The Value of Observation

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Week two of introduction to hermeneutics.
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To remind everybody from last week, how many of you remember what hermeneutics means? Somebody raise your hand so I know who wants to answer.
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Yes.
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Well, it's how to study the Bible, but where do we get the word hermeneutics? Where does it come from, James? Yeah, the mythical god Hermes was the one responsible for bringing the message from the gods to the people.
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Therefore, the term hermeneutics is based on that name whose responsibility it was to get the message from the author to the audience.
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And that's really the idea of hermeneutics, getting the message from the author to the audience.
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And in our first class, we talked about the importance of studying the Bible, why people should study the Bible, why people don't study the Bible.
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And if you weren't here last week, remember all of our lessons are available online so you can go back and listen to last week's lesson and know what we talked about.
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And also, if you don't have the book yet, the syllabus tells you what book you need.
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The title of the book is Living by the Book by Dr.
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Howard Hendricks and the accompanying workbook, Living by the Book, The Workbook.
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And we will be going through our first workbook lesson tonight after the break.
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Remember how we do the class.
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We do about an hour worth of lecture and interaction.
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Then we take a five to seven minute break.
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Then we come back for the last 20 to 25 minutes.
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And that's when we do the workbook.
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At least that's when we're gonna be doing the workbook.
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How many of you have your workbooks? Great.
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And I know, Ron and Wilma, you guys just started.
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How many of you did your workbooks? Okay, not everybody.
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Well, we're gonna do it together.
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We're gonna go through it.
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So that's good.
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Okay, class two.
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Tonight, we're going to be looking at observation part one.
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How many of you remember the three steps to Bible study that are found in our book? I'll go ahead and let you go again, James.
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What is it? It's not Jeopardy.
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You can just answer.
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You don't have to answer the form of the question.
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The three things is.
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That's right.
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Observation, interpretation, and application.
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So since this is an eight week course, we're gonna spend two weeks on observation.
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We're going to spend two weeks on interpretation.
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We're gonna spend two weeks on application.
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That'll get us to week seven.
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And then in week eight, here's what's gonna be great.
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On week eight, you guys are going to get to give me texts that you want us to look at in class.
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And we're going to take that process that we learn of observation, interpretation, and application and we're going to do that in class.
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Now, over the weeks, I'll be asking you if you have a passage you want us to do, write it down and give it to me.
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You don't have to wait until that night because I'd rather have an opportunity to look at them beforehand and maybe judge which ones would be best as far as for time.
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Because last time, I'll tell you what happened.
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We did this class two years ago.
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Brother Mark Souter was in this class and he asked me to go over Genesis six and everybody else wrote what they wanted.
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We spent an hour on Genesis six and it wasn't fair because I spent so much time on his, I didn't get anybody else's.
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And so I'm gonna try not to do that this time.
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I'll try to make sure that we have the opportunity to look at more than just one passage on week eight.
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Okay, so tonight observation part one, we're going to be looking at the value of observation.
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And this comes straight out of your book.
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This is part of what you should have read.
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The value of observation, 10 strategies for reading.
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We're going to talk about and answer questions about the 10 strategies for reading.
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And then we're going to take our break and then afterwards we'll go over our workbook assignment.
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But before we do that, I want to start with prayer.
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Father, I thank you for this class.
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I pray, Lord, that you would bless us in our study.
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Lord, most of all, that we would not study the Bible just to increase the expanse of our minds, but Lord, that we would study the word so that we would know you better.
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And Lord, that we would grow in our sanctification through the power of the spirit coming and teaching us your word.
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And I pray that he would be here tonight teaching us, Lord, that I would decrease and that the spirit of God would have preeminence here in Christ's name, amen.
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All right, so we're going to look at part one.
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Good evening.
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Part one, the value of observation.
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When we look at the three steps, observation is not only the first thing that we do, but observation is, in my humble opinion, the most important thing that we do.
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Observation is number one.
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And number one, not only in order, but number one in importance.
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And a lot of people don't see it that way.
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A lot of people think interpretation is the most important thing.
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But what we are going to learn through this course is that the better you are at observing the text, the more accurate will be your interpretation and the more fruitful will be your application.
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So that's why I say it's number one, not only in order, but also in importance.
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The first step to Bible study is observation.
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We are seeking to answer this question, what do I see? Too often, people go directly into what does this mean or how does this work? They miss the vital first step of observation.
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Years ago, I read a book by Dr.
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Steve Kreloff on how to preach.
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It was a small book called Expository Preaching.
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And it became one of the most important books on my shelf.
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I found myself referencing it over and over, even though it was really not even a more than just, I couldn't have been more than 100 pages.
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It was a very small book.
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But in it, Dr.
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Steve Kreloff said this.
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He said, the only three steps to preaching is read the text, explain the text, apply the text.
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Read the text, explain the text, apply the text.
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And he says, and that's all preaching is.
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And honestly, in 15 years of preaching here at this church, I've not really deviated from that particular model of preaching.
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Read the text, explain the text, apply the text, move on.
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And that's it.
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Well, what's the first step in Dr.
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Kreloff's order? Read the text.
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And he spends time in that book explaining.
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He's not just saying, read it.
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He's saying, observe it.
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So really in my own preparation for preaching, observation is number one.
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The problem is we often don't observe.
