How To Study The Bible

As we take a look this morning, you should have a sheet that on one side has SALT 91 in black and the other side has X18 in blue. It should look something like this. And what we'll want to do this morning as we take a look at this passage, we'll want to kind of exercise some of the things we've been learning to make sure we don't just pile you up with theory here, but keep you going on applying it so that we learn as we go and then that way you'll absorb it better as we move along.

Okay, the first one is Psalm 19.1. And this is one that in kind of the version I got memorized in my head. It says, you know, the heavens are declared the glory of God. And so we'll want to take a look at that bit by bit.

And one of the things that we'll do in order to get there is if you have your binder with you, we'll turn to the questions that are there. And I'm talking about the questions in the beginning of chapter 5. page one. Incidentally, in these things here, as we're moving along, I've found just little stickies, you know, where you can stick it on there and find your place helpful. So I'm going to pass a little pack around just because you can take one or two or three or whatever you like to help kind of find your place and see where you've been reading. Boy, Cheryl's just outfitted to the max here. She may not need it.

If you look at the first part of chapter 5 there, the title is The Interpretive Process. So as we look at that part of chapter 5, what we're going to do is about halfway down the page, it starts asking some questions. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at this psalm 19-1 passage and ask those same questions, okay? So let's begin.

Who is writing? Who's writing this thing? Ah, okay. Any idea why you think it's David? Ah, okay. Yeah, one of the advantages we have, not with all of the Psalms, but with a good many of them, is it will have a Psalm of David, a Psalm of Asaph. It'll credit the author. There's even at least one that I'm aware of by Moses. So I mean there's different ones. Psalms is the Israeli or the Jewish national hymn book. That's the way to think of it.

A great many of them were sung in syncopation between groups as they were walking to and from Jerusalem. That was one of the ways that they would do it. So for example, the first group might say The heavens are telling of the glory of God, only in Hebrew. And then the next group would come back with the next part. And they would go back and forth saying and singing these psalms. So this is a psalm of David here that we're looking at. So we know David wrote it.

Now, let's take a look. About whom is it being written? What's he writing about? This is about the glory of God. We see that coming out. Now, to whom is he writing this? And in some cases, that question may be a little more important than others. But let's ask this question. Who is he writing to? Okay, it's most directly written to the children of Israel. Okay? So that's number one.

And here's an important question to ask alongside that. Is it possible that something is not written directly to you, but there's still something to be learned from it? Yes, and that's exactly the case here, isn't it? We can still glean a truth from things that are not written directly to us. And that's exactly what we'll be seeing here.

Then, about what is he writing? What seems to be the focus? The glory and greatness of God. And what else? What else do you see in there? What seems to be the subject matter? Okay, yeah, in order to be talking about, you know, here's the heavens out there, okay? So he's writing about the universe. Other places he may be writing about an entirely different subject. But here, that's one of the things you see is talking about the heavens. Talking about the expanse, it's called, okay? Now, what literary form has he used?

In the middle of page one there, it's got a list. Poetry. Okay, the first one happens to be it, right? So we hit it on the first one. Let me just read through them just so we'll make sure. Poetry, parable, narrative, history, logical arguments, and prophecy. Just to kind of put a parenthesis in this here. What's an example? We have an example before us of poetry. How about parable? Where can we find parables? Okay. Jesus told a lot of parables. Who? Right? Okay. Another example might be the prophet Nathan.

Talking to David, David had committed the sin of adultery with Bathsheba, and Nathan was in a spot where he was saying, okay, how do I confront David with this? And so what did he do? Nathan told David a parable. And when Nathan was done telling it, David said, that man deserves to die. And what's Nathan's response?

You're the one! He used a parable. So a parable is another form. Another one on the list is a narrative. Can you think of a narrative passage? Yes, Genesis is an excellent narrative from front to back. Another one in the New Testament? Acts, yes. Acts is an important link. As a matter of fact, if we didn't have the book of Acts, a lot of the rest of the New Testament would be a real head-scratcher. What's going on? Who's Paul? Why is he writing so much? Who's Timothy? Who's Luke?

So there'd be a lot of questions that just wouldn't quite make sense if we weren't able to have those. OK, how about the last one here? We've got history. History oftentimes is overlapped with a narrative. Sometimes history, however, will be a little bit more, you know, there was this king, and he lived here, and a little bit more in that role. So some books you'll find switching between narrative and history, okay?

