or strictly the meat of an animal as food or by extension the body as opposed to the soul or spirit. or as a symbol of what is external, or as the means of kindred, or by implication human nature with its frailties physically and morally and passions, or specifically a human being. So, does that help? Not so much.

So, where a word has multiple definitions, and this is a good example, might be a little tough to work with. That's why if you get, especially if you get multiple word definitions, the Vines or the Zodiates, you know, Bible Essentials, something like that is a lot better. Because you get context specific. Plus a lot of times give more detailed definition for each one. And you get other examples of other verses where something is used. Okay? All right.

Another thing to watch out for is assuming that the English word that's derived from the Greek word automatically gives us the understanding. One of them that we've run into in the past, there's a Greek word, and we mentioned it in here, dunamos, or the verb is dunameo, and it's commonly translated power. Well, it so happens that the word dynamite derives from that Greek word Dunamis. So does that mean that God blows us up? Does it mean that he gives us explosive power? We're Christian hand grenades. Is that what it means?

Probably not. So be careful about jumping to conclusions because you've got an English word that's derived from it. When it talks about the life in the New Testament, often the word that's used is the word where we get our word zoo. It doesn't mean we are a bunch of giraffes or elephants or rhinoceroses or anything like that. So, that's an item to be cautious of because we can get confusion because of a connected English word.

Okay. Here's something else. There are words that are used in the Greek culture, or sometimes related cultures, that Christians use differently than the rest of the culture. So if you look up some book where this is the way they use the word in the Greek language, it may be different for the New Testament. Let me give you an example that we have in here.

Grace. Grace was ordinarily used, charis is the word, that word was used for doing a favor for a friend or relative for which you expected no return. Why is that different from the Christian use of grace? Yeah, one is grace is from a higher power. Yes, that's one. So that's one important distinction.

What else? There's no way to return the favor. A lot of times the favors that these people would do for a friend or relative, they didn't expect anything in return. But in reality, because it was a human accomplishment, the favor could be returned. So that's a distinction. A higher power, a favor that could be returned theoretically.

What else? There's another thing about it. How about the friend or relative part? Christ died for us while we were good buddies? while we were yet sinners, right? So that's another big distinction. So here's this word grace, what did the Christians do?

They borrowed the word and expanded it three ways. You brought up one of them, you brought up another, and I brought up a third. It was God who took the action, and the Greek gods didn't do anything like that. It was God who took the action, In addition to God taking the action, He took an action that we could never even hope to repay. And He did it while we were enemies. That's phenomenal. So here's this word grace that in the Greek culture was like, I'm going to do you a favor and it's okay. Don't worry about paying me back. It just exploded it hugely.

Here's grace so massive Ephesians 2.7, it's going to take eternity for God to reveal it all. Phenomenal. I mean, it's not just make it a little bigger, it's just hugely bigger. Massively bigger. So, that's one thing.

If you look up the meaning of a word, make sure it's the way it's used in the New Testament, not just some classical Greek reference or something. Among the secular culture, It was a borrowed word and greatly, no, infinitely expanded, infinitely expanded, so that the word becomes huge, in fact, eternal.

You know, the song Amazing Grace, when we've been there 10,000 years, and I'm not sure years will mean anything, but, you know, we've no less days to sing God's praise because God will continue to reveal His grace, grace that makes us gasp for eternity. That's way beyond just doing somebody a favor and not expecting something in return. So while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So anyway, that's another thing just to think of.

The cultural indications will sometimes be helpful. Sometimes they're nowhere near enough because of the Christian use of the word. The other thing, is that there'll be words that we'll encounter in scripture that'll have a uniquely cultural character and that simple definitions, though correct, do not fully explain.

An example would be the word adoption. When we think of adoption, what do we typically think of in our culture? We think of little kids. In fact, Randy and Jessica, I don't know if they made it today, but they have guests in town who adopted a baby from China. And so that's a common conception, right? Oh, this cute little kid. When Paul used that word, however, which he did with the church at Rome, he did with the churches in Galatia, and he did with the church at Ephesus, when he used adoption of sons or adoption of sons, he didn't mean having a little baby come into the household. But isn't that cultural? Yes, that's exactly the point.