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And I love Sherlock Holmes.
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So I brought this, and this was also in the book.
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Sherlock Holmes was famous for saying, you see, but you do not observe.
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I used to enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes.
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Used to substitute teach.
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And there wasn't a lot you could do while substitute teaching while the kids are doing their work, you have to do something.
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So I would pull up on my Kindle, the Sherlock Holmes novels.
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And I would read through.
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And they read very similar to your modern day television programs, like CSI or things like that, where there's something going on and you got to put all the pieces together.
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And I don't know if you ever saw CSI, but there was a character called Gil Grissom.
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And he was like the head of the crime scene.
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He was like the modern day Sherlock Holmes.
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He could look at a crime scene and out of that crime scene, he was able to draw all of this information in that was able to give him a picture of what had taken place.
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He could look at the, whether it was the splattering of fluid on the wall or something else, and he could look at it and it did.
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And it showed sort of how his mind was putting all of these pieces together.
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And that really is a modern day version of the Sherlock Holmes mythology.
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The story of the idea of someone who was a master observer.
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If you read your book this week, you'll remember that Dr.
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Hendricks talked about Luis Agazes.
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I think I'm saying his name correct.
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He was a renowned 19th century naturalist of Harvard.
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And he was asked on occasion, what was your greatest contribution scientifically? And his answer was, I have taught men and women to observe.
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I've taught men and women to observe.
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That's my greatest contribution to science.
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Consider the way pastors preach through a book.
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Early on, many pastors will sometimes preach two or three books in a whole year.
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But then the further they get into their preaching, the further they get into their study and they begin to be better observers.
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You find yourself going one book for two or three years versus two or three books in one year.
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Because you begin to see more that you didn't see before.
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You begin to draw out more that you didn't draw out before.
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Some people, I remember years ago, Byron Starkweather, he was one of our elders here.
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And I was preaching through the book of James.
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And he came to me and he says, you're going awful fast.
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But I was young, I think I was 28 years old.
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He says, you're going awful fast.
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And he was right because as I was learning to preach, I was learning to observe.
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Well, I preached through the book of James years later at Set Free and it took me a lot longer the second time because I was able to observe more than I had the first time.
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Dr.
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Hendricks goes on to talk about the professor and he says this.
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He says that same professor at Harvard would place a fish on a tray and put it before his student and ask him to write down everything that he sees.
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The student returned a day later and he said, I found 37 things.
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The teacher said, good, go and look some more.
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He did this until the student exhausted until rather until the until he exhausted his student over a period of two weeks, just observing.
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Every time he'd come in, I found 20 things.
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Go look some more.
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I found 15.
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Go and look some more.
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In fact, that's the motto of this class.
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This is it.
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This is the motto of this style of Bible study.
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Go and look some more.
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Spend time in the text.
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Spend time observing the text.
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Go and look some more.
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So with that in mind, we're now going to have our first practical exercise of the course.
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And you might think that I'm going to put a Bible verse up here, but I'm not.
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This is a little different and you might think.
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Maybe a little weird, but if you know me, you'll know that that's not beyond reason.
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I am a little weird.
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You like weird.
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Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a picture.
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Now, this is a graphic.
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It's not like a picture picture.
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It's a drawing, but it is a computer generated drawing of a desk drawer.
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And inside this desk drawer are all kinds of items.
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And I'm going to give you one minute to observe all that you can on this picture.
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And then we're going to go around the room.
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Not everybody's going to get a chance to speak, but we're going to see what were some of the things that you were able to observe in this picture.
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So get your pen and paper ready.
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And again, boys in the back, boys, gentlemen in the back.
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You may want to come up here where you can see better, and that's OK.
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But this is you're going to get one minute starting.
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As soon as everybody sits down, I'll wait till everybody sits down.
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Are we ready? One minute.
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Write down as many observations as you can.
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Nothing is unimportant.
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Go.
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We're about 30 seconds in.
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Ten more seconds.
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Pencils down.
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It's like a test.
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Pencils down.
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All right.
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I'm going to leave it up there.
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But we're done writing.
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Last semester, I actually put it.
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I had a table with a tablecloth on it filled with all kinds of stuff.
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That was a little more fun.
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But this was quite honestly.
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And I think it gets the same thing across.
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Let's talk for a minute.
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What were some of the things that you observed about our.
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What would you call this, a junk drawer? I got one of these in their house, a drawer that's just junk.
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Well, what do you what do you observe about the junk drawer? Anybody observe anything right off the bat? Yeah.
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What you got, Frank? It's open.
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Hey, that's good.
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That's an important point.
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It is open.
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In fact, the way that it looks, it might not even be attached to a desk.
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It looks like it's sitting on something because you notice the other stuff around.
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It looks like it might be out of the desk.
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So that's something else you can notice.
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What else? MacGyver can make a bomb, OK? They like pizza.
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That's good.
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Yeah, that's it.
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Either that or so it's either that or they're smokers.
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Yeah, they like pizza.
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Firestar's a little scissors.
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Ha ha.
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OK.
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Anything else? What else? Something.
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Yeah, that's a barcode.
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Yeah, I think it's a tag.
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I think it's a price tag.
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Yeah.
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Again, you get you you want to observe closer, right? Because you're not sure.
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What else? Yeah, that's a good one.
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I thought about that when I pulled this up.