Logical argumentative discourse. There's kind of a classic on that one. Which is it? Romans is particularly narrative, excuse me, argumentative discourse. There is some in Job, too. You're right, okay? And the last one, prophecy. Revelation is an example. Daniel in the Old Testament. About 28% of the Bible is prophecy, by the way, so it's a big chunk.

Okay? Pardon? Isaiah, yes. Okay, now, as we go down that list there, when is the action taking place? Incidentally, in this book, I apologize, there's some kind of a strange code problem where it puts an extra I in front of the is, so it's not it is, it's just is, okay? Yes, it causes a glitch. Yes, that's PDF, it's unalterable. Okay, when is this action taking place?

Now, this is an interesting thing because there's kind of two parts to this. What's he describing right now? When is this action taking place? The heavens declaring the glory of God or telling? It's taking constantly, isn't it? It's continuing. He was writing this roughly 1000 BC, okay? But the truth is, it's continuing on and on and on and on.

Now, if we go in the past, has it continued on in the eternity past? Has there been a heavens always? Okay, so actually there was a time when it started, It's now continuing, now for 3,000 years since he wrote this, continuing to declare the glory of God, and will, up until the time, as we'll read later on in Revelation, in weeks and months ahead, there'll be a new heaven and a new earth. So actually, this telling the glory of God is going on for thousands of years, but had a start and will have an end.

Now, in some cases, that question of when did it happen is going to be a lot more important. in terms of time sequence and history and what happens. In this case, it's a little different, but it's still important to ask the question just to make sure we understand.

Why is the book or passage being written? Now, not always will they tell you. One of the things I found out about the Apostle John is he tells you why. He writes at the end of the Gospel of John, he says, these are written that you might believe, that you might have life through his name. Any simpler than that? No. So you'll have those instances where it's just told outright what's the reason.

Here, we have to read the verses to see why he's writing it. What's it all about? What's his intent when he writes this? He is writing out the evidence for God from what? From everything we seek. From creation itself, right? Here is the evidence of God. He is saying the heavens themselves are declaring the glory of God. He is saying if I look at what God has made out here, that by itself will declare the glory of God.

Now, where is the action taking place? Obviously this is going to have a little bit more value in some kinds of writing than others. Where is the writer going with his argument? In other words, where is he expecting to take this? Where does he want you to end up?

Yes, worshipping the Lord. Yeah, exactly. That's where he is directing us. Now, other writings may have an entirely different purpose, and as we interpret it, it's good to know what they're talking about. Okay? You did not come here this morning expecting for me to tell you how to bake cookies, which is really good because I'm lousy at cookies. But there is an expectation whenever you hear something, whenever you read something, this is where the author is trying to take us. And so that's important that we know, otherwise if we just grab some verse out of the middle of it, that may not have anything to do with what the author is trying to say. Right? Why is this book or passage being written? Why does a writer move from one topic to another in his discourse? Why is he angry, excited, pleading, commanding, exhorting?

We kind of addressed that previously. He is wanting to take us to a place of worshiping the Lord. He is wanting to take us to a place of recognizing just the immense expanse Have you ever gotten so absorbed in the situation that you're in that it seems like that's all there is? And one of the values of just kind of looking at the stars and looking at what God has made, it gives us a whole different perspective, doesn't it? And that's a part of what He's doing.

Here is David. Now, can we describe David? And this was probably written before he went off to be king. Here's David, a shepherd boy. He's out there watching the sheep at night. A lot of sleepless nights, right? He's out there watching, and he's looking up, and here's the heavens. What's David's sense of things? What's his perspective? What's he gaining by looking at these stars? What's going through his mind?

Yeah, this is phenomenal. David was thought little of by his brothers. Frankly, even his father. Samuel came to Jesse, David's father, and said, hey, show me your sons. I want to pick one of them here to anoint. And what happened? Jesse said, this is it. And guess what?

Who was missing? David was the one missing. Jesse just thought David was even inconsequential to this whole thing. Couldn't possibly be David the one you want to anoint. And yet, that's the one. So here's David who was thought to be insignificant in his family, and he could have thought, oh, I'm just worthless, I'm nothing.

And yet, here he says, I can look at the heavens and get God's perspective on things. What could be more valuable than that? See that? Okay, let's continue to move on with these questions here. How did he proceed to present his subject? Now, what's the first thing He says? What's the first thing He points you to?

The heavens. That's the first thing. The heavens. Okay, that's His subject. He's looking at the heavens. And then He's saying, okay, what about them? And the next thing is, He's saying the heavens are telling of the glory of God. So this is the direction that He's trying to take us here.

