19 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Analytical Bible Studies

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of the Biblical Harmonetics. We're glad to have you with us again. This is Lesson 19. We have one more class in this school after this class, a very important lesson on how prayer is involved in your Bible study.

People think that those don't kind of go along. Yeah, they do. But we are in Lesson 19 where we have now finished, if you remember, if you're good students and you've been starting with us from the beginning, we have been going through how the different tools that you have that will help in your Bible study.

We have gone through the actual method of Bible study and looking at how we're going to go through the actual process of interpretation. We've looked at then taking that and then how we apply that to ourselves and others in the teaching or in the learning steps.

And then what we've done is we have now started into the last section, which is looking at different types of Bible study, different ways to dig into the Scriptures. Granted, we want to really try to go verse by verse when we can because that helps in giving us the context.

But we've looked at biographical studies. Maybe you want to study the life of an individual person. That is sometimes good to do. Maybe that's something of importance for you. Sometimes it's a topical type of study.

And we looked at that last two classes where we looked at these different types of ways to study. And now what we're going to do is if you have your syllabus, you can take that out. We're on page 31. You can get a syllabus if you want one at the website down there below and you can pick one up and enroll in the Academy.

You'll get the syllabus amongst other things. But we're going to discuss the last of these, which is the analytical Bible study. An analytical Bible study. And we're going to go through this and what I hope to do in this is actually kind of step by step walk you through some of the process of what I actually do when I prepare a sermon.

Not the full process because the full process is about 30 hours of work. So we'll just kind of zip through it really fast. But we'll give you an idea of some of the things that some may skip because they think it's tedious or they may not see value to it and yet it becomes a very important part to the interpretation process.

The Analytical Method of Bible Study

All right, so let's start with the analytical Bible study. Let's describe this somewhat and see how this is. Now an analytical Bible study, the analytical method of Bible study is when you take a whole apart into smaller sections for thorough analyzing.

So what you do with that is you end up taking, and this is where it's really good to go verse by verse, is if you're taking this and you're taking a whole book and you're breaking that book down by chapter by chapter by chapter and then verse by verse by verse.

That's really where this is going to come in the most helpful. And so this is going to be something that becomes very important in doing a verse by verse study, which is really one of the better things to do.

What I find often, I had someone this past week that I work with, a discipling, he preached a sermon and the sermon was really good. I mean, the content was very biblical. It was, there was nothing he said that was wrong biblically.

The problem was it had nothing to do with the verse that he was discussing. You see, he was doing a message on peace and really it would have been a great message to put if you preached out of Philippians 4 where it says there's a peace that passes all understanding.

It would have been great for that because everything he talked about really was rooted from more in that mindset of peace and not in what we have in the beatitudes of a peacemaker. And we all have probably done that at some time.

We all have to be aware we could be guilty of that where we see a word in the English, we think we understand its meaning and we start building something up and totally miss the point. See, a peacemaker is someone who is somebody, the word peacemaker actually appears only once in the entire New Testament in the Greek.

So we end up having to look at other Greek writings of the time to get a better understanding of that meaning. And what we see the word means is a peacemaker was somebody who would take two people that have a disagreement and bring reconciliation to them.

And so that's what a peacemaker is. It's not having an inner peace, it's bringing two people to reconciliation that have a dispute. In the backdrop of the Pharisaical religion, of Pharisaical Judaism, that becomes more of an issue.

So what we end up with is a case where we see that the Pharisaical religion in that there is a contrast there. And we could be guilty of taking a word that we see and jumping out and doing a topical study which is really what sometimes people do, they kind of springboard from a part of a passage and they do more of a topical study, not an analytical study.

And the advantage of going verse by verse is that it helps us to remember the context, makes that part of the process that much easier because we start at the beginning of a book, and we work our way through the study of a book, we end up in a situation where we know the context because we've been studying it as we go, okay?

Where if you come to a verse and you're taking a passage and it's kind of out of the middle, there's other passages there, what ends up happening is we end up looking at that and we see this one word maybe or one phrase and kind of jump off in an area where that passage doesn't speak of it because we lost the context.

That's why it's important to, really important to kind of go verse by verse if you can. And if you're doing a topical or biographical study, it's important to make sure that you dig into the context before and after to make sure you understand what really is being discussed.