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The marker doesn't have a cap, which again, now we sort of move into a little bit of didactic reasoning.
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Right.
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And that is that it probably is dried out.
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OK, what else? More like the light on the band.
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What is it? I said you could light the light bulb with paper clips in there.
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OK.
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Somebody's going to start a fire.
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But there's enough stuff here to start a fire.
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Absolutely.
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It's an old drawer because it has film.
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What camera uses film anymore? Not very many.
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And what is the stamp is a regular stamp or a forever? It's thirty four cent.
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That's old.
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Yeah.
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What's the stamp cost now? Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So that that dates it.
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That's good.
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That's good.
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I don't like the receipt.
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Yeah, there's this receipt and I can't see.
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But yeah, the receipt would date it for us.
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It's for twenty two thousand one.
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That's old.
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So it's 20 years old.
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We now know at least it's it can't be newer than that.
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Because it has a date on it.
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OK, what else? Juicy fruit says bubble gum, but juicy fruits, not bubble gum.
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Exactly.
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Wow.
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Wow.
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That's a good point.
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Juicy fruit is what doesn't say, Julia, but you can tell by the color.
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That's juicy fruit.
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Oh, yeah.
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I mean, the taste of movie, but it's not bubble gum.
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Could be a lack of food.
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All of this is good.
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Anything, anything else? Nobody's going to retire.
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Batteries are rechargeable.
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OK.
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Oh, I didn't notice that.
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That's probably.
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I'm not sure if we were just I can't read it.
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I'm not sure if it's outside the outside.
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Well, that's what I was saying.
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Something tells us there's some stuff got knocked out or fell out.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You use a magnifying glass.
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Oh, yeah.
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So we'll see.
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OK.
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Oh, yeah.
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That's scissors.
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That's scissors.
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Yeah.
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Grocery list.
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Grocery list.
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He looks like he has a PO box, a safe deposit box.
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Not a door key.
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You think this door? Now, this is impossible to know.
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Do you think this door belongs to a man or a woman? That's a man.
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That's a man.
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I was.
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Yeah.
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Screwdriver.
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You know, that's a woman.
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I was going to say, I don't think you can know.
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As I said, I don't think you can know because my wife and I share a junk drawer and it kind of looks just like this.
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What's on the receipt? That's.
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It's a hardware store.
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I was saying, I don't know why you know.
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I don't know.
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I can't.
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A woman would put the cap back in the marker.
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Yeah, but you see how we're going even further and further.
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This is what observation is.
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We go back and we look some more.
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We see things like number one.
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We don't know whether that band-aid is used or not.
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Yes, it's a sticky side down, right? You don't know if it's got the little tabs, so you don't know for sure if that's a used band-aid, which is gross, but it could be.
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And they're very strong.
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You don't know whether or not I think the handle on the door is falling off.
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Here's something you can't probably discern from this.
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And some of you may be too far away to see it, but you can probably discern that these people have children.
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Because it's children's aspirin.
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Yeah.
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So these are little things, right? Little observations.
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Again, you become Sherlock Holmes.
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Could have a heart condition, too.
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That's true.
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Now, see there, Ed, you threw something I thought about because people with heart conditions take baby Tylenol, children's baby aspirin.
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There you go.
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All these things.
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Nothing is unimportant.
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Last time we had the thing with the table.
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Gary Childers was here and he goes, the table's got four legs.
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He didn't say it like that.
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I don't know why I gave him a New York accent.
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But he was just like it was, you know, he was right.
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And I said, nothing is unimportant.
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The table does have four legs.
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So this is just a little exercise.
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This is a fun exercise to do.
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And you can do it anytime.
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Practice your skills of observation.
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Now we did that.
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Let's move on to observing a verse because now that we've done what we've done with a picture, which was practical exercise, now we're going to do what we did.
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But with a Bible verse, and I'll put it up here for you.
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If you want to look in your Bible, if it's easier for you to see in your Bible, it's Galatians chapter one, verse one and two.
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Just like last week, we we did at the end of class, we looked at Romans 12, one and two, and we made some observations.
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We're going to do the same thing.
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But here we're just going to be again.
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We're not interpreting anything.
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And you say, well, what's the difference? We're just what does it say? That's all we're looking for is what does it say? What information can we get out of this text? What it says.
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So it's I'll read it out loud.
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Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia.
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Now, right away, we can't spend all night on this, but I'd like for everyone if you get it for a moment, I'd like you to write down three things about this text that just jump out at you.
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Three observations.
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I won't give you a time, but it shouldn't take you long to come up with three.
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You already got your you're done.
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OK, you can go.
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Yeah, I have to.
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I'm drawing a blank right now.
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You have to remind me walking there.
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Hmm.
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Walking there.
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Oh, yeah, that would have been a good one.
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That would be a good maybe next class since we have video.
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That would be a good one.
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As we're on observation, two weeks, that would be good.
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Yeah.
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How many have three? Ed, give me one of yours.
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Give me the best one.
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Best one.
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That his title apostles got given, not from man, that God gave him the title.
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OK, he's an apostle, not from man, but from God.
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OK, that's it.
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That's one.
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Who else? James.
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Immediately he is voting his own name.
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Thank Paul.
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I'm writing this letter here.
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So I did a self-identifying.
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Paul often begins his letters with self-identification.