Now, let's go through this and start kind of asking some questions because remember, observation, interpretation, and application. And in our observation stage, what we're going to want to do is to ask these kinds of questions we just went through, and then begin just asking questions of this.

Now, let's ask this heavens, which heavens is this? Is this heavens like we're all going to go to heaven someday? Okay, it isn't. And how would we know that? It's what he sees right now, okay? And so by reading the context, you get the sense this isn't heaven like we're going to go to heaven someday.

This is the heavens up there, you know, where the stars and everything else is, okay? Ah, yes, okay. And then he brings it down and here's the firmament, or in some cases the earth, what's down solid below, okay, as well. And then what are those heavens doing? Isn't that interesting?

Now, let me ask you something. Are the heavens figurative here? No, the heavens are literal. So shouldn't I interpret this literally? Telling, the heavens are telling. Shouldn't I interpret that literally? Now, that's where I have to make a differentiation. He is using a figure of speech, right? The figure of speech is to communicate something literal. Very important for us to note.

He's got telling. You know that the stars aren't up there yacking. When's the last time you heard a star come out and say, Hey Wayne! It doesn't do that. But what's happening, he's using a figure of speech here, a figure of speech to communicate something literal. Telling is what? What is telling? What's that? It's communicating. He's using the figure of speech to tell us that the heavens are communicating to whom? To us, to anybody who will look and who will listen. The heavens are communicating about what?

The glory of God. Now, interesting, that phrase, glory of God, does that occur elsewhere in Scripture? Lots. Now, here's the other thing I can do I can look at these phrases and look at where else are those used in Scripture to get an understanding. What is that? There's something else I could do. I can even look up in an English dictionary, since I have a translation here in English, what do those mean?

What does glory mean? People talk about glory when they talk about war and football games. Is that what this is talking about? Yes, this is about God's very character. All glory originates from God himself. You don't have glory if there isn't God, because all glory originates from God himself, because glory is essential to the character of God himself. Now, here's another question to look at. You notice it says, to the glory of God, it doesn't start trying to prove God's existence. It just states it. What other question could you ask about that glory of God?

How many different names are there for God? How many different names are there? Lots, huh? Yeah. Yet there are quite a few, and one of the things you could do, how could you find out which Hebrew word is behind that? Concordance would give you that, okay? If you were to look that up. There are some other resources, but that's the simplest and most commonly available one. And you can look up in there and find out which name for God is on this verse, okay?

Because the name for God frequently is expressing something particular about the character of God. There are some names for God that refer to Him as the Healer. There are some names for God that refer to Him as being the Almighty. The name Jehovah is actually a contraction for I was, I am, I will be. And that refers to His dominance and His lordship over time. So I could look up the name for God that's in this verse and learn from it as well. Now, let's look at the next one. and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands." Now, is that telling us anything different? Yes. Yes. Something that, matter of fact, I'll be talking about it this morning in the main service.

Hebrew poetry is different from English and a lot of other languages. We try to rhyme words. Okay? If you think of just about all English poetry, and there's been some variation these days especially, but the general pattern is in our poetry and in our songs, we try to rhyme words. Hebrew poetry does not do that. They rhyme ideas. How about that? They don't care if the sounds rhyme at all. They want to rhyme the idea. And so you'll notice that as you read through the Psalms, frequently you'll see that repeated idea You see what's happening. Their expanse is a repetition of what idea?

Heavens. Okay. Is declaring. What's that? Telling. Okay. Of the work of His hands. Whose hands? Okay. It's going back to here. So what happens? Psalms will do a repetition of ideas. Now, here's a help for an interpreter with the Psalms. If you are puzzled as to the meaning of one phrase, look for the repetition. Because what's the repetition going to do? It's going to help you clarify the meaning of each part. So whenever you have that repetition take place, you can look at the part that you do understand to help you understand the part that you don't understand. Let me give you, for instance, and you can look at it on your own, Psalm 6 has, in quick review, I think about three repeating verses like that, where it says the same idea over again. And that repetition helps you understand each part, because it kind of reinforces the same idea. There is value, however, in looking at what's different.

