The Whole Process of Bible Study

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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August 1, 2019

00:00: So we are going to be looking at these verses, the ones that say passages for study.
00:06: We're going to be examining them with the same process that we have started since we began this course, which is the process of observation, interpretation, and then application.
00:20: We're going to do that until right about 725.
00:26: At that point, we're going to take a break, and we're going to do a class photo.
00:30: Hopefully you wore your shirt tonight.
00:33: You got your shirts when you got here tonight, and you brought yours with you because we wanted to look nice for our class photo.
00:39: After the class photo, if you do not intend to do a paper and receive credit for this course, you will be dismissed.
00:49: However, if you would like to stay, and you don't have to leave if you'd like to stay, the last 20 minutes or so, we're going to be going over the requirements for the final, and I'm going to be having everyone write down what text they're going to be using so that I know what to expect.
01:08: The final is writing an exposition of a text, and so you're going to choose one from this, or I'm going to choose it for you if you want me to, and we're going to put it down on the paper.
01:18: So that's what we're going to do in the last 20 minutes of tonight.
01:22: Everybody good on what to expect? All right, how many of you did your homework? Great.
01:29: Well, we're going to start with that.
01:30: Pull out your homework.
01:31: I'm going to pull up Romans 12, and we're going to see here Romans 12, verses 1 and 2.
01:40: Now, again, I'm trying to get as much words on the screen as I can.
01:44: I think that you all should be able to read that.
01:47: Is that correct? Is that good? Good.
01:51: I can go up bigger.
01:52: We can make it a little larger.
01:54: Is that better? OK, all right.
01:58: I'm looking at you, Kelly.
01:58: You're the furthest away, but you don't have glasses, so I'm hoping.
02:04: All right, so let's look only at verse 1, since that's all we can fit on the screen.
02:10: You had your 10 previous observations, and your homework was to provide 20 additional observations, which means you were required to dig a little deeper for your observations.
02:25: 10 observations could be simple things, such as the verbs in the sentence and things like that.
02:33: But when I say, give me 20 more, which is a total of 30, that means you had to dig a little deeper.
02:40: So I would like to know what observations that were new and maybe ones that you really had to look to see that you were able to come up with.
02:50: Maybe one or two of you could share something unique that you felt was an observation that you had not seen before really looking at the text.
02:59: Who would like to go first? All right, brother, go right ahead.
03:10: OK.
03:25: That's very good, seeing the comparison from one verse to the next verse and how one is focused on the body and one is focused on the mind.
03:32: I'm only repeating you to make sure the recording here.
03:34: That's real good.
03:36: OK, so there's a number two is outworking number one.
03:41: Very good.
03:43: Anyone else have an observation they'd like to share? Is it only on the first one? No, well, if it's something on verse two, that's fine.
03:51: What would you like to share? OK.
04:05: OK, very good.
04:06: And it is a negative command.
04:08: It's a do not command.
04:09: I think the Greek is me, which is the adversative.
04:13: Do not.
04:14: Yeah, good.
04:15: Very good.
04:16: All right, are there others? Yes, ma'am.
04:28: And so I keep that up the first time I go to sleep.
04:32: Very good, yeah.
04:33: This is something they already know about.
04:36: By the mercies of God, this is something that you are aware of.
04:39: Very good.
04:41: Anyone else would like to share? OK, Miss Laney, go ahead.
04:47: No, no, please.
04:53: Fashion that required an action from the believer.
04:59: OK.
05:04: Yeah, what kind of set? What is a living sacrifice? Yeah, very good.
05:08: Also, I saw that as a free will, and free will is a command.
05:14: I saw that as free will, but it's not taken from.
05:19: OK, OK.
05:22: Anyone else have it? Yes, Miss Kara.
05:30: I was trying to figure out where it all was in there for.
05:37: But I was seeing exhortation, like for brothers.
05:43: Yeah, yeah, appealing is exhorting.
05:46: But I didn't see it in the first one, so.
05:47: Yeah, no, that's great.
05:48: No, making an appeal is an exhortation.
05:50: I'm calling on you to do this.
05:53: Very good.
05:54: What were you saying, bro? The living sacrifice, I think it's a reference to the old law of sacrifice still.
06:11: Instead of sacrificing something else, we sacrifice ourselves because of what God already did.
06:16: Because like that, therefore, is in reference to the first 11 chapters.
06:20: Then it's like he laid out that whole thing, therefore, your part is to offer yourself to the living sacrifice.
06:27: Yep.
06:28: And that's true.
06:29: I think equating the sacrificial language to the old covenant is very, very good.
06:34: And he just spent three chapters talking about the relationship to Jews, and the new covenant, and the old covenant, chapters 9, 10, 11.