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In fact, this is you guys know what pseudepigraphy is.
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Pseudepigraphy were books written in the early church that were written with a false name.
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So like the Gospel of Thomas is considered pseudepigraphy, it's false.
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It wasn't really written by Thomas, but they used his name because they were trying to gain an audience based upon who he was.
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Right.
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So Paul does put his name to identify who he is.
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And some people would put a false name.
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But certainly this is not a false name.
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OK, anyone else? Frank, is there a greeting from Paul on behalf of himself and others? Yeah, there's other people involved.
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It's not just from Paul.
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Very good.
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What do you got? That's from Jesus Christ and God the Father.
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That's right.
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He makes a distinction regarding Christ and God the Father.
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And interestingly enough, we would say Christ is God.
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But oftentimes when Paul makes a distinction, he makes the distinction.
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He calls Christ Lord and the Father God.
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So he makes that distinction.
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OK, he doesn't do that here, but we see that in other places.
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Yes, it was written to the churches.
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No, nobody else mentioned that.
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In fact, that's the one I would have probably mentioned, is that the churches are plural.
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What do we know about Galatia? It's a region.
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That's right.
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It's not it's not one place, but it's a region.
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Acts 13, I think it is, gives us the churches that are in Galatia.
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It's Lystra, Iconium, Derby.
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Those are all churches that are in Galatia.
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They may know by chance where Galatia, the region is.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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Southern Turkey.
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Southern Turkey.
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There was a northern Galatia and there's some people who are.
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I remember preaching through Galatians.
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There are some who argue he was writing to the northern Galatian region.
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But there is no evidence of that.
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All the evidence points to the southern Galatian churches, which are in the book of Acts.
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But yes, it is modern day Turkey.
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OK.
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Anybody else want to throw anything out there? What was your what was your best one? You already gave us one, but give us another one, Nails.
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Immediately give them self-titled apostles, representing who he is.
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Yep.
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He's an apostle.
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That's right.
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Anything else? Now, you remember what I said Dr.
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Sproul would do? I don't remember if I told the story last week or not.
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When you came to his class, he would give his students, his seminary students, he'd give them a passage like this.
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He would say, go, go find 50 things.
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Not 10, not 20, but 50.
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And they had all week to do it.
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And they would gather together in dorms, and they would all share and try to come up with 50 things.
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And they'd all come in the next week.
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They'd hand in their papers.
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Professor, we got 50.
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And he'd go, OK, now go find 50 more.
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And that was how he did it.
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He tells that story.
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It's great.
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And that really is because what we're talking about, we have looked at a lot of surface things, and not that that's bad.
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That's where we start.
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But there are other things that we can begin to draw out of this the more that we learn to observe.
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All right.
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So as far as part one goes, what do we learn? We learn many people skip observation in Bible study.
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They go right to interpretation.
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And observation takes time and effort.
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We are naturally lazy.
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We don't like time and effort, but it's what is required.
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Time and effort.
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The better we are at observation, the more we will draw out of the text.
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So now let's move into part two, 10 strategies for reading.
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Did you all read this in the book? How many of you read this portion of the book? Amen.
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OK, only a couple.
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All right.
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If you did not read this portion of the book, that's OK.
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But I will say, after I've given you these 10 strategies, if you want to learn more about them, it's in the book, because I'm going to give you an overview of the 10.
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I'm going to kind of hit the high points of what each one means.
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But as you go through, you may say, I don't really understand that.
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I need a better clarification.
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Go into the book and it will clarify what each of these 10 are.
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The first step to be good.
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Excuse me.
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The first step to good observation is to become a better reader.
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According to New Testament scholar Douglas Moo, 30% of American adults read at or below a fifth grade level.
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In fact, if you have your textbook, mark page 70.
27:24
Mark page 70.
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I don't know if you want to dog ear it, put a note in it, do whatever.
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But there is a good reading test on page 70 that will help you kind of judge your reading.
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It gives you a portion to read in 90 seconds.
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You read in 90 seconds and then you answer questions about it.
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It doesn't give you a grade, but it gives you sort of an overview of what your reading level is.
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And I was commenting the other day that my wife is a much better reader than I am.
27:59
But I will say this.
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Growing up, one of the ways that I became a better reader was by reading comic books, because I didn't read a lot of novels when I was in high school.
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But I did enjoy reading comic books.
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And it actually did increase my vocabulary and my ability to follow narrative and things like that growing up.
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So whatever you can do to help yourself be a better reader, do it.
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And what's funny is I had a comic book Bible when I was a young man.
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Not that they're the best in the world, but it was something.
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It was something.
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Whatever can help you be a better reader.
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So 10 strategies for reading.
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I'm going to give you these 10.
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You can write them down and I'll define them.
28:42
I didn't put the definition on here because it was too much on the screen.
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You wouldn't be able to probably see it.
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10 strategies for reading.
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We want to do 10 things when we read.
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Number one, we want to read thoughtfully.
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Now, what do we think that means when it says read thoughtfully? That's right.
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That's it.
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Just what you just said, Ms.
29:05
Wilma.
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Actually think about what we are reading.
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One of the things Dr.
29:11
Hendricks says, he says, put your thinking cap on.
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Remember when your teachers used to say that? Put your thinking cap on.
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Do not put your brain in neutral.