This is the heavens, and this is the expanse. Does that communicate something a little different than that? What does expanse tell you? Yeah, it's just massive. Nancy has on her computer, you know, one of those changing, you know, screensavers. And what it is, it's a picture of the heavens from the Hubble spacecraft. And it just sits there and goes from one to the next. And what's mind-boggling is here's this little screen, you know, about a foot across. And it's showing you pictures of things that are billions of miles across. the expanse, the vastness of it. It is unbelievably vast, huge, massive. If you start looking at how large it is, it just is mind-boggling. Now, declaring, is that different from telling? Ah, okay, that's right. Now let's think about telling. What does telling convey to you? What impression do you get when somebody's telling you something? Okay, telling is kind of information, isn't it?

Now, but if I come to you and I say, I'm going to declare something, what does that mean that's different? Yes, it's almost an announcement, isn't it? So here I have a repeated theme, but a different idea being communicated. So look for the repetition, but also notice the difference. Because each of those, one's giving you information, the other is making an announcement. When somebody makes an announcement, what do you usually think of? It's typically important. It's typically something you may not know before. work of his hands. How is that different from the glory of God? The glory of God has to do with God's very essence, doesn't it? Who he is. The next one is action. It's what he has done and accomplished. Do you see the difference there? Now, let's look at another thing. Does God have hands? So what have we got?

Engineering. Yeah, you got that. Quite what I was shooting for. That's a good point. I think it's more like thought. He willed it and it was. Yes. And when you see a phrase like this, what is that? It's an anthropomorphism, it's called. It's using something we understand. That's right. It's a kind of a figure of speech.

And we'll find that frequently as we get to figures of speech. is that the Lord will use something that we understand, and you'll see it even in the Revelation passage we're going into this morning, He walks among the lampstands. The sense there is there's this figure of speech to convey to us something as human beings that we might not understand otherwise. See that?

So now if I take a look at this, I can start asking all kinds of questions, and frankly we haven't chased them all down this morning, have we? We've just begun to ask some of them and haven't pursued them all. But the reality is I can start asking questions there, and asking those kinds of questions, getting the words clear in my mind, and understanding what's figurative and what's not. Okay?

Understanding what's figurative and what's not. Whenever we see a figure of speech, very important to ask, what is the figure of speech intending to convey literally? A couple nights ago, Heidi was with Nancy and I. We were talking about figures of speech and kind of sayings that are used in German and in English. And it's real interesting. These figures of speech will kind of go outside of literal language, and yet they're intended to convey something literal. So we need to understand what is the figure of speech and what is the literal meaning that's intended. All right, let's move on to this Acts 1-8.

I should be in blue on your sheet there. And I have to make a confession here. When I put this verse on there, we cheated. You know why we cheated? We cheated because I'm cutting in the middle of a passage, and you'll notice that because it's a lowercase b on the beginning there. So, we need to get the context, don't we?

What is this that we're reading in Acts 1.8? What's happening? It's explaining. It's giving us prophecy. And who is speaking? Jesus. And who is He speaking to? Disciples.

What's the point in history? When is this happening? Jesus had resurrected So after the resurrection, before what? Just before the ascension and obviously before Pentecost. So that's our kind of historical time frame. Getting the historical time frame in place is critical.

See? That way we understand what happened. Have you ever been in a situation where you just kind of walked in on a conversation and you didn't get the context? And you end up with a really strange understanding of what happened? Sometimes it's humorous. But getting the whole context is important. So that's why we ask these questions.

Now, here's Jesus. He's been resurrected. He's about to be ascended. He's giving last instructions to his disciples. Now, who wrote this? Who wrote the book of Acts? Dr. Luke. He wrote first the Gospel and then the book of Acts. Who did he write it to?

Theophilus. Do we know anything about Theophilus? Theophilus is Greek. What does the name mean? Theo means God. Philos means lover of God. Cool, but interesting thing. From the evidence, it appears that this was a legal submittal to Theophilus, who was a Roman bureaucrat. Interesting, huh? Now, you look puzzled. He's explaining to Theophilus. But this is an instance where it isn't written to us, but it is written for us. It's given to us. We can glean things from it. Now, here is Jesus.

He has just told them No, now is not the time I'm going to establish the kingdom. That's up to the Father to set those times. But... Why do we put the word but in there? Why do we use that in English? That's right. There was something said before, and then there's some degree of contrast, isn't there? Not this, but, in contrast, this. So this isn't going to happen. I'm not going to establish my kingdom now. But in contrast to that, this other thing is going to happen. Let's read what's the other thing.

But you, who's you? Who's he talking to? And right then and there, do we know who was gathered around? That's right, the disciples. Less who? Not Judas. We say the twelve, but in fact it's eleven. So here's the eleven disciples. He's talking to them particularly. But you will.