That's why topical and biographical types of study are more difficult because it requires more work. Not actually that they're more difficult, it just requires more work because you have a lot more passages to deal with and you've got to do all the work of interpretation for them.

So, it must be remembered that this type of Bible study, an analytical Bible study, is built on principles of inductive study. Using the kind of study, using this kind of study in like the epistles, those instructional books are very effective.

So we do something like this, we're going to first, just like we did in the previous type of ones, we looked at grabbing the text. Now before we started with grabbing the topic or the person, and then we looked at the text, but in this case we just have the text that we're going to deal with.

So we don't need to dig into trying to find out the topic or the biographical person we want to study. We're actually studying the text. So the first thing to do is you want to choose a text. We're going to look at an example that I have from actual notes from a sermon that I worked on in the book of James.

But the key with the analytical method of Bible study is to study to avoid tackling too many passages at once. In other words, what we want to do is we want to make sure that we are looking at grabbing a smaller section because we're going to be digging in deeper here.

When you do a biographical study or a topical study, you may not want to go into the depth of looking into the smaller details. For example, I just mentioned that when I look at the message I was just mentioning earlier out of the Beatitudes.

When I look at that, what did I do in that study when I prepared in looking at that? Well, I took a look at the individual words. I broke it down, which is the second thing that we do. So the first thing we do is we choose the text.

The second thing, letter B in your syllabus, is break down the passage with a block diagram. We're going to look at that. Then we break it down. We're going to look at the words and things like that. What we end up having when we do that is we end up with a case where we see that sometimes things become clear, as in the example I gave earlier.

This is really, if you're going to do a topical study or you're going to do a biographical study, you really should do this method of an analytical study with each passage you have to deal with, which is what makes it so much more difficult.

So this is going to be, we're going to take a smaller section. We want to break down the passage into blocks. Now, what that means is this. We want to keep the main thought or the clauses to the left in kind of a vertical chart.

And then we want to indent the subordinate clauses. I know, I know, I know. You're going, subordinate clauses, that's English, like I hated English grammar. You know? I know. But it's going to help in your study.

And so what we have is we have a case where this understanding even the English language will help. Now, if you can dig into the Greek, great. And if you go back to the previous lesson where we talked about software, I showed you that in Lagos they have a tool that already does it, a book that you could purchase, a book that already shows you in the Greek what the main clauses are and the subordinate clauses.

It's all broken down for you. So you could kind of cheat. Ooh, are we allowed to cheat in class? I don't know. But so what you can do there is you can look at that and see that that might help. But if you understand even in the English, you're going to find a real great value in doing this in the English.

You're going to see some things that pop out. We've kind of looked at this in the past a little bit, but because it's difficult sometimes to grasp, this is why we're kind of covering it again, because I knew we'd hit it at this point, but I want to kind of cursory view in an earlier lesson so that maybe this lesson you pick this up a little better.

So first, keep the main thoughts to the left, indent the subordinate clauses. Number three, note the punctuation in the English Bibles. Now, remembering that the punctuation was not inspired by God, it's not in the original texts, so we're not going to see that in the original Greek, which we don't have.

But the punctuation is helpful though to English readers to know where some of the translators have seen good breaking points. They're mostly accurate, engaged to determine the main point and the sub points, but sometimes you'll see where chapter breaks aren't in the best spot.

Sometimes some of the translations will have something like Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 -14. That's actually one run-on sentence, and what you end up with is the fact that sometimes some Bible translators will put some punctuation in there and make it several sentences, and it's really one run-on sentence, kind of.

And so, you know, punctuation can be helpful, but don't treat it as if it's authoritative, okay? So look at that as a guide, all right? The fourth thing is notice subordinate words that explain nouns and verbs.

In other words, some examples for nouns that are subordinate. If you have who, whom, which, things like that, they're subordinate to the noun. You might have some verbs that are subordinate, that help to point out the subordinates.

Things like that, so that, because, words that end in ing. Those are words that are supporting or subordinate to the verb. So from here, the process of investigation is similar to what we've already seen before, but it's detailed at a much deeper level.