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How many of you have read a page or something and realized when you got to the last period on the page, you don't remember anything that it said? Yeah.
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I think all of us would be, if we were honest, would say, yeah, we've all gotten to the bottom of the page and said, well, that was a waste of five minutes because I don't remember anything.
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And that was because at some point our minds simply shut off and we were not reading thoughtfully.
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We were just basically skimming or scanning the words.
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Good reading requires thought.
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It requires thinking about what we are reading.
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Number two, read repeatedly.
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Dr.
30:04
Hendricks in the book mentions this, and I've heard the same thing.
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He said, I was listening to a preacher preach one time.
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And he said, when I read this passage for the hundredth time, this jumped out at me.
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And he goes, I don't think I've ever read any passage a hundred times.
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And it just dawned on him that it took that guy a hundred times reading that passage for it to jump for the information that he had for that, that observation that he made to jump out at him.
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How many of us read repeatedly? Remember what I told you last week? I talked about my own personal Bible reading.
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What do I do is I read the same passages every day for a month.
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Right now I'm reading the first seven chapters of Revelation and I'll do that for 30 days.
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Then on next month I'll do the next seven chapters of Revelation for 30 days.
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Now, after that, I'll probably do eight chapters because there's 22 chapters and I don't want to have just one chapter left.
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So I'll probably do seven, seven and eight to get through the book.
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And you break it up however you want to.
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But after the third or fourth day of reading the same thing, you begin to see the things that you missed.
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And after the 10th or 11th day of reading the same thing, you begin to really, you know what's coming and you begin to outline it in your mind.
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You, you follow a different.
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And then again, after 30 days, you kind of know where everything in that book is those seven chapters.
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And so reading repeatedly is a way to increase your reading, increase your reading ability.
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Number three, read patiently.
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You cannot, I love this.
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You cannot hurry holiness.
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Nice little phrase from our textbook.
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You can't hurry holiness.
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You, you have to pace yourself.
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I am very, I admire people who read the Bible every year.
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And I had, I had a friend.
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He used to be an elder here, Richard Taylor.
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He read the Bible every year since he became a Christian.
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He'd been a Christian for decades.
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And so he had read the Bible once through every year.
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And that was his discipline.
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However, if reading that amount every day is more than you can do and do so well, then don't try to do what you can't do.
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Well, you know what I mean? You can pace yourself.
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If it takes you three years to read through the Bible, do it, but don't feel like you got to keep up with Richard Taylor or whoever else is a better reader than you.
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You should pace yourself and read at the pace that is comfortable.
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And also when you were thinking about the subject of studying a particular passage, you need to read patiently and not, you don't read this.
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I know this sounds cheesy, but it's one of those things.
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Oh, Dr.
33:08
Dr.
33:09
Powers used to say in class, he says, it's not, it's not important that you get through the reading.
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It's more important that the reading gets through you.
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And I just remember, you know, it's, it's more important that it gets through you and that comes with patience.
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Number four, reading selectively.
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Now I want you to put selectively slash investigatively investigated because selectively is a little odd, but if you do go to the book, what he's saying is when you're reading, you're asking yourself questions as you go.
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The questions, what are the five interrogatives? The five questions that you ask when you're doing who, what, where, why, right? Or is it who, who, what, when, why, and where, those are the five questions that all every good journalist knows to ask.
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And they start their, their interviews with those questions, right? Well, when you're sitting down with the text, you're interviewing the text.
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You're asking the, who you're asking the, the, what you're asking the, where the, when and the why.
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So that's reading selectively.
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So slash investigatively, investigatively you're a, you're a journalist.
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You're a, you're, you're looking for the answers.
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You're seeking the answers.
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Number five, and this one, every time we say something should go without saying there's a reason why we say it, you know, nothing ever really goes without saying because there's reasons why we need to say it.
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And we need to read prayerfully.
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Prayer and Bible reading are cooperative disciplines.
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Years ago, something dawned on me.
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I don't remember where I, if I was a pastor yet or not, but I realized that prayer was my opportunity to speak to God.
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But reading God's word was his opportunity to speak to me.
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And that became almost like discourse.
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I could read his word and that was him speaking to me.
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And then I could pray to him.
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And that was me speaking to him.
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And, and that's how we begin to have a conversation with God.
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You know, some people want that want their conversations with God to be some kind of mystical.
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God speaks through something.
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Well, he does speak through something.
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He speaks through his word.
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You know, it's, it's, it's a, it's joke, but it's not a joke.
35:50
You want to hear God's word.
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Read the Bible.
35:53
If you want to hear God speak out loud, read it out loud.
35:57
Cause that's his word.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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When you're.
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Yeah.
36:05
And again, you're, you're asking the Holy spirit to be with you in your study.
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You know, what does first Corinthians tell us? It tells us this is spiritually discern.
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The information in this book does not come to the unregenerate that they can study it and they can, they can pull facts from the Bible, but they will not pull the, the, the spiritual meaning, the truth out of this.
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And even if they pull the right meaning and they won't be able to apply that meaning to themselves.
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So you're asking the spirit of God to be your teacher.
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You know, that's what we're told.
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You know, I, I hold the position of teacher, but I really don't.
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I'm a facilitator of information.
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The Holy spirit is the teacher.
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And if you are going to learn anything, it's because the spirit is going to apply that information.