Now when we say that will, this isn't talking about last will and testament, is it? No. This will in context, we know it means what? What's happening to the time? It's looking into the future. This will happen. But you will, Receive power. Receive power. Now what's that going to tell you? You're going to receive power. Okay, it's going to come from somewhere else. You're going to receive this power.

Now when you say power, what does that mean? Does that mean these guys are going to be able to just run like they've got big engines behind them or what does that mean? Is their clutch going to get engaged? What's it talking about? You will, future tense, receive. So they're going to receive something. And what is that they're going to receive? Power. What kind of power? Ah, OK. Very important.

We look at, sometimes it will say, well, do I know what that is? As we read in context, it will oftentimes explain what that is. So very good point. That's the importance of context. it will tell us what kind of power later, in the rest of the verse. So, you will receive power and you're saying, what kind of power? Then, you're going to get the rest of the explanation. Okay, when? So here's a timing word, isn't it? You're going to receive power when Vern says go. No? Right? No, it gives a timing. What's the timing thing?

The Holy Spirit has come upon you. Now, who's the Holy Spirit? It's the third person of the Trinity. How could I find out more about the phrase Holy Spirit? You could look it up in a concordance. That would be one good way to do it. You could see other things.

What does it say about the Holy Spirit? As a matter of fact, this is prophetic. Do we have anything before this that tells us that the Holy Spirit was going to come? So we can look at other verses that tell us about the Holy Spirit that Jesus already spoke about. Then we could look after this to see what happened later. What did the Holy Spirit do?

That also gives us more understanding of what it means by power. You see that? I'm looking before, at this verse, and afterwards to get the whole understanding of what it means by the Holy Spirit. Let's ask something else. It says the Holy Spirit, not a, not one of. You see that? There's a distinction made even in that. The Holy Spirit is a singular person, as opposed to a bunch of them, or a few of them, or one of them. So just even that right there communicates something to us about the character of God. When the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Now, what does that tell you about their current state right now?

They don't have it. One of the pet peeves that Hal will mention from time to time, and I've only known him a few months and he's mentioned it several times, so it must be important. people will sing this song out of the Psalms, take not your Holy Spirit from me, right? Well, if we study the various passages, we'll notice that Christians don't need to pray that. We have the Holy Spirit.

But these have not yet had it. You see the point there? So, they had not yet had the Holy Spirit come upon them, so this had not yet what had been prophesied before yet been fulfilled. And, I'm sorry, what? Oh, got a little visitor. Okay. And, okay, so he's adding to this message here. And you, here's the you again. Same people? Is it the same ones? Yes, it's the same ones we saw before, right? And you, you 11, all right, shall be my witnesses. Why do you use the word witnesses? What's the value in that word? What does a witness do? Yes. What's that? That's correct. That's right. All right. Luke is writing the Theophilus about what Jesus said to the disciples. Good point.

To be a witness is to testify about something. And if you're a witness, does it matter whether you tell the truth or not? Not doing so can be a pretty risky proposition. A witness is to tell the truth. You're going to be the ones telling the truth. My witness is telling the truth about me.

See that? Both in, and this is the thing, frankly, as we see this, it took them almost 10 years to get this. Because in Jerusalem, yeah, they understood that. Judea, yeah, okay, that's alright. Samaria, huh? You see what's wrong with that? Yeah, that comes just before, even to the remotest part. Yes, and you're going to go to Samaria. I'm going to go where? And even to the remotest part of the earth.

And you know what they did for 10 years? They hung around Jerusalem. That's right. And finally, almost 10 years later, was where Peter is presented, remember, with the vision coming down of these so-called unclean animals. Finally, at that point, they begin to get it. So here it is. They were told it. It was almost 10 years later before they began to understand it. And think of this.

Now, Jerusalem. all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth. And these disciples did go all over the place. Alexander the Great, a few centuries before, stopped at the Indus River. He didn't actually go into India. According to tradition, Thomas did. There's even some evidence that the Christians made it up to Britain within the first century.

Okay? Kosovo, you know where we had this battle? Paul went to Kosovo. Okay? They went down into Africa. I mean, they went all over the place. But it took them a while, almost a decade, just to get to anything beyond Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. To get to the rest of that verse was not even on their horizon, not even on their radar screen for almost a decade. We've run out of time, so let's pray. Okay?

Lord, we thank You that in Your Word is just such immense depth that You have laid things out for us line upon line. And Lord, we pray as we go from here that You would indeed be teaching us and we'd be learning all that You have for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.