This is where we're really, if you're preparing a sermon, or you're preparing to teach, this is really where you should be going. You should be breaking it down to this point. And so, I want to take a little bit of time, get an example of what I did in looking through the book of James, all right?

So let's take a look. This is actually a block diagram here. This is what a block diagram looks like. This was the first 12 verses of James chapter 3 that I have put here. Now this is from my actual notes, and you notice it says block diagram right up top.

And the reason that is, is that I put in my notes so that I never forget that I need to do this. So I have in my, I have an actual, before we go to that, let's switch back to me, thanks. So what I have in my, I have a template in Microsoft Word that I have that's called Bible Study Template, okay?

And it has certain sections. And the sections are there specifically so I don't miss any steps. So what I do is I will look at first the block diagramming, which you saw up there. That was the first thing.

And it will be empty in my template. And so, what ends up happening is I'll go through and you're going to see some of the other sections I have, questions, I have a section that's called pretext and posttext so that I make sure I get the context of the verses before and the verses after.

I have a section for my questions that I write down. I have a section for my outline. I have a section for key words that I want to make sure I look up. If I'm studying through and I look at a, take a passage and I see the word showing up many times, I may want to look at that and take a look at that word itself.

So let's take a look now at the block diagram, okay? Here we go. And so you see here, this is what I do. If you look in this example, I have here my, and what you see there in brackets is, it says James.

Now what I've done here is, what I tend to do is I actually copy and paste James 3, and this will probably be the New King James Bible translation because that's what I was preaching at the time that I did this work.

So I probably would have copied that one, but I'll copy the actual text that I'm studying. So the first 12 verses will actually show up right there. I'll paste them right into the block diagram section.

And then what I do is I start reading through this, looking for prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, because a prepositional phrase is a subordinate clause. I'll look for words that are subordinate, and I'm going to indent them.

What I'll also do for clarity is I'll put something where if it says my, I want to remember who the my is, because as you look here, I'm in James chapter 3. That means I'm already two chapters into the book.

This is now the third chapter. I may not remember who the my is. So I'm going to put my, and in brackets, I'm going to say who that's speaking of, James. Brethren, well, I put in brackets there the scattered Jewish believers.

Where do I get that from? Well, James chapter 1 and verse 1, James tells us that he's the writer, he's the author writing to the scattered brethren that are scattered abroad. Okay, he was the pastor in Jerusalem.

He's writing to the Jewish believers that have gone into the, that basically because of persecution had scattered out. And so you'll see that when it says the brethren, I want to mention who they're speaking of.

So my brethren, let not many of you. Now notice the of you is indented. Why is that indented? The of you is indented because of is a preposition. So the prepositional phrase that is there of you, I indented.

And then after you, I put who it's speaking of. So my brethren, let not many become teachers, knowing that we, now who's the we speak to? Well, it speaks to teachers. It's not James and whoever he's writing with.

It's he's speaking to the teachers. So you see how just looking at the context, this helps us. So we teachers shall receive a stricter judgment. For we, and that actually, the for we actually should have been indented because for is a prepositional phrase.

For we, the teachers, so that should have been indented, all stumble in many ways. So the idea of the stumbling has to go back to the becoming a teacher and having the stricter judgment. OK, so we would want to actually, that was a prime mistake on my part that should have been indented.

And so what it's this is going to help us do is to see the main point that James is saying here is to not let many become teachers. And then he's going to support it with knowing because you see the knowing is an N-I-G ending in an I-N-G, which means that's supporting the verb to become.

So that those two should have been indented further. And so what that says is that it's the emphasis is on let not many of you become teachers. The reasons he's giving is knowing that there's a stricter judgment and knowing that we all stumble.

And as a teacher, we stumble a lot. I mean, the more you teach, the more your words you're going to use and the more words you're going to use. The more we're going to end up in a situation where we have things that we're going to say that are inaccurate or wrong.

Now, as a teacher, we do this all the time. I've been in a position where I've said things and I listened to a sermon maybe afterwards. And I'm like, did I really say that? Like, I mean, I don't even recognize him.

I said that I remember once I was preaching in a church and one of the chairman, one of the board of directors for Striving for Eternity was in that church that day. And I remember saying something. I don't remember what it was now, but I said something and just happened to look at him.