06:41: Absolutely, would fit into that.
06:46: All right, I have one that I'd like to share, but I don't want to go before anyone else.
06:50: Anybody else want to share anything before we move? Yes, ma'am, Ms.
06:53: Rosanna.
07:13: OK, now this is an interesting translational question.
07:20: Yours says brothers and sisters.
07:23: What translation are you using? OK, because the ESV, you'll notice, only says brothers.
07:29: But if you notice, there's a star right here.
07:32: While you were talking, I just clicked on that, and it told me it does say brothers and sisters.
07:37: So I want to now look and see if brothers and sisters is part of the original, because I'm curious.
07:48: Not that it would change anything, because I do think the sex references, and the pronouns, and just like when we say man, it's referencing mankind, not just men, most of the time.
08:02: So using people or something like that as an appropriate equating language.
08:08: In this case, though, since there is the star, I'm going to show you a little trick my program does.
08:15: And you can do this, of course, with the internet.
08:18: It sometimes takes a little longer.
08:20: But my program gives me the opportunity to pull up the Greek New Testament, and so I can look at it right next to the English.
08:28: And because I am able to read partially over here, I can equate them.
08:36: But even if I couldn't, you'll notice when I tab over a word, it tells me what that word is translated in English.
08:43: And so that's a nice little tool.
08:45: So if I go to I appeal to you brothers, that is Adelphoi, there, in the Greek.
08:50: And it says, diaton oik, well, oik tir mon.
08:55: That's that long, that's that word there.
08:57: Oik tir mon is mercies to, that's the genitive of God.
09:02: So oik tir mon, Adelphoi diaton oik tir mon, that does not say sisters.
09:09: It doesn't, there's the word for sisters is not there.
09:11: But the word Adelphoi is generic.
09:16: It's where we get the word Adelphos, it's where we get the word for Philadelphia, that root in the middle of Philadelphia is Adelphos.
09:25: And that's where we get the word brothers, but it's more like the idea of siblings.
09:30: So it certainly could be translated brothers and sisters, doesn't have to be because brethren is generic.
09:38: I could say, you women are my brethren.
09:42: And it wouldn't be in any way a negative or inappropriate thing to say because it's generic.
09:48: But it's interesting though, because you use the NIV, you noted something that it said and it made the point of brothers and sisters.
09:55: I think it's implied in the ESV, but it's certainly something that, but you see now how these programs can be helpful.
10:04: Now again, this is not a super expensive program, but it's not cheap either.
10:09: There are internet sources, studylight.org and blueletterbible.org, I think, is it .org or .com? I don't use blue letter much.
10:21: Those are the two that I use the most.
10:23: The other one that I use is biblehub.com.
10:27: In fact, I'll just show you why.
10:30: I don't know if you'll be able to see this very well.
10:32: There's my Facebook, so we'll eliminate that.
10:34: And there's me, Bible Hub.
10:40: You'll notice it's the first one that comes up.
10:43: This one is great because if I type in Romans 12, one, it'll pull up immediately, various translations automatically.
10:55: So I don't have to go look for various translations.
10:58: I have the NIV, the NE, the NIV, the NLT, the ESV, the BSV, the BLB.
11:05: That's the book for me, the B-I-B-L-E, you know? So there are several translations.
11:14: Excuse me, I have to start the recording over.
11:16: I did not realize, okay, that's recording.
11:27: Apparently this new, I have a new iPod that's recording.
11:31: They still sell iPods, can you imagine? They still sell them, and I bought one just to record sermons with.
11:37: But apparently it's connected to my phone, so it just took a call.
11:41: It's not supposed to take a call.
11:43: That's not supposed to happen, so I'm gonna turn the internet off.
11:47: So forgive me.
11:49: I don't know if you noticed tonight I'm going a little bit more relaxed.
11:52: I want to have fun tonight.
11:53: It's our last class of the semester, and I want to have some fun.
11:57: All right, so there is, you know, brothers and sisters is certainly a possible way to translate, certainly nothing wrong with it.
12:05: But yes, it does apply to men and women.
12:08: Okay, so moving back here, I'm gonna throw the Greek away for a moment and ask, is there anyone else who'd like to share anything before I share one of the things that I noticed? Yes.
12:17: I think spiritual worship.
12:34: It is defining what that is.
12:35: That's very good.
12:37: But I'm gonna throw something else out that's gonna tag on to what you just said, because I don't think spiritual worship is the right translation.
12:47: In fact, I think it's the worst, not the worst.
12:50: There's a lot more worse.
12:51: I don't think it's a good translation, and I'll explain why in a minute.
12:54: But you're right, that last clause, spiritual worship, is being defined by the mercies of God, presenting your bodies, living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.
