The Perfect Bible Study Pt. 2

The Goal of a “Perfect” Bible Study Method

We are working on the perfect Bible study. Now, obviously, my Bible study isn't perfect. The only perfect thing about me is my Savior. Okay, so this is a play on words. So, we're going to be using the letter P to form an alliteration for our perfect Bible study method.

Every step in the process will begin with the letter P. We'll go through the steps, summarize the process, and then recommend resources you can use.

Okay.

So, I do want to make a correction. Last, well, a couple of weeks ago now, I made mention of Mitch Mayer, and he does a series called Clarifying the Bible. And what I did was I flipped the Gospel and Acts.

So, the Old Testament is the anticipation of the Messiah. The Gospels are the manifestation of Messiah. Messiah is here. Jesus is here. Acts is the proclamation of Messiah, the proclamation of the good news, and the apostles and disciples going out to all the nations.

The epistles are the explanation of Messiah. This is where Paul dives deep and tells us who Jesus is and how the Old Testament connects and how he fulfills the prophecies. And then the consummation of the ages is in the book of Revelation.

I also used the term Old Covenant regarding David when I should have used Old Testament. Okay, so it's not just the Old Covenant. I was talking about the Old Testament. And I conflated the term. I called it the book of Luke when it really is the book of Acts.

Right?

The Gospel of Luke, I conflated the two terms. So, it sounded like Luke wrote the book of Revelation. John wrote the book of Revelation. I know that. My point in telling you at the end of the book of Acts that Luke didn't include the destruction of the temple is telling.

Because if that temple was destroyed, that would have been a prophecy that Jesus fulfilled in his time. He died before the destruction of the temple. That would have been important. Okay, so again, preliminaries.

This is basically last week's lesson. The things you do before you get to the actual text. You want to recognize the person who wrote it, who heard it, who's in it. The place, where was it written? Where is it taking place?

What place is the letter being mailed to? The position, where is it in the Bible? Where is it in the biblical timeline? Where is it in the genre of literature? These are all very important things. The point in time, when was it written?

When does it take place? That's big for the book of Revelation and all the others. And then profile, what category of literature is being used? What literary devices are being employed by the author? All that happens before we read the text.

Prayer, Perusing, and Pouring Over the Text

So, now on to the text. So, in the preliminaries, what was the first thing we did? What was the first P? Great. Now, what's the first thing we do before we read the text? Pray, yes. Prayer is the most important part of the process.

We are going to invoke the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is known as the paraclete, the one who comes alongside to help us to understand things. So, the first P after we pray, as we get into the text, is the word peruse.

Anybody know what the word peruse means? To look through? Right, skim over. That's what I thought it meant, but it doesn't. It means to read something carefully and thoroughly. So, when you peruse a document, you're going through the whole thing.

You're making note of what's being said. You're highlighting certain things. You're making sure you understand the document thoroughly. It's like a private eye. When we go to the Scriptures, we're going to be like a private eye, looking for clues.

What is the author saying? Where is he directing us? What is he highlighting for us? Perusing is the part of the procedure that requires you to slowly, carefully, and prayerfully read the text, making notes as you go, highlighting important details, and asking questions of the text that you need to explore, all in light of the preliminaries, remembering the author, the audience, and the context, keeping those things in mind as you read.

So, you peruse the text. You go through it carefully and thoroughly. After you peruse the text, you now pour over the text. You continue to go through it. You continue to pray. You continue to ask God to reveal the message to you as you read the text.

So, you peruse, you go through it carefully, and then you pour over it. The next P is to point out and probe. So, as you read, you want to point out certain things. You want to outline the text using headings and summary statements.

We did this, actually, on Wednesday, when we started going through the book of Titus. Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, okay? And we highlighted those things. There was three things in the opening line, and then we outlined them.

You want to highlight, underline, and circle words. Notate key details and words. If you don't know what the word means, look it up. Get a Bible dictionary, and we're going to go through the resources you can use to do that.

You want to identify the flow of the text. Is the author making an argument? Is he just detailing an account? Let's find out what the flow of the text is and what he's pointing us to. You want to identify the pertinent and particular details and the patterns.

A lot of times in the Scriptures, there are patterns that are being laid out for us. In fact, I just learned this the other day as I was reading a book. Matthew, who is a Jew, wrote the book, the Gospel of Matthew, to the Jews.