He's very theologically minded. And so when I said something, I think I just I misspoke. I mixed up a word or two or said something. And what I said was actually wrong. Most people didn't pick up on that.

But I immediately looked at, I happened to see his face and he had a frown on his face. And I immediately thought back to what did I just say? And I realized what I said and went, oh, I misspoke. I said something in a different way that could have had a different meaning if someone that understood the theology.

And so I corrected it right away. But I don't always correct it. There was one time in my church when I was preaching where, and I love my dear congregation, they're so trusting of their pastor. Because I do my own translation, I would sometimes translate words different than the New King James or English Standard Version, whatever I was preaching out of.

And I'd give a reason why I would translate a word differently because I thought there was better reason for it. But there was one time where for some reason, I don't know why, but in the English when reading through the words in the text, I actually replaced one word with another word three different times throughout the sermon.

I actually re-listened to the message to hear. I did it three times, the same word. I replaced it with the same word. So people in the congregation were actually looking up to find out, they're looking, they're pulling out their MacArthur Study Bible, their ESV Study Bible, and they're trying to look up to see if there's any notes there.

Why is he replacing this word with that word? There must be a reason. He's not giving us the reason. They couldn't figure it out. And I had one person come up and said to me, why do you replace this word with that word?

I'm like, I did. And the second person said it, and the third person. And they assumed there must have been a reason. The following week, I had to get up and explain to the congregation, the reason I replaced one word with another is because, well, I'm a dope.

I mean, I just, I totally didn't realize that I had done that. But the more often that you speak, the more you're going to do that. Okay, enough for that side bar. Let's get back to the block diagramming.

All right. So you see how we say the if anyone and the anyone is anyone. So I put that in brackets, does not stumble. Okay. Now, what he's getting into now is really this idea of the stumbling. And so what you're seeing now is that, and this probably should have been indented to the stumbling above, because he's really going to get into kind of a new thing here where the main section here is going to be on the tongue.

And so he's going to speak of the speaking process. Now, what's the context of this? The context is in being a teacher. Now, the things he teaches in James 3 about the use of our tongue is useful for everyone, but it's specifically in the context here of for teachers.

So if anyone, if anyone does not stumble, in word is indented because that is supporting the stumble. So how do we stumble? We stumble in a word. He is a perfect man. Okay. Able to bride the whole body.

Indeed, we. Now, who's the we? Well, it's generally anyone. Okay. We put horses in, we put bits in horses mouths. So we put bits. Well, those bits are for the horses. So that's subordinate. So you see, I'm going through this to show you kind of how this breaks down.

But if you notice there at verse three, you see it talks about bits and everything else under this. And this is where sometimes the verses help out because everything under that is really supporting the first part of verse three.

If you look at verse four, we have look also at ships. And now everything under that, if we go to the next page, is supporting of the ship. Okay. Then we go to verse five and it talks about the tongue.

Okay. In verse six, you'll see it talks about the fire of a tongue. All right. So you're seeing here just the main points are going to be to the left and they're going to stick out. Let's go to the next page just so you can see the last of the verses.

So you see all 12 verses that I covered here in this passage. And what you see is, but no man contained the tongue. Now, that everything else after verse 9, 10, 11, 12 is supporting that one part. Okay.

Because he's now going to describe the tongue. It's an unruly evil. With it, we bless, you know, our God and father. With it, we curse men. Out of the same mouth proceeds blessings and cursings. And I will do that with a conjunction and or but.

I'll put them, I'll not indent them, but put them on a new line just so that they kind of stand out so I could see them. So what you end up seeing here is how these, this helps in the outline. So let's next go.

The next thing you do after you have your block diagram is to build your outline. Remember, these are, these are really the steps that we did that we taught earlier. And so this is, should be somewhat repetitive, but I'm, I'm digging a little deeper into this so we can go a little deeper.

That's what we want to do at this point. An analytical Bible study is to really dig into the individual words, into the real, the heartbeat of the meaning. You really want to get deep into the study in this one.

Okay. So, um, the, uh, let's look at the outline. So next section after my block diagram in my template is going to be an outline. And so I don't know if you can read this outline so well. This is my outline for this text.