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I'm just a mouthpiece and hopefully a useful one.
36:55
Right? So prayer reading prayerfully next five, read imaginatively.
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Now I want to throw a word on the board.
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I talked about this in my last sermon, actually two sermons ago.
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And the word is, Oh, I, I knew I was going to do that.
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Sometimes when you're writing on a whiteboard, things just sort of look weird.
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And the word is existentially existentially.
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Now you've probably heard of the philosophy called existentialism.
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That is not what I'm endorsing, but existentially means that when we read the text, we read the text, remembering that the people that we are reading about within the text literally existed at a point in time and in a, in a place in space, they existed.
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Like I mentioned this when I taught on Genesis 22, Genesis 22, I, I, I was, I waited for years to preach on this because I started Genesis back in 2018 and here it is 2021 and I'm only in chapter 21.
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I got to chapter 22 two weeks ago and I was so excited to preach the text because when I read Genesis 22, I, I try as best as I can to put myself in, in my sanctified imagination into the footsteps of Abraham, Abraham, as he is told, take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac onto the mountain that I will show you and sacrifice him there.
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And it says in the very next verse, there was no argument.
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God did not barter for the life of his son or Abraham did not barter for the life of his son like he did for Sodom.
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You remember when God said he was going to destroy Sodom? He said, well, maybe if there's 50 there or 45 or 40 all the way down to 10, but in this moment it didn't say that he bartered for the life of his son, but rather it says he rose early the next morning and he cut the wood and he saddled his donkey and he took his servants and they left and they walked for three days until they arrived at the mountain where the sacrifice was going to take place for three days.
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Abraham watched his son who probably was a young teenager that time run and go back and forth around the donkey and go and pick up a rock and say, look dad at this rock that I found for three days.
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He watched his son take a breath and expel a breath and smile and laugh and hug him and sleep next to him for three days, knowing that on the third day he was going to take his knife and he was going to run it across his throat and kill him on the altar.
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See how that see the difference when you begin to think of it like that.
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That's reading the text existentially trying to think that this is a real person at a real time and a real place, not a computer program or a mythological being or character, but a real man and a real child and a real God and a real sacrifice.
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And how beautiful was that ram when Abraham turned and look and saw his horns caught in the thicket, how beautiful was the substitute that God provided for his son? See, that's reading the text existentially.
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You might say, well, that's a little harder when you read something like, you know, Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
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It's not written like a story.
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That's true.
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But we can still read it, imagining what exactly we are seeing in Paul in this.
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Who is he right? When we learn more about Ephesus, we learn why and we learn more about Corinth.
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You know, I preached to the book of Corinthians, first Corinthians, and I kept imagining what kind of a church would have a man in it who's sleeping with his father's wife and do nothing and say nothing.
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Well, a lot of churches today are just like that.
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You see what I'm saying? That's reading the text existentially.
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It's and Dr.
41:40
Hendricks says imaginatively doesn't mean we add a bunch of things to the text doesn't mean we read into the text things that aren't there, but we can draw out from the text things that are that are there.
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So I hope that was helpful.
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That's the one I think for me is one of the especially in narrative.
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It's one of the most precious to sort of imagine.
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Number six was imaginably number seven is meditatively.
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Might want to write this next to your psalm.
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One verse two says his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night.
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Now, meditation does not mean that you sit with your legs in a lotus position with your fingers crocked together and and humming.
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Oh, that's not the meditation that the Bible describes.
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The Bible describes meditation as thinking deeply upon the text, whereas we tend to think of meditation is shutting your mind off.
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That's the Eastern meditation is to think about nothing to try to focus on nothing.
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The difference is we are focusing on God and his word.
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That's meditatively.
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It's thinking about his word on his word.
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He on his law, he meditates day and night.
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Number eight purposefully purposefully.
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Now, this may seem like it's just an extension of what we've already looked at, but purposefully means that we're looking not only at the who, what's where's and why's, but we're also looking for overall structures in the text.
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We're looking for.
43:29
We're looking at the purpose of what we're writing.
43:32
For instance, if I were to ask you, what are the two parts of Paul's letter to the Romans? What are the two parts of Paul's letter to the Romans? Doctrine and application, which breaks into what chapters? Chapters one through 11 is Paul's doctrine.
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Paul chapters 12 to 16 is Paul's application of that doctrine.
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We can see the same thing in the book of Ephesians.
44:04
The first three chapters are doctrine.
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The second three chapters are his application of that doctrine.
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So when we begin to read purposefully, we begin to see the broader structure.
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It's what we talk about.
44:16
The difference between the microscope and the telescope, right? Rather than looking down and we step back and we look at the broad picture, not even telescope would be like the wide angle lens.
44:27
We want the big picture.
44:29
So reading what's the purpose in this? In fact, a great story that he tells in the book, he said he went to a church and the church said, we want you to preach.
44:40
He was coming as a guest preacher and he says, well, what would you like me to preach on? And they said, we don't care what you preach on.
44:46
Just please don't preach on Ephesians.
44:49
And he said, and now he has to know why not preach on Ephesians.
44:55
And they said, because our pastor has been in Ephesians for three years and we're still in chapter three.
45:03
We are fed up with Ephesians.
45:06
Please preach something else other than Ephesians.
45:08
And Dr.