13:04: All that is giving a definition.
13:07: But I wanna ask you, how do we translate words? We translate words either by a one-to-one equivalent, or we translate by what we call the dynamic equivalent.
13:22: So this is getting to my thing that I noticed.
13:24: Every time I read this verse, I notice the same thing, and that is that spiritual worship is not, it doesn't fit.
13:35: You say, why doesn't it fit? Well, because the word spiritual doesn't mean spiritual in the Greek.
13:44: It means reasonable.
13:47: The word means reasonable.
13:50: And I'll show you that very quickly.
13:53: The word for spirit, or spiritual, is pneumos, pneumatos, pneumatikos, depending on how it's, and again, I'll bring the Greek up very quickly, and you'll notice that the word here is not, I don't know if you can read that.
14:12: Let me pull it, get a little closer there.
14:16: This is the word here.
14:19: What's that? I don't think that matters if we can see it or not.
14:21: Well, I know you don't, but I'm working towards something here.
14:28: When I read it to you, it will, the word that would normally be for spiritual would have the root of pneuma, because that's the word for spirit, or sometimes pronounced pneuma, because it begins with the letter P.
14:46: But this is the word logikane, and it's where we get the word logical or reasonable.
14:53: If I say you're being logikane, I'm saying you're being reasonable.
14:57: It's the logical thing.
14:59: Therefore, I don't think spiritual is an appropriate translation.
15:05: I think the better translation, and this is, again, something I simply noted, because as I was reading, I said this doesn't, the word spiritual worship sounds like a modern phrase.
15:17: It doesn't sound like, it's not something, I don't know that that term is ever in scripture that I can remember anywhere other than here.
15:24: Spiritual worship, and I said it's not what Paul is saying.
15:30: He is saying that if you present your bodies a living sacrifice, the reasonable result is that you would offer yourself a living sacrifice.
15:41: The reasonable service, or the reasonable, and by the way, the word worship is latrein, and that is a word for service.
15:49: So I actually translate this, that to offer your bodies a living sacrifice for this is your reasonable or your logical service.
15:58: It's the logical thing to do.
16:00: If you have received the mercies of God, the logical outpouring of that, the rational outpouring of that is that you'd offer yourself a living sacrifice.
16:14: And so that's why I say I don't think spiritual worship, and again, comparative now, I want to pull up the King James.
16:22: All right, so here's the King James, and notice what the King James says.
16:26: I beseech you, therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable God, which is your what? Reasonable service.
16:35: So this is one of the times where I think the King James provides a better translation than does the English Standard Bible.
16:44: But again, all I've done is made an observation.
16:47: Not interpreting it.
16:49: I guess I've given a little bit of an interpretation as to why I would accept one versus the other.
16:53: But simply looking at the word logocane and how it's to be used, I don't see it as spiritual.
17:01: See it as logical.
17:03: Now an interesting addition to this is if you go here to this little star and click on it, you'll notice even in the ESV, a secondary rendering, which you can't see because it's too small, is rational service.
17:19: Because even in their textual notes, they have provided what I would consider to be the better reading.
17:28: So that's, again though, this is all observation, right? It's one thing to notice that phrase sounds funny.
17:35: Let me go and see how that phrase is, you don't have to know Greek.
17:39: If all you knew was King James, you could go over to the King James.
17:44: The ESV says spiritual worship.
17:47: The King James says reasonable service.
17:53: So spiritual worship and reasonable service is not the same.
17:56: Do you agree? Now spiritual worship can be reasonable service, but they're not the same.
18:04: And so right away, remember what we said, one of the ways to do observation was compare one English text to another.
18:12: You don't have to know Greek.
18:13: You can just look from one English text.
18:14: They used to have these things called parallel Bibles.
18:17: I guess they still sell them, but you can choke a mule with it.
18:20: So I don't know very many people that carry them around.
18:23: You know what I'm talking about.
18:23: It's in my office, but I don't carry it.
18:25: You can't carry it unless you've got a backpack.
18:30: It's this big, but it has the King James, the NIV, the ES, whatever, usually it's four translations side by side.
18:38: So this is a helpful way to do it.
18:40: Like I said, my program does it for me, so I get to cheat.
18:45: But it's my job.
18:46: I've got to have good tools for a good job, right? Yes? I thought you mentioned earlier the message.
19:02: There's the message, which is a paraphrase, and there is the passion translation, but the passion translation is more of a...
19:13: I can't think of the word I'm trying to look for.
19:15: It's awful, but that's not the word I'm looking for.
19:17: I feel like Zed is digging into my question.
19:21: I know that there are translations that change the meaning of scripture.
19:29: I mean, are we to be careful in everything? I mean, some people use NIV, some people use ESV.