And do you know that there are five sections in the book of Matthew? And they're designed to match the Pentateuch, the five books of the early Bible, of the original Hebrew Bible. I didn't know that. So we have to look for these patterns, consulting commentaries or otherwise, to see how this is pertinent to us.

We want to know what the passage is pertaining to and pointing us to. We want to know the point of the passage. What particular details inform us of that? Are any words repeated? Any patterns developing?

Another thing you want to do is read multiple translations of the passage. So what I did was, this is a picture of my Bible. And I just wanted to let you know what I do when I go through the Scriptures.

On the top, whenever I see a reference to the Trinity or Jesus being God, I put a little triangle next to it, here, here. And then I go up top and I put verse 30, 33, Jesus is God. So when Jehovah's Witness comes knocking at my door, I'm not flipping, oh, my goodness, where is this?

I'm just looking at the top. I'm looking at the top of my Bible pages. Jesus is God. Boom, boom, point them here, here. Then we hold to the doctrines of grace. So any time I see a verse that points to a specific doctrine of grace that we hold to, I put it in here.

L .A., limited atonement. But you do not believe because you are not my sheep. That's a verse that would help us know limited atonement. Then I look for patterns. Look, listen to the word I emphasize.

My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give them eternal life. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father has given them to me. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

I and the Father are one. My, me, I. Who's that pointing us to? Christ, right? This is about him, not about me, right? Now, there's a couple other words that I actually should have circled. I should have circled I, whereas me over here, I missed that one.

But mark your Bible up and use things that are going to be, that you're going to understand and remember. So you have an underlining system. You could do colors, whatever it is. But make it so that as you're going through this scripture again, you have little notes there, things that you learned in the past that you want to bring forward.

Now, I want to give you a little trick. A lot of times people go away, right, and they go to hotels. And what does the hotel key card look like? It's that little plastic thing. And we get that, we throw it away.

Don't do that. That becomes an excellent bookmark and a way to highlight your text. You keep that in the Bible. You need to underline something instead of like a jagged edge like I would do. You put it there, you underline it.

So now you have a way to underline things in the text and keep a bookmark. A little easy trick, right? Okay. So we're going to ask probing questions. This is the P for probe. Who, what, where, when, why, how.

Like when we're looking up the words in the scriptures, the Gospel of John uses the word world in 14 different ways. So when you come across that word world, you need to know what is the context and what is he meaning.

For God so loved the world, the whole world went after Jesus. Do we think that the whole, like every single inhabitant of the whole entire world came to Jerusalem and went.

After Jesus?

No.

Do not love the world. Well, wait a second. God loves the world. Well, the world, the word world means something different in those contexts and we need to know that. So why does the author use the specific words that he does?

What does the word mean? Again, we're going to need a Hebrew and Greek dictionary. If you don't read Hebrew and Greek, even if you do read Hebrew and Greek, you're going to want to know how it's used in context, especially how it's used elsewhere, especially in the Old Testament.

When you're reading the book of Revelation, if you haven't read the Old Testament, it's not going to make any sense to you. This book was written to the churches, the Jews, right? Who were in the churches in the book of Revelation.

And he heavily references the Old Testament. If you don't know what the phrases in the Old Testament mean, you're going to be lost and you're going to come up with some pretty crazy understandings of that book, which many people do.

Okay. You want to ask, why did the author put things in this order? Is there a specific order to this? And finally, what is the main point of the passage? When you boil it down to the main point, that's what the author's intention is.

You don't want to know what, what you're bringing to the text. You want to know what the author is telling you in the text. And what particular details inform you of that. So now if you would open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 12, 7.

I'm glad everybody looked down. I just put it up on the screen, but I wanted everybody to open their Bibles.

All right.

2 Corinthians 12, 7. So to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

Now, see that word, a thorn in the flesh. You know how many different opinions there are on the thorn in the flesh? Like, oh, this is a sickness. You know, Paul had bad eyes. This must be, you know, God giving him an affliction.

So let me ask you something. If you read this verse, do you have any clues in and of this particular verse that would hint at what it could be?

Anyone? Okay.