Um, and so in here we have, uh, from, from my outline that I have. Um, you see that I say, uh, do, do not seek to be a teacher. Uh, that is one of the, the first points that we see there, it talks about not seeking to be a teacher.

Now, why, why could that be important? Well, in this passage is that could be important because well, many seek to be a teacher. I mean, a lot of people seem to want to have the limelight. They want to be seen by, you know, by other people and, and have people look up to them as a teacher.

And, but here, James gives a warning against that for good reason. I mean, elsewhere, you know, it's going to mention that there's accountability with being a teacher. If you are a teacher, there's an accountability that comes with that, that you have to be aware of.

You're accountable to God for what you teach. That's why it's so important that we make sure we're right in the interpretation, that we spend the time to do a right interpretation, because this is really important.

We're going to be, if we're teaching, we're going to be accountable to God for what we have taught. God will judge us for every idle word. And when you're a teacher, you have a lot more words that you use.

So we want to be careful with that. All right. So let's get back to the outline. So we see here that all people stumble in speech. I didn't, I don't put, I didn't put the full outline here. So, you know, this is just going to be part of the outline.

Just to give you an idea. And that way you can kind of see, you know, just how I do it. But you're going to see all people stumble in speech. So we shouldn't seek to be a teacher, that all people stumble in speech.

Then you'll see that I have large things controlling small things. Okay. And then some examples of that. What are the examples? Horses and bits, ships and rudders. Another large to small is the tongue is a small thing.

So the idea is he, we see in this text is he talks about some things, large things being controlled by something small. He gives some examples of something small that controls something big, and then mentions that the tongue is a small thing.

He then talks about small things that can cause disasters that cannot be controlled. Example of kindling in a forest fire. And then he talks about a tongue doing great disaster. Okay. Then letter C in this outline, we see great things that can be controlled.

Example of, of man controlling all kinds of animals. But one thing he can't control is his tongue. We see opposite things that cannot come from the same source. And so you see there the blessings and cursings are from the same mouth.

You see some examples of fresh water and bitter from the same source or figs and olives from the same source or salt and fresh water from the same source. So what you see in there is you end up noticing, just from there, I hope from doing the block diagramming and just that outline, you're starting to see some things about the way we speak and the outline and the methodology and the thinking that James has and how he's writing this, I hope that that helps us to understand what he's saying and dig deeper into that.

Let me just to wrap up some of this, I want to show you some of the questions. I mean, I had more in my study in my notes, but I want us to look at just some questions that I ended up having and you'll see I number them, my questions.

Now this was grabbed in the middle of study. So the importance of that is that not all of my questions are answered here, but what I'll do is I will write questions as I study, as I go through this, I'm going to be taking notes and as I take notes, I write down questions that I end up having as I go.

I'm not sure how clear this may be for you, but I'm going to take the questions and then I'm going to seek to answer them. Okay. You see a number 11 is answered, number five, number four, you know, what is kindling?

So I mentioned, you know, what is kindling? Now you might say, well, gee, I know what kindling is. Well, I don't want to take for granted that I know what kindling is. I mean, I think I'm pretty sure I know what it means, but I'm going to want to look at that word and make sure it has the same meaning in the Greek that I'm thinking of kindling as it's translated to in English.

Maybe I might find something interesting about that word. And so I'm going to do that. I'm going to put the questions into, uh, basically into the, uh, my notes and then look to answer them. You know, one reason why I do that, and this is very important.

If you're going to study for the purpose of teaching, okay. If you're studying for the purpose of teaching, then remember that you may have questions that you answer because you continue to study and you're studying But you may have questions that other people may have the same questions and you may take for granted that because you've studied it out and you know what it means, you may take for granted what someone else is saying or thinking, I should say.

So, you know, why would I ask the question of what is kindling? Maybe not everyone was a boy scout or a pyromaniac, right? Maybe not everybody knows what kindling is. So I'm going to actually ask questions that may be asked from people, remembering that my audience as a, as a pastor is maybe a wider range than your audience.

I'm teaching very many different age levels. I end up having people in the congregation as young as seven and eight years old. And so they may not understand what kindling is. Now, how long does it take to explain what kindling is in a sermon?

