Bible Study Method Overview

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00:01
Okay, so we are our last 20 or so minutes is part 3 Which is going to be an overview of the process that we're going to be learning Tonight was all about motivation getting in gear, and I'm glad some of you had some conversations during the break Because I'm glad to know that we're motivated all to go the same direction So we're going to look at the outline.
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This is the outline from the textbook, but I want to tell you something This outline is so simple, yet it is so powerful.
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It's one of those things that when you first see it, you're going to go, well, yeah, I knew that, but you don't underestimate the power of simplicity, because when I show you the outline, you're going to go, well, that's simple, it is simple, and that's the point.
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There are much more, there are books that are much more technical on how to arrive at exegetical conclusions, but there will be nothing more foundational than these three things.
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You are going to learn in this class three things.
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One is observation.
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We're going to spend two weeks on observation.
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What does the text say? Not what I want it to say, not what I want it to mean, none of that.
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And I'm going to show you next week that this is the most overlooked aspect of Bible study, because people want to go right to what does it mean, rather than what does it say.
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Observation is key.
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We will spend at least two weeks learning how to observe.
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Number two, interpretation.
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What does it mean? Once we know what it says, then we can know what it means.
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And here's the thing, if you spend an hour in observation, your interpretation will be better.
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But if you spend five minutes in observation and go right to interpretation, it will be worse.
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You need to spend most of your time on number one, and your second one will be better.
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Thirdly, application.
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How does it work? Not does it work, because it does, but how does it work? This goes to the question of relevancy.
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Remember we talked about earlier, some people don't feel like the Bible is relevant.
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It is, but learning how it is, is part of the task of Bible study.
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And often we stop before this point, because we don't want to apply it.
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We don't want the Bible to speak into our lives.
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So we observe, and then we interpret, and then we stop.
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Because we don't want it to shake up our lives.
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Now, this method, if we follow this method, we will be ensuring that we are engaging in exegesis, not eisegesis.
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And I know that those words are probably common for some of you, but some of you they may not be, so let me give you the definition.
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Eisegesis, with the prefix E-I-S, eisegesis, is reading into the text something that is not there.
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I gave you an example earlier.
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That was the miracle of sharing.
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That's eisegesis.
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It's not in the text, but he wanted it to be, so he put it there.
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That's what people do.
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They put things in the text that are not there.
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Eisegesis.
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I mean, have you ever been in a conversation where somebody did that? Where they're just throwing stuff at you, and they're saying, well the Bible says, the Bible says, and you're like, no it doesn't.
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That's what you want it to say.
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But that's not what it says.
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Eisegesis is reading into the text something that's not there.
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Exegesis, coming from the prefix X in Greek, which means out of, like an exit.
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Exegesis is to draw out of the text what is contained within.
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Yes, narsegesis.
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Narsegesis is a made up term, but it basically, narsegesis is a, I don't remember who coined it, but it basically means reading myself into every verse.
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That's right, yeah.
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I had a cousin that did that a long, long time ago.
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I had a car, I was working at a restaurant, and some guy went out back, and he kicked dents in my back doors when he didn't like me.
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And one of the kids that worked there saw him do it and told me, so I went and filed a complaint with the state attorneys because he damaged my car.
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And my cousin's like, he's trying, he's like, oh it says in the Bible you shouldn't take people to court.
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You shouldn't sue people.
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I'm like, wait, wait, wait.
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You know, very active, me trying to get compensation for him maliciously destroying my car was wrong.
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I'm only laughing.
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You're not supposed to sue believers over trivial matters that you can work out with.
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And I'm like, nah, nah, dude, come on.
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When you said the word compensation, I saw your face on like a billboard.
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Do you need compensation? See Ed.
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I'm sorry Ed, I just, when you said, I.
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But there is, there is a lot of exegesis, in fact, it's, it really is the, it's the, it's the thing that causes most disputes.
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I had a, two weeks ago on my podcast, I had a friend of mine who's a Reformed Baptist, he came on the program with me.
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And we discussed the subject of baptism, the difference between believer's baptism, which is practiced by Baptists, and infant baptism, which is practiced by Presbyterians, Episcopalians, even Roman Catholics practice infant baptism.
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And we discussed what the differences are and why we hold to believer's baptism and not to pedo-baptism or the baptism of infants.
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And I would argue, and I have argued in public debate, that the reason why people would hold to infant baptism is because of exegesis.
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They're reading into the text something that isn't there.
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Like oftentimes you'll hear people that believe in pedo-baptism, they will say, well look at these households that were baptized, the household of the Philippian jailer, the household of Stephanus, the household of this guy or the household of that guy.
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It just stands to reason that those households would have infants in them.