How about the term, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan. What's a messenger? Angel, person, right? So some people conclude, well, it's an affliction. Looking at the text, I see a messenger of Satan, but where does that word thorn in the flesh appear in the Old Testament?

Now, here's where I'm gonna need your help. Who wants to read Judges 2 -3? Numbers 33 -55, Micah 4, and 2 Samuel 23 -6. Somebody's gonna have to do this, or I won't be preaching in a little bit. And use the microphones.

Who wants Judges 2 -3? Alex. Alex for 500. Oh, sorry.

Judges, that's a little loud. Judges 2 -3. So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their God shall be a snare to you.

I shall not drive them out. They shall become. What? Thorns in your side. Read the next one. John, you want numbers 33 -55?

Is this on? 33 -55. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land which you live.

So the enemies that you don't drive out, these people will become thorns in the flesh. Who wants to read Micah 7 -4? Someone?

Anyone?

Eliana, go ahead.

7 -4, right?

7 -4.

The best of them is like a briar, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen, your punishment has come. Now their confusion will come.

In a different translation, it says thorn, which is briar. Again, this is pointing us to a person. 2 Samuel 23 -6.

Go ahead.

But worthless men are all like thorns that are thrown away, for they cannot be taken with the hand, but the man who touches them... Oh, that's 7.

That's okay. That's good.

That's good right there. So all four verses tell us that thorns are related to what? People, right? So the thorn in Paul's flesh, a messenger of Satan is probably a person, maybe an enemy of the gospel.

I would say that this rules out affliction or anything else. But we wouldn't know that if we didn't read the Old Testament. So you want to look... If you come across a word you don't recognize in the New Testament, try to find it in the Old Testament.

Try to see if it's a reference to someone else. Something else, I should say.

Panorama, Cross-References, and the Analogy of Faith

Okay.

Panorama.

Who wants to tell me what the word panorama means? A wide view. Excellent. Getting a complete view of an area from in every direction, right? So we want to look backwards.

We want to look forwards.

We want to look upward. What does God think about this? What does this look like from God's perspective? And then we want to look downward. What does this look like from a human perspective? So we need a panorama.

We need a whole view from beginning to end. We need to look at the big picture and see where the passage fits in. And that's why we have Bible timelines back there on your way out. We're going to take those because you're going to have homework, and we're going to come back next week and actually go through a passage.

So we want to see where this particular verse or book of the Bible fits in to the whole scope of redemption from Genesis to the consummation. We want to consult commentaries and systematic theologies.

A lot of times if you're using Bible software, you can plug in the verse and just search the systematic theologies and see where it highlights in certain systematic theologies to see if there's a doctrine that the author is trying to teach us.

You want to compare it with the creeds and the confessions. We recognize that the creeds are not infallible and the confessions are not infallible, but they're correct inasmuch as they reflect the infallible Scripture.

So the creeds come from the early church. We need to make sure that our conclusions are not in opposition to the creeds, but they're in line with the creeds or else we've got to rethink something. We've got to say, wait a second, this may not be right.

Now, the creeds are what you should believe or what you must believe. The confessions are what you should believe. We have a whole bunch of different confessions. The Belgian Confession, Westminster Confession, the 1689, we hold to the 1689.

We think as a church that those best reflect what the Scripture teaches. You want to check cross-references in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Very important. If you get the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge cross-reference and the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, that's an excellent cross-reference.

You plug in the verse and it gives you all the cross-references. It just lists all the cross-references for you and you can look them up. Very important. You want to consult a concordance. A concordance is going to tell you how many times a particular word appears in the Scripture and where else it appears.

So that's going to simplify the process. When we look up the word thorn, we can go to the concordance. Where else is that word thorn used in the Old Testament? And boom, now we get our answer. You want to find it on the Bible timeline chart.

Where exactly does this fit in? Is this before Jesus? Is this after Jesus? Is this after the cross? Is this after the resurrection? All those things are going to matter to the audience and the author when he's writing the letter.

All right, so I want you to open your Bibles again. Actually, don't open your Bible. You can. Mark chapter 4, verses 35 through 41. And this is where Jesus calms a storm, right? So I'm going to put it up here so you don't have to look down at your little phone, right?

Mark 4, 35 through 41. And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling.

But he was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. And they woke him and said, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And he woke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

And he said to them, Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? So now when you're looking at the panorama of Scripture, does that account remind you of any other account in the Scripture?