45:09
Hendrick said, well, that's interesting that your pastor would be in Ephesians for three years and you've only got the chapter three.
45:14
He said, what is Ephesians about? They didn't know.
45:21
They didn't know the purpose of the book.
45:24
If I were to ask you, what's the purpose of Galatians? Do you know the purpose? Not a few verses here and there, not fortune cookies, but what's the purpose? Okay, James, you know, what's the purpose of Galatians? It was Paul's attack against the Gnostic teaching, kind of like his approach to Galatians, but falling right back into what the, was it Gnostics? No, it was, you're on the right track.
45:51
It was Paul's dealing with the Judaizers, those who came into the Galatian churches and tried to encourage them to accept Old Covenant law keeping, keeping the circumcision law particularly.
46:05
So, yeah, it was Paul's addressing false teaching.
46:09
Absolutely.
46:10
And so, knowing the purpose of the book, what does that help you with? Think of that as an observation, but how does that help you interpret? Well, now it helps me interpret every passage because I know the overall purpose of the book.
46:23
So reading purposefully, drawing out what is the purpose.
46:28
Number nine, this is an odd word, but this is the word he used in the book, so I kept it.
46:35
Acquisitively, not inquisitively, but acquisitively, and that word means to acquire, to acquire, to take ownership, to stake claim.
46:47
You don't just read it to say you read it.
46:51
You read it to possess it.
46:55
You read it to keep it, to have it, to remember it, to recall it.
47:01
This goes back to the whole repetition thing.
47:04
You're not just trying to get through it.
47:06
You're trying to get it through reading acquisitively or to acquire, to stake your claim.
47:15
There was a man who was having trouble with his Bible reading.
47:20
This may be in the book.
47:21
I don't remember if this is out of the book or if I heard this somewhere else.
47:23
So if you if you read this in the book, that's where I got it.
47:26
I'd sometimes get in my mind.
47:29
I have so many illustrations that sort of float around.
47:31
I sometimes forget where they came from.
47:33
There was a man who was really having a struggle with studying the Bible.
47:39
Couldn't just couldn't get him.
47:41
Couldn't get into it.
47:42
And his pastor said, OK, here's what I want you to do.
47:45
So I want you to take the book of 2nd Peter.
47:49
It's only a few chapters.
47:51
And I want you to spend the next 30 days reading the book of 2nd Peter every day more than once, but definitely read it at least once every day for the next 30 days.
48:05
And he said, you're going to commit to it.
48:07
Yes, he committed to it.
48:08
OK, you're going to make this book yours.
48:10
Yes.
48:11
And acquisitively, you're going to this is you're going to stake your claim on this book.
48:15
I said, yes.
48:15
So he went home first couple of days.
48:18
Wasn't much to it.
48:19
He did what the pastor asked him to.
48:21
He read through the book, whatever.
48:23
But then as he got to days three, five, seven, as he got through the first week and then beyond, he began to see things in the text that got him excited.
48:32
Now, every time he saw the pastor, he was opening up his Bible.
48:35
Did you see this? Did you see what he talks about in this book? Did you know that that Peter addressed this subject and how important this is and how many people aren't living by this? And and and by day 20, it was all he could talk about.
48:50
And by day 30, it was his.
48:53
He had staked this claim in 2nd Peter, and he began to get excited about studying the Bible because it became part of him.
49:02
So that's acquisitively reading it to stake your claim.
49:07
Lastly, number 10 goes with number eight, because we said purposefully is look for structure.
49:13
But number 10 is looking at the broader structure.
49:16
We say telescopically getting the big picture, not just the big picture of the passage, not just the big picture of the chapter or even the book.
49:25
But how does this book fit into the whole of redemptive history? Remember, I told you the Bible can be summed up in three parts.
49:33
Brother Mike said last night four parts, and we would agree.
49:37
I guess we're just looking at it a little differently.
49:39
I say three parts.
49:41
Paradise, paradise lost, paradise regained.
49:45
That's the three parts of the Bible.
49:47
Paradise, paradise lost.
49:49
That's where we are.
49:50
Paradise regained.
49:51
That's where we're going.
49:52
And I forget the four.
49:53
Brother Mike, I think said it a little different.
49:55
He says creation, fall, redemption, consummation.
49:58
That's it.
49:59
That can also be looked at that way to creation, fall, redemption, consummation.
50:01
That's if you look at it in four parts.
50:03
But where there's the book you're reading, like if you're reading Chronicles, second Chronicles.
50:08
Where does it fit? In the overall narrative of the Bible.
50:15
Understand this.
50:15
You ever heard the phrase the sum is greater than the value of the parts.
50:23
You understand how that works, what that means.
50:26
I had this thought in my head.
50:27
I thought I might share this.
50:28
If I offered to you and I said, brother, I'm going to give you two choices.
50:32
I will either give you all of the parts to a Mustang 5.0.
50:36
Or I'll give you a Mustang 5.0.
50:39
Which would you choose right now? You get to choose.
50:41
You get all the parts down every screw, every gasket.
50:47
You get all the parts.
50:48
We're going to put it in a big shipping container.
50:50
You get all that shipping container and you can take those parts.
50:53
You can sell them.
50:53
You can put them together and do whatever you want.
50:55
Or we have the Mustang 5.0.
50:57
Which one's more valuable? The one that's already together, right? Because the sum is greater than the value of the parts.