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And I said, no it doesn't.
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Because I'm going to ask you all right now, how many of your households have an infant? None.
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That's what I'm saying, you did it one time, but it doesn't stand to reason that your households have an infant.
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No, I know that brother, I know the reason, but my point is, that argument about families, it stands to reason there would be an infant, that is exegesis, that's reading into the text something that's not there.
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In fact, R.C.
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Sproul, who believed in infant baptism, he said, well it's silent, the text is silent, but it's a pregnant silence, because he believed in infant baptism, so he had to have a reason to have that faith.
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But I believe again, it's reading into the text something that's not there.
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Now certainly Presbyterians would disagree, they would argue with me, they'd be angry with me for saying it's exegesis, but that's what I believe that it is.
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But you see how important it can be, because it can create an entire division in the body.
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What one thing divides the body more than anything else? The sacraments, baptism in the Lord's Supper.
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Baptism in the Lord's Supper, the two ordinances that are supposed to unite the church have the most dividing effect.
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So it's just, exegesis is divisive because people see something they want in the text, and they go to find it.
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They have an idea they want to find in the text, rather than drawing out what the text actually says.
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Exegesis is to draw from the text what is there, and only what is there.
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Exegesis is the basis for hermeneutics.
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Let me give you, this is not on my screen, but I do have a whiteboard for moments just like this when I have an idea.
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By the way, we're getting new whiteboards.
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Brother Andy and I, we're going to have, we're actually going to cover the windows.
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On this end it's going to be all whiteboard, because we're excited.
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TV's going to be mounted, we're going to do this whole new learning center thing.
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It's going to look great.
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But here's a term I want to introduce you to, it's a Latin phrase.
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Tabula rasa is, it means a blank slate, a blank slate.
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Now this has a lot of philosophical baggage, so I don't want to spend too much time.
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If you Google tabula rasa, a lot of weird stuff will come up, because a lot of times it talks about like human beings are born as a tabula rasa, or a blank slate.
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That's not true, we're born in sin, we're sinners from birth, that's not the case.
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So just understand that's not the way I'm using it.
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But what I am saying is when we come to the scripture, we need to do our best not to read our preconceived ideas into the text.
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But rather come to the text as a blank slate.
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Now that doesn't mean that you can't, you know, I know who Paul is, so when I read Paul's letters I can think, okay this is Paul.
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That doesn't mean I have to erase that.
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But what I mean is when I come to the text, and Keith Foskey has a personal bias about something, that I read my personal bias into the text.
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But rather I should try to erase my biases, which is almost impossible, but I should try to erase my biases so that I go to the text as close to a blank slate as I can.
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So allowing the text to speak to me, rather than allowing the text to speak for me.
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I don't want the text to have my words in it, I want the text to have God's word.
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You know, the difference.
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So that's just a phrase, you know, that I've used in the past, I wanted to give that to you.
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Alright, so we've got a few minutes left.
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By the way, that's the basis of hermeneutics, exegesis is the basis of hermeneutics.
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What this class is, if it's a hermeneutics class, it's really an exegesis class.
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How do we do that? How do we do that? So we're going to start tonight with what would have been our homework, but because some of you didn't get it, it's just going to be a class exercise for the next 10 minutes.
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We're going to come up with 10 observations from Romans chapter 12.
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Now if you have a sheet of paper, you may want to take it out.
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Alright.
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Now, first thing we have to decide is a translation.
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Because if we don't all agree at least somewhat on a translation, the first thing we're going to be observing is how different the different translations are.
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And that's fine.
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But, let's all agree that for tonight we're going to use the ESV, only because there are ESVs sitting around.
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So if you don't have an ESV, there are blue ones, and there's one back there, there's about four or five of them back there.
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Brother, would you hand me that one? NIV? Don't let him give the NIV a hard time.
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No, you don't need...
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Listen, it's...
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The NIV has issues, but so does every other translation.
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They just may have a few more.
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Yes, it's simply the same thing.
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Alright.
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Now, I'm not going to write the whole verse.
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In fact, let's do this.
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Since it is only one, or since we're only doing 10, I think we could do 10 in the first verse alone.
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So you got 10.
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We're going to do this together.
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We're going to observe here.
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And this is before I've even trained you.
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This is before you've even been given the skill set.
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You're going to be getting the skill set starting next week.
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Again, if you read the book, you'll get the skill set out of the book because it's all coming out of the book.
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Alright, so what's the first sentence? I appeal to who? To you.
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Therefore...
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Brothers.
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It's supposed to be ancestors.
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Mine does say ancestors.
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Wait a minute, wait a minute.
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You have an NIV and it says brothers and sisters? That might be one of the problems we have.