No.

It does. Anybody want to take a guess at what this might look similar to? Who? Jonah. Jonah.

Right?

Jonah's on a boat. Storm comes. He's asleep in the bottom of the boat. They wake him up. Are you responsible for this? This is a of the Jonah was a foreshadow of what would happen here. So let's take a look.

Jonah was on a ship hit by a great storm. Jonah won four. Peter was on a ship hit by a great storm. Mark 437. The sailors on the ship with Jonah were filled with great fear. The disciples and Peter on the ship were filled with great fear.

You see the parallels? Jonah avoided the presence of the Lord. Peter avoided the presence of the Lord. Luke 5 8. Jonah was on a boat running from God and was thrown off. Peter was on a boat, jumped off and ran to God.

Jonah didn't want the sailors to be saved. Peter was a sailor who needed to be saved. Reluctant Jonah fled from Joppa to avoid ministering to the Gentiles. Reluctant Peter went to Joppa in order to minister to the Gentiles.

He gets the vision, right? The sheet comes down, right? Peter, kill and eat. Lord, no, I haven't touched anything unclean. Jonah is told to arise and go. Peter is told to arise and go. Jonah was restored and given a second chance.

Peter was restored and given a second chance. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. The Gentiles in Nineveh believed in the word and were forgiven. The Gentiles in Caesarea believed in the word and were forgiven.

See, when you look at the panorama of scripture, you're going to start seeing parallels. And you're going to recognize there's nothing in the Old Testament that's written that's not going to have some relationship to a New Testament verse.

The New Testament is an outworking of the manifestation of Christ. And you're going to see these things. So, what was Peter's real name? Simon. Simon. What else? What's his last name? Bar-Jonah. Simon Bar-Jonah.

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. Like, you start making these connections, and you're going to come to the conclusion, God is really smart. Like, he orchestrated this whole thing.

This is not by accident. This is something that's meant to edify us, to show us the counterparts. Okay, so that's what happens when you get the panorama. I'm going to give you another one real quick, and I'm going to have to read this quickly, because we're short on time.

John chapter 8, okay, verses 31 through 38. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

They answered him, We are offspring of Abraham, and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Now, right off the bat, just to let you know, these are Jews. They're offspring of Abraham.

And they're saying, We've never been enslaved to anyone. Have you read the Old Testament? Like, you enslaved to the Egyptians, you were a slave to the Assyrians, you were a slave to the Baboronians, you were a slave to the Persians, you're under Roman occupation.

You are spiritually blind. Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. They don't want it. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and doesn't stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. There's some heavy doctrine there.

But now, this is John chapter 8. What happens at the very next chapter? Jesus heard that they cast him, the blind man, out. This is the man born blind physically. And having found him, Jesus asked him, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

He answered, And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you. He said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. He can't even see the risen Christ.

He cannot even see Jesus. Yet Jesus says he sees him. He's talking about spiritual insight. It's no coincidence that this chapter comes right after the chapter of the Jews who can see him and reject him versus the guy who can't see him physically but accepts him.

This is the work of God. Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see, the blind man, may see, and those who see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, Are we also blind?

Yeah.

Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would have no guilt. In other words, you can see me. You know who I am. But now that you say we see, your guilt remains. This is the call of God opening the eyes of people who cannot see Jesus.

The man was born blind. The Jews who should have known rejected him. There's a pattern. Born able to see, born blind. One rejects him, one accepts him. So when I say check the cross-references in the Old Testament, why do we do that?

Why is that important? Why do we check cross-references?

Yes. Why?

Because Scripture interprets Scripture. This is known as the analogy of faith. Scripture cannot contradict itself. So what we have to do is when we look at the Scriptures, there's going to be Scriptures that are easy to understand and Scriptures that are hard to understand.

You want to interpret the hard ones in light of the easy ones, the ones that are clear, so that you harmonize the Scriptures. You don't butt heads with them. You don't want to point two Scriptures against each other.

This is God's Word. Everything in the Scripture is coherent and consistent. So the difficult Scriptures need to be harmonized with the real clear and easy Scriptures. It's based on the analogy of faith because Scripture interprets Scripture.

Purpose, Polemics, and Prophecy

The purpose.