And that is that if we read the word, and that's one reason we'll look at culture as another aspect to study later, just remember that sometimes the word carries either a different meaning or, like the word grace, a hugely expanded meaning compared to what we might typically think. Yeah, it is cultural. And so just be aware that when you look at something like that, and it'll lead into the next thing we're going to talk about here, that there may be a real shift in our use of the word versus the way it was meant. Well, by being in grace. Yeah. In our culture, it means you're not lonely, right? Yeah, gracious, yeah. It means you don't trip. Yeah. Graceful, yes. Yeah, just the cultural definition.

When Paul wrote Adoption of Sons, these people dropped the paper, dropped their jaws and were just amazed. They were astounded because that was something that was only done, you know, it started with emperors. and the emperors did it, they adopted an adult son in order to have heirs. In fact, let's turn to the next page. There's a couple of slides from our going recently through Galatians, and it's probably worth our looking at. This adoption of sons, and it basically from the Greek means son position. I don't mean S-U-N, S-O-N, okay? A son position. And we say here, if there ever was a statement of our position in Christ, this is it.

The Roman law, the adopted son had a position far better than the natural born son. You know, in Roman law, a father could kill his son at any age, no questions asked, unless that was an adopted son. Couldn't touch him. If a son was adopted and then a natural born son was born afterwards, the adopted son had priority. Whatever rights and privileges you got are stuck. You can't change it. How about that? We're not done.

A full heir, irreversible, the adopted son was legally severed from any prior sonship. Let's look at the points in the next slide here. The adopted son lost all his rights in his old family and gained more rights than a fully legitimate son in his new family. How about that? The family that we once had before being believers, not a part of that family anymore. We're in a new family.

He became an heir to his new father's estate, even if other sons were born after. And here's the incredible one. Number three, the old life of the adopted son was completely wiped out so that the adopted son was regarded as a new person entering into a new life. That meant primarily two things.

Regardless of any prior crimes committed, all offenses, no matter number and magnitude, were completely erased as if they never occurred. If that adopted son had committed murder, that was forgiven and completely wiped out as if he'd never done it. Next thing, it didn't matter how many debts or what the number totaled to, all debts were erased. How about that? All. Didn't matter if it's massive, huge, hopelessly large, all gone. The adopted son was literally and absolutely the son of his new father. I mean, that's locked in. There was nothing more certain or untouchable. There's no way to be a son more sure than that.

And so imagine Somebody, and a great many of the people who read this, like in places like Rome, probably half the population were slaves. So maybe half the church might be slaves, maybe even more. Imagine them reading. This is privilege beyond imagination.

The adoption of sons process originated Augustus, who was the emperor when Jesus was born, and the next one. Both were emperors under this process. The entire Roman Senate had to approve it. It had to be declared in front of seven witnesses at a minimum. This had high-level approval in order to happen. So here they are, you have the adoption of sons.

They're mind-blown. Wow! No, I'm too bad. No, I'm too... No, it doesn't matter what it is. It's all wiped out. Lord, I owe too... No, it doesn't matter. I'm not as... It doesn't matter if you're not as good as. That's not what counts. None of the things that you think you're going to...

No, you're locked in. You have adoption of sons. Phenomenal, amazing privilege. Jaw-dropping, astounding privilege. Totally secure. And approved at the highest levels of the universe. That's what he told these people they had. Some of them who owned nothing. Some of them who were slaves that were entirely subject to someone else. This is amazing stuff. Phenomenal stuff.

Okay, thoughts, questions, ponderings? Yes, oh yeah, definitely chosen. Absolutely. If you look at it, it's because that sun was chosen very deliberately And with the intent of being an heir. Yes, absolutely. It would took so much effort and in fact it required so much forgiveness in so many cases that this isn't something you do casually at all. Nothing else required the entire Roman Senate and seven witnesses. This was phenomenal. This was amazing stuff. It could be because things like forgiving all past debts. Who knows what this person might have... Because there was no limit. You know, from time to time... Have you ever talked to anybody and maybe even you felt this yourself?

Oh, I'm too bad for this. You know, the Lord can't... No. There isn't any maximum number here that the Lord can't deal with. And that's a huge thing. Or somebody wondering, boy, I wonder if I'm really saved and if I'm good enough. That's not the issue. Yeah, you're right, Doug. This is chosen with great care and phenomenal consequences. Amazingly good consequences. Yeah.