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Alright, so, and we're going to talk about that.
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Okay, I appeal to you therefore brothers.
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By the mercies of God.
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By the mercies of God.
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To present your bodies.
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To present your bodies.
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As a living sacrifice.
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Only and pleasing to God.
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As a living sacrifice.
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Alright, now, you know what? That's far enough.
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That ain't even the whole verse, is it? Yup, that's far enough.
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Okay, because you can get 10 out of this.
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Because I'm going to show you what I mean by observation.
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Last class, we did this a couple years ago, and the first class I said bring 10 observations.
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And people were losing their minds because they didn't understand what I meant.
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Here's a quick thing.
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I'm going to switch to a different color.
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And hopefully this will make sense to you.
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I appeal to you brothers.
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What's the first observation I can make? I.
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Even before that.
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Even before that, I look at this and I say, okay.
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I have here a set of nouns and pronouns that are identifying people.
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So I start with this one.
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That is a singular personal pronoun.
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It's referring to somebody.
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Who's it referring to? Paul.
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So my first observation is who's writing? And he's writing to someone.
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So I'm going to go over here to the you.
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Because that's who he's writing to.
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And he tells us who the you is.
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It's the brothers.
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So who are the brothers? Believers.
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And it's actually the audience in Rome.
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So it's the Roman Christians.
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So right there.
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So Roman Christians are my audience.
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So right there is two observations.
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Who's it writing from? Who's it writing to? And by the way, a lot of times in the Bible that will help you interpret.
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If you know who's writing and who they're writing to.
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Right? Huh? Yes.
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Are you saying it doesn't apply to you? He's not talking to me? Okay.
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At this point.
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At this point, even though I have a slam dunk answer for that.
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At this point, that's not the point.
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Because at this point, we're not looking for an interpretation.
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At this point, we're only making observations.
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And again, what do we want to do? We want to jump right into the meaning.
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We want to jump right into who it applies to, how it applies, and what it applies, and what it's going to do.
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That's three deep.
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We're only one deep.
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We're only observing.
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Right? We're only observing.
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I've observed two pronouns in the first clause.
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Right? The two pronouns, which are connected to this noun, which is identified by the book itself.
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It's the Roman Christians.
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Okay? So that's two.
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We're going to have a tally.
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There's two.
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What's another observation we can make? Any word can be an observation.
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So you can say, okay, well, there's one, two, three, four.
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There's 17 words.
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And that's fine.
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But I'm looking for something else.
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Okay.
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Let's go right here.
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Yes, Nance.
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Okay.
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I appeal.
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What is an appeal? A plea.
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A plea.
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A plea is another word for that.
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So I could write plea.
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I plea with you.
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What's another word for appeal? Exhort.
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And you said, Julie, you said beg.
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I beg you.
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Well, just that's enough, right? So now what we're doing is we're observing the meaning of a word.
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How's this word fitting in with the rest? So we're just looking at that word.
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I appeal.
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But what else does an appeal recognize in the whole? It appeals that Paul cares.
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So there's a care.
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I don't make an appeal to anybody that I don't care about.
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So there's also, there's pathos in this.
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There's emotion in this.
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I appeal to you.
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So there's emotion in this.
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Yeah, I was thinking the word fight.
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Yeah, yeah, it's in his heart.
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I'm calling you out to do this, right? And so right there, just in the first line, we've already come up with three observations.
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Okay? Now, big word.
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Therefore.
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What do we know about the word therefore? Transition.
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Therefore is a transition word.
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It connects what came before to what comes after.
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If you see the word, therefore, you need to know what it's there for.
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That's the old joke, right? Because therefore is a word that connects one thing to the other.
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Like if I said to my daughter, if I said, I looked in your room and your room is dirty.
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Therefore, you must clean it.
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That is a connecting point between two statements.
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I looked at your room and it was dirty.
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That's point one.
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You must clean it too.
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And one is the therefore of the other.
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One leads to the other.
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So therefore is an important word.
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And what is it connecting? It's actually connecting.
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What verse is this? Let's go back to some general observation.
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This is 12 verse what? One.
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We can even say YA because we don't even have the whole verse.
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So this is chapter 12, verse 1.
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So what is the therefore connecting to? Verse 11.
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Well, it's connecting to the previous chapter, right? So we know that we have the previous chapter.
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But what we'll learn, and this wouldn't come by observation automatically, but what we'll learn is actually Romans 12 is a transition moment in the book where Paul moves from doctrine to application.
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The therefore in this passage is actually a marking post in Romans to show Paul moving from the doctrinal to the applicable.
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Because of this, do this.
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He's moving from the indicative, is, to the imperative, must.