We want to find out what is the author's main point or intention in the passage. So we look at the flow of the passage and determine its purpose. What is the author's point? What is the author's purpose?

What is the author's pathos? In other words, the direction he's going. What is he saying and what is happening? Like we just read John chapter 8 and 9. What is the author saying? John is showing us, he's talking about Israelites, bloodlines, children of Abraham who reject the Messiah, even though they should have known who he was, versus the man born blind, who they're saying, oh, he must have sinned in order to be born blind.

He was born blind for the glory of God because God is the one who reveals himself to whomever he will. What is he saying? What is the author saying? And what is happening? Why is the author writing this?

These are questions that you want to ask. Now, listen, you may not be able to answer every single question as you go through this process, but at least have the question in mind. Because as you're reading other scriptures, you may ask the same question.

It might pop out to you, oh, yeah, this is why. And when you recognize scripture, interpret scripture, now you can take the why from this passage, bring it here and say, okay, this is why God is doing this.

Is the passage descriptive or prescriptive? It's a big difference. Again, last week we went through the Book of Acts when the 120 in the upper room received the Holy Spirit. Now, some people look at that and say that's prescriptive.

You need to do that. Whereas we look at the Book of Acts and say that's a narrative, not meant to be normative. That's descriptive, not prescriptive. Because it's funny, people look at the account and say that's prescriptive, but then their experience doesn't line up exactly the way it happened in the Book of Acts.

Did you have real tongues of flame above your head? Oh, no, no, no. You didn't need that. Oh, we're not picking and choosing. So you want to recognize, is this descriptive or prescriptive? Is the text prescribing something to do or describe something that was done already?

Position. Is there a theological position being taught? We want to recognize that. Like when Jesus goes through John chapter 6, he's talking about man's deadness of sin and the fact that no one is going to come to Jesus except God the Father draw them to Jesus.

That's pointing to man's inability. It's crystal clear. It's amazing how many people just reject that wholesale.

No, no, no, no.

Man has to choose. Okay, you can't come unless the Father draws you. And that word draw, if you look that up, is the same word used in the Book of Acts when they talk about Paul being dragged to prison.

The word draw and dragged is the same word. A little bit different context, but the meaning is Paul was being pulled into prison, not by his own will. We are pulled to Jesus. Our hearts are inclined in the opposite direction.

We are running the other way, and God's grabbing us and bringing us back. Polemic. Is there a position being challenged or opposed? I'm going to show you an example of that in a minute. Is there a theological position that we know of, and is there opposition from someone else in the Scriptures?

And then finally, prophetic. Does the passage cite a prophecy, or is it the result of a prophecy? We can see that in the beginning of the Book of Matthew. They shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us.

That's a prophecy. We can see it in Luke and Mark. Speaking of John the Baptist, he will make a way for the Lord. Again, that's out of Isaiah, pointing us to Jesus as being the Lord. Okay, Galatians. Here's the polemic.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, Cephas is Peter, I opposed him to his face. Think about this. Paul is opposing the pope of the church in front of everyone. Oh, yeah, it doesn't say pope. I'm sorry. Paul is opposing Peter to his face because he stood condemned.

For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. In other words, he was afraid of the Jews who believed, you're not allowed to have table fellowship with the Gentiles.

Again, this is part of the context. This is going to help you understand this. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, this is a gospel issue, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Right?

He's opposing the Jews because they were legalists. What does he say? This is his position. This is Paul's position now. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. He's opposing the Judaizers who are saying, oh, no, no, no, no.

You need to get circumcised. You need to follow the law, and then you can come to know Jesus. Paul's saying, no, that's not in line with the truth of the gospel. The gospel is Jesus purchased people from every tribe, every tongue, every people, every language.

This is all of humanity. Last I checked, Adam wasn't a Jew. Neither was Abraham. Abraham's grandson would be called Israel. That's the birth of Israel. Abraham was not Jewish. He was a descendant of Eber.

So he was a Hebrew, but he was not a Jew. So understanding the polemic and the opposition to that helps clarify for us what the point of the scripture is. So the book of Kings versus Chronicles. They very much read like the same book.

You start reading it, and it's like, this is just a repeat. Like, what's going on? I have to read all these genealogies again? I didn't understand them the first time. Now they wanted me to read them again?