Other thoughts? between being adopted and being under the law. Yeah, being adopted and under the law. Yeah, what does the law do? Do you have criminal issues under the law? Yeah. Matter of fact, it's the law that's going to create the problem. It's this gracious adoption that's the phenomenal thing. The law is going to make you a criminal, and the law is going to put you in debt, right? Yeah, good point.

A huge contrast, massive. Let's look at this thing after the orange divider. The idea with the orange divider is this is the beginning of the appendix. I'll, from time to time, add things. So if it has appendix item, just put it behind this from here on out.

This is Bridge Crossings by Chester McAuley, who, by the way, years ago apparently spoke here. And I think, Doug, didn't he stay with you, Chester McAuley? Didn't Chester McAuley stay with you when he came here? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, Chester McAuley wrote what's on this, Bridge Crossings.

To think about what we're trying to do, why do we take the time to study, we mentioned three things, language, history, and culture. Why do we study those things? We study those things because we're trying to make an understanding bridge. They spoke a different language in biblical times than we do, so we want to make a bridge that explains that what was their language in our own, right? So we're making a language bridge. Bring it across so that we understand it.

The next thing is a history bridge. There's a particular, time has gone by, right? It's been 19 centuries and a few more years on top of that since the New Testament was finished. So we've got centuries of time. since the things in the Bible happened. So we have also, we've got a time bridge, don't we? We need to bring that time to this time. And then we've got this culture bridge. We're bringing the culture of then to the culture of now.

You know, the example we gave of adoption. adoption where it means something quite different in that culture versus our own. One of them we brought up going through the book of Philippians. Well, in our culture, we would spend a fair amount of time trying to teach our kids, you know, please and thank you. One of the things we brought out going through Philippians is that Paul wrote a four-chapter book in which he was saying thank you, but the culture did not allow saying thank you. Isn't that amazing? Human beings did not say thank you to other human beings in the culture. As a matter of fact, it was considered a curse to do so. So Paul had to use all kinds of words to say thank you without saying thank you.

It's a culture bridge. And so we have to understand things that are different in the culture. Things that have changed from there to now. So we build a bridge across that change in culture over time. The fourth one that Macaulay adds, and how we're going to fit that into our understanding where we're looking at language, history, and culture, he adds geography. And what I'm going to say is that that breaks up into history and culture. And here's why.

Let's think about, if we say Arabia, what do we think of? We think of Saudi Arabia and that usually is kind of what stands in our minds. Arabia in Paul's day was more shifted towards the Sinai Peninsula. More towards the area below Israel and next to Egypt.

So different meaning. In fact, that's a word that he uses in Galatians. And it kind of goes up into the desert area just to the north of there. So here's historical geography. That's why a lot of our Bibles have maps. Things like that. What was it like then? If we say Israel now, is that the same thing as the land of Israel back then? No. It's changed. Now we've got all those little Palestinian areas mapped out and Israel's actually pretty tiny compared to what it was in some biblical times. The other thing is cultural geography. What was the culture like You know, back then in this area, in this other area.

A few years back, my great-great-grandfather passed through Denver, okay? It was spring of 1859. He walked from northeast Kansas into Denver, and there were 25 canvas roof houses. And as he walked into town, he said it was one woman, as far as he could tell. And at that time, that was Denver.

That was it. And he was a medical doctor. So when he walked into town, one of the things that happened is somebody shot an Army captain. And being a medical doctor, they said, hey, help us here. I had been the only one in town, and only by chance. But apparently, the doctor died in his arms.

From then on, he said he went to Golden City, and then went up in the mountains, and there was no names for the places up there. So here's the thing. Same place, right? Same place we are now. I'm sure he would be Well, he would have been stunned beyond belief to see what's here now. It wasn't all we expected.

So what's happened? This is cultural geography. The culture's changed a lot. He wrote in his little diary about sleeping with a pistol under his pillow. I think you'd probably get in trouble for doing that now. So things have changed culturally, haven't they? It's the same place, same area. The culture has changed radically.

So language, history, and culture, and he adds in this historical geography and cultural geography, which is fine. But essentially, what are we doing? We're creating a bridge so that we can understand in our terms what was said back then. Later on here, we're going to find Paul talking about the cross.