51:07
And see, we take the Bible apart and that's good.
51:09
But we have to look at how it fits together as the whole.
51:15
That makes sense.
51:16
10 ways to read better.
51:18
OK, I'm going to share this with you.
51:20
This one might come.
51:21
This is a quote.
51:23
This isn't from the book.
51:24
This is actually from Alistair Begg.
51:26
You guys know Alistair Begg.
51:27
He's a pastor.
51:28
Love Alistair Begg.
51:29
This is a quote he gave when he was speaking to pastors about how to how to prepare for sermons.
51:35
So this might you might think this doesn't really apply, but it really does, because the way you're going to study is the same way we studied to prepare.
51:42
Yeah, I mean, it's really the same thing.
51:43
We're all doing the same thing.
51:44
We're all trying to get the meaning of the text, right? The only difference is you're not having to present yours at the end of the week.
51:51
But here's what he said when he said when he prepares his sermons, this is what he does.
51:55
He says, think yourself empty, read yourself full, write yourself clear.
51:59
That was his three points.
52:00
That's what he meant.
52:01
He says, when I read the text of Scripture, the first he said, I think about it until I can't think anymore.
52:06
That's observation.
52:08
He says, I think myself empty.
52:10
I think myself empty.
52:11
I just think about it and think about it until I till I've till I've come up with all I can think about.
52:16
Then I go to the commentaries and I read myself full.
52:20
That's what read yourself full means, because he thought he he he all the information he's already written it down.
52:25
He's gotten all of all of it out of them.
52:27
Now he's going to fill back up with commentary information and things that he didn't know.
52:32
And then he's going to write himself clear.
52:34
And honestly, this is probably one of the best examples of how to be a good expositor in the world is you begin with observation, you think yourself empty, then you go and read yourself full.
52:44
And how did you think yourself empty? You had to read the text.
52:46
Obviously, thinking yourself empty is another way of saying observe the text until you can't observe anymore and then write yourself clear.
52:56
All right.
52:56
I'm going to recommend we got five minutes left before I break.
53:00
I'm going to recommend a book.
53:03
It's not required.
53:06
The only book required is the book in your syllabus.
53:09
But this is a recommendation at some point in your life.
53:14
I think you should read this book.
53:16
It is called How to Read a Book, which is interesting because it's a book.
53:20
It's a book on how to read a book.
53:23
But it's it's called How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.
53:26
It is considered to be a classic.
53:29
It is not a Christian book.
53:30
It's not a religious book.
53:32
It's just how to read a book.
53:35
And it makes you understand what what is the process of being a better reader.
53:40
And we talked earlier about most people read or 30 percent of people read at a fifth grade level or below.
53:45
This will make you a better reader.
53:47
It will help you be a better reader.
53:49
And one of the strategies that he uses in the book.
53:53
Is called coming to terms.
53:56
Coming to terms with the author.
53:59
Means recognizing the use of terms or language employed by the author.
54:05
If you were a carpenter, there would be certain terms that would be employed that you would need to understand.
54:11
Likewise, that's true of doctors, lawyers, accountants and theologians.
54:15
Like if I were talking to Bobby and I talked about aspiration and a trocar.
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Many of you would probably not know what that is, but we know because we both worked in the funeral business.
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And aspiration is something that's done to the body prior to preparing it for burial.
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And it's not something I want to describe.
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Trust me, but it is.
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But it's something that's a term that most people would never hear or if they heard it, they would think of it in a different context.
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But because Bobby and I have a unique relationship and how we worked in the same field, we have a term that means something to us when we are studying the Bible.
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The goal is to come to terms with how the Bible uses certain words.
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Doctor Hendricks in the book talks about the word believe.
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You read in John, what's his favorite word? Believe I've written these things that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.
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For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to whosoever believes in Him.
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This word believe comes over and over.
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And if you don't understand what he means by believe, you won't understand what the book means.
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So coming to terms with the author, these are not just words, but they're words or phrases which the author employs to communicate his message.
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When I was in high school, I was in the band.
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I was in the band for middle school and high school, seven years in the band.
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And I had to learn musical terms that I would not be able to do what was required of me if I didn't understand those terms.
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Same way with the Bible.
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We have to come to terms with...
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Just this week, I'm going to be preaching.
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This is going to come up later in our lesson, but I'm preaching on Genesis 22, its use in James Chapter 2 because James references Genesis 22 in James 2.
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And I'm going to compare the use of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in James to Abraham's references in Paul.
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See, Paul references different terms or even the terms that he used have different meanings.
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And understanding those terms and how they're used is absolutely essential to a right understanding of the text.
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Dr.
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Hendricks says this.
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He says, you've got to learn to recognize terms and pay close attention to them because they are the basic building blocks with which you construct meaning.
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All right.
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Well, I've jumped ahead of myself because this is the thing about faith and Paul.
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I'm talking about this this Sunday.
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And again, the term faith, when Paul and James use it, it's the same Greek word.
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But James tells us there's two different types of faith.
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He says there's living faith and there's dead faith.
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And he says dead faith can't save you, which means what? Every time Paul uses the word faith that saves, he's talking about living faith because James tells us what? Dead faith cannot save.
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See how the terms matter.
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OK, we're going to take our break and we'll come back.
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It will take 10 minutes and we'll be back.