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And so this word therefore actually is huge not only in this verse but in the book as a whole.
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Alright, so we got five.
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Alright, so we're up to five.
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Now, that's just one line.
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Well, two on here but in your Bibles, one line.
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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, right? Now, here's something else.
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If you have this blue Bible, which I know not everyone does.
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If you have this blue Bible, you can actually see that next to the word brothers there's a superscript, a little number three.
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That brings you down to the bottom, which does say or brothers and sisters.
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So the NIV chooses to put that in the text.
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But isn't that an interesting observation that the ESV does choose in the margin to include the masculine and the feminine.
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Even though in general it's unnecessary because there's what's called the masculine universal.
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When I say brothers, if I say to the church, brothers, I'm not just talking to the men, I'm talking to the brethren.
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Brothers and sisters.
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But in this sense, this does refer to brothers and sisters.
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This doesn't leave out the ladies.
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So that's another observation.
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All right.
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All right.
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What else? We're trying to get to 10.
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We're over time.
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It's got to hurry.
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OK, so what is mercy? No, that's grace.
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What's mercy? No, that's a good guess.
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But what is the difference between mercy and grace? That's right.
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Mercy is not getting what you deserve.
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Grace is getting something you don't deserve.
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Grace is a gift.
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Mercy is the withholding of justice.
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Right.
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And who is the one being merciful? God.
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Because we have this little word of.
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Right.
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The word of connects this, making it possessive.
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It's God's mercy.
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You can even translate it that by God's mercy.
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But rather we translate it by the mercy of God.
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So this becomes possessive.
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There's another.
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We have mercy is from God.
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Right there.
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And it's all again, we're not interpreting anything.
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We're just that's what the text says.
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It's the mercy of God.
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All right.
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Now we move to the word to.
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And what is to do? What is to do? That sounds like.
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It's a directive.
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It from here on.
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It's what you're going to do.
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This changes.
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All of this is the appeal basis.
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I base this on the mercies of God.
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That you do this.
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So the two changes.
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From I appeal to you.
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Therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God to do something.
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So after the word to is what you got to do.
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You might say this is also childish and so simple.
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It's not.
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Yeah, this is how I prepare sermons.
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I print the text.
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On a big white sheet of paper.
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And I take out a pen.
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And I begin first thing I do normally.
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I go through and I underline all the nouns.
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People.
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Then I go through and I look for all the verbs.
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Verb show action.
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So in this sentence, when I start looking around.
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What's it present is a verb.
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That's what we got to do.
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It's the command.
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It's what we're doing.
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So there's my verb.
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Boom.
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That's something else I've observed.
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I'm excited.
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I like to do this.
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It's fun.
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See, when I present what? Your body.
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Your body.
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As what? Living sacrifice.
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What do we know about this? It's an oxymoron.
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You know what an oxymoron is? It's two words that go together.
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Mean opposite.
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Jumbo shrimp.
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Dodge ram.
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Dodge ram.
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If you dodge it, you didn't ram it.
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It's a dodge ram.
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It's an oxymoron.
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Living sacrifice is oxymoronic.
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It's two words.
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If it's live, it's not sacrificed.
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And if it's sacrificed, it's dead.
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That's biblical principle.
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Dead things get sacrificed.
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Things when they're sacrificed are dead.
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But we're called to be living sacrifices.
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So right there, this is a unique term.
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This is a unique term.
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And next week, we're going to talk about terms.
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And what terms are and why they matter.
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Terms are not just a word.
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But a term is something that helps you understand concepts.
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You all have jobs.
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That you do jobs.
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In your jobs, there are terms that only affect your job.
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You know what I mean? Because it's what you do.
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My son, I was going to tell the story next week.
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I'll tell it now.
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My son worked for a window company before he went in the military.
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He worked with my friend Kyle.
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And he would always come home and he would talk about wet flash.
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Wet flash.
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Daddy, I got wet flash in my pants or something.
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I think that's what it was called.
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Wet flash.
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And I know what wet is.
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And I think I know what flash is.
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But I had no idea what wet flash was.
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He had to explain it to me.
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Because that's a term he used all day long.
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But it didn't make any sense to me.
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It was the stuff they put around the window to keep the water from seeping in.
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That's what it is.
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But I didn't know that.
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Because that's not a term that I use in my daily life.
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Living sacrifice is a term Paul creates for this.
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To help us understand what he's calling us to do.
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Right? He's calling us.
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God is calling us by his mercy to be a living sacrifice.
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We're out of time.
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But this is what this class is.
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Observe.
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Interpret.
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Apply.
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Alright.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that we get to spend eight weeks, Lord, studying it.
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And I pray that it will be fruitful as only it can be.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.