And even in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ.

We say crucified and we say, okay, I know what that means and everybody's fine and nobody flinches. That was a cuss word in biblical times. It was so foul in the days that Paul wrote that, that the judges like Pilate were allowed to use alternate terminology when they handed down the sentence because it was understood to be such a foul word. What Paul wrote about being crucified with Christ was shocking stuff for people to hear.

Yes. That was in the culture of the day. Here you have all these Jews that want justice cursing out loud. Yeah. And when we think of it, we think, oh, that's an awful thing. But we don't get the same sense of, this is a disgusting thing to be yelling out loud or writing to people. It was shocking, a shocking thing to say. And so that's a matter of carrying over the culture, carrying over the understanding of what this means. Adoption, essence, grace. Those things. Carrying those things over from the time. Carrying over from the language. Carrying over from the centuries. Carrying over from the culture. So that we understand it. There's a handout.

We're going to have to call it quits for now. There's a handout that I'm going to give you called Never Read a Bible Verse. And that's obviously a shocking way to tell you don't just read it. to take a look at it and what we want to end up being able to do is to write down in our own terms, crossing these bridges, what was the author of scripture saying? What was the author saying?

Sometimes it's amazing, I was telling somebody just two days ago, When Christ said, and in English it says, it is finished. In Greek that's one word. So he said one word when he was done, and it takes us three to say it. But what I said is, it is finished isn't enough. It was a Greek accounting term that means it's all paid. Okay? Which it is finished doesn't get across entirely.

More than that, it was in the perfect tense, which means that's a completed past action, continuing and ongoing results in the future implying permanence. all from one Greek word. So there's the value and the point. By the time you put that all together and carry it over into English, take whatever words you need to say to say it, the image that it leaves with you is profound. Christ was calling out from the cross your debt.

It's all paid. Every little bit. And it's completely done permanently. Wiped out. That's potent. That's powerful stuff. And so that's the value here. We're creating a bridge so that we begin to understand what Jesus said with one word. And it probably takes us 20 or 30 to get the idea across. But man, is that cool. That's great. That's great. I don't have to worry about, oh, man. Yeah, but the stuff I've done, no, that's not any challenge.

The thief on the cross right next to him was so awful that the Romans crucified him too. And yet Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise. Today. Today. That's really cool. That's major cool. You know, thief, you've done some awful things probably your whole life. And you're paying for it now. but you're not even beginning to pay the whole of it. But it's all paid. And it's so incredibly gracious that I'll say it's finished and you're going to spend eternity with me starting today. Paradise today. That's really cool stuff. All right.

Thoughts? Questions? Wanderings? Exasperations? One thing I hope you've gotten across here, no matter what you've done, it cannot be bad enough that the it is finished doesn't cover it. No matter what you've done or haven't done, there's no way that it exceeds the capacity of adoption of sons. Not the little baby adoption, but this adoption here. All debts and crimes wiped out, no matter what the magnitude or number. Actually, their terminology of adoption is a lot better than being a natural born son. Far, far better. Far, far better. It's astounding.

And that's why Paul said it to the church at Rome. Guess what? Here's where the laws come from, right? He wrote it to the Galatians where two of the four cities were Roman colonies. And he wrote it, the third place he wrote it was to the Ephesians that had a Roman governor and 3,000 Roman soldiers. So he wrote it to those churches that would have a good understanding of what that meant and he didn't write it to the others. He knew what he was saying and he knew that they knew what he was saying. Unlike a lot of folks, who knows what the Bible means, they knew exactly what he meant and they were mind-blown.

Their jaws were dropped. They said, stop, wait a minute, quit reading, I've got to soak that up. This is astounding stuff. The Lord's grace really is amazing. Let's pray. Lord, your grace truly is amazing. As we look at these bridges and begin to look at this language bridge here and begin to understand the history bridge and the culture bridge. Far more than being just a bunch of intellectual stuff that turned us into Greek geeks or something else. Lord, this is amazing stuff. This is stuff that's so amazing that eternity is not sufficient to reveal it all. We just thank you for what you have revealed, what you've made known to us, because you love us and care for us. In Jesus' name, amen.