Not very long at all. It doesn't take long to say kindling is that those little tiny sticks that you have that you start a fire with. It's something that burns very quickly. It doesn't burn for long. And that's what, you know, kindling would be.

Someone's asking or saying that they bet that I was a pyromaniac. Uh, I know what kindling is because yes, well, I did try to burn my house down twice. Well, I didn't try to burn the house down. It's just kind of, I was throwing matches in the garbage can just to see, and then covering up the garbage can and noticing the flame went out.

And I just kept doing that to see how long the candle would burn until putting the lid on it, wouldn't put it out. And then all of a sudden I discovered that it wasn't going out. Okay. I was five years old, so cut me some slack.

Okay. I was five years old. All right. I was throwing the matches in and then I kind of opened the lid and realized it's still burning. Then I found, figured out a different problem. It's six in the morning on a Saturday morning.

I better run and wake my mother and tell her there's a fire in the garbage can, which is exactly what I did. And she put it out quickly, not the way you want to wake up first thing in the morning, but she put the fire out and asked me how it happened.

Everyone else in the house is sleeping except for my dad who went off to work. How did the fire start in the garbage can? I don't know. I just came down and found it that way. Mom, I really thought she'd believe that.

Yeah. What did I know? And my kids wonder why, you know, they, they do things and it's like, I already know these things. I've done all the stupid things. So yes, that was me. Um, uh, so when we take something like kindling, we want to just a quick explanation.

You want to put those questions into your notes. Why? Because you're going to forget probably to explain what kindling is if you don't have it in there. All right. I put those into my questions section so that when I'm preparing my actual message, I actually go through and look to see, did I answer all the questions that I had in the message in studying for the message?

Now, I don't always answer all of them because I ask lots of questions, but there's a lot of the questions I go back and go, you know, I forgot to put that in. I should explain that here. And sometimes it doesn't take a long time to explain.

I mean, a horse and a bit in a horse's mouth. A lot of people haven't grown up around horses. I mean, if I'm preaching this message in New York city with people who've never left the city, they probably have never been on a horse, you know?

Okay. Maybe they, in Times Square, they saw the horses that people ride, um, around the town, you know, for the carriage rides. Okay. Maybe then, but you know, a lot of times some people have never seen a horse.

They don't know what a bit is. Maybe they don't know the importance of a rudder on a ship. I mean, I grew up on a, on a, on a ship. So I, I understand, you know, how a rudder works and the, the, how it steers a boat and it's, it's really small.

I've seen, you know, very, very large vessels out of water and seen the, the size of the rudder. So I have a visual understanding of a rudder on a ship or a bit in a horse's mouth, but not everyone might have that.

And so it's good to put every question you could possibly think into that section, no matter how simple you may think it is. And you want to do that so that you have a really good grasp of everything and try to wrap everything up when you get to the end of, of working on the message itself.

Okay. So that's actually one of the most valuable sections that I find in, in the study, because I'll put things in there that, and the, and the words, I have a section on words where I will put the different key words that I need to translate and dig into, and a lot of times that works its way into the message of me explaining the idea of, of maybe a word.

Now I may not go into, oh, this is the Greek. If I have a bunch of seminary students in the congregation, I'll explain the Greek word or the Hebrew word. You know, it's explain the participles, things like that, break down the tense and voice, the mood if necessary.

But a lot of times I don't need to do that for most people in congregations. And so I won't do it. I mean, why bother going over their head? What, to show that I'm really, that I know these things? No, there's no sense in that.

And so what I want to do is I want to look to do that in such a way where we are kind of helping to see this come together by digging deep into a passage. Okay. And so as we wrap up in the syllabus, at least what we have in the syllabus, you know, when we look at these different kinds of, of Bible studies that we looked at the biographical, we looked at topical and now analytical, we can spend a lifetime studying the Bible and not exhaust the depths and the riches.

And hopefully the study, this study, these classes that we've gone through will set a foundation for proper interpretation of the word of God to understand the scriptures rightly, because this is a major problem.

Just dealing with people on Facebook, it's amazing how many people get out there on Facebook and just will say, this is what something means. And they really don't have the foggiest idea. They haven't looked at it.