How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Feb 3, 2002
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262240216860

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Let's see, I think each of you has a massive document on your... I don't intend to pass out something quite so thick every week, but this is something that's intended to be used as kind of a reference. We'll be looking back at it for some weeks to come here, kind of like for the next two months. So be sure to bring it. And it would be occasional other handouts, but for the most part, this is going to be what we're going to be looking at.

And just to get ourselves all in sync here, what we're looking at doing is learning how to use the complete Word Study New Testament as a tool for Bible study. And one of the things that is valuable is that you can very quickly get the advantage of what's in the Greek text that's behind the New Testament, the English New Testament, without having to learn Greek. I'm not saying there isn't additional value in learning Greek, but I'm just saying you can get a lot of advantage pretty quickly and without having to drill this stuff into your head.

So I think it's a real valuable tool. Frankly, I use it all the time, even having been through Greek courses and that kind of thing. I still use it because it's a valuable tool. I know Hal does as well. And we just were both very convinced that you'll be able to make good use of it, too.

So anyway, that's the idea. Let's grab hold of that. And you should have that with you there. And let's go through it, starting with the first page. The things that will allow you to do, see these bullets here? Let's go down through those. It'll give you the specific grammatical structure of the word in the sentence. If you look up something like, you're familiar with like strongs or something like that where you'll look up a word but all it does is give you sort of a general list of here's the range of things it might mean. That doesn't tell you what does it mean here and it doesn't tell you anything about how is this word particularly structured to mean something in the context that it's used. This tool will help you do that, will help you get beyond the ambiguity that's left by some of the general lexicons and dictionaries that are available.

The next thing is, it says the tense, voice, mood, person, and number of a verb. You see, in English, we put all those parts of our speech by not entirely, but largely by putting words around a verb. Example, we would say in English, I would like to eat it. In Greek, that's all one word. They put all that packet into the verb. So the verb has who you're talking about, how many people, whether it's singular or plural, It talks about the time and your own personal desires, and all that is built into the verb. And so that's one reason, as you'll see as we get along here, you'll see all these English words and there will just be one Greek word coded in there. And it's because so much gets packed into one Greek verb. A lot gets packed into one Greek verb. And all of what I just told you might be in only six letters.

Amazing, huh? Okay. Anyway, we'll learn more about that. The meaning of the Greek word in its context. Let me give you, for instance, out of English. The word, I'll spell it out, B-O-W. What is that? Bow or bow. Bow or bow. Now, let's start off. Bow, what is that? It's a person with bow. Okay, alright. Does it mean anything else? Okay, now that's a, how do I call it, a homonym. It sounds, the tree bow is a B-O-U-G-H, right? But it sounds the same, doesn't it?

Okay, now there's a different one. Instead of a bow, we also have a bow. Now, how about the bow of a ship? There's another one, okay? So there's, with the bow pronunciation, we've got at least a couple of meanings. And there's another one, yeah, it's the sound we make for a dog. Let's give it three, okay?

Let's look at bow, okay? Winnie already mentioned the bow and arrow combination, right? What other ways do we use that word B-O-W? A bow, like in a hair, bow tie, okay? A bow and a piece of wood, you got a piece of wood that goes like this, it's got a bow in it, good. A rainbow, there's another one. I've also heard it used for like a turn in a river. Okay? Hobo don't get it. Hobo. That's a little stretched. You get the idea? Here's this one English word.

So if I come to you and I just say, Bo. You don't know what I'm talking about. Or if I spell it out, it's even more vague, right? But if I come up to you and I say, hey, I'd like to go down and buy a bow and arrow, you're not wondering which kind I'm asking about, are you? How do you know the difference? Why is it all of a sudden you know what I mean? By the context, right?

And that's the same thing here. There are Greek words that have multiple meanings. And we know in the same way we know in English, context. So that's where just looking something up in a dictionary a Greek dictionary isn't automatically going to tell you what does that mean here. See? And we have to have an understanding of the context to know what it means. And this complete word study in the New Testament tells you that. So it's valuable. Alright, let's go to the next item.

The English word or words correspond to a Greek word. That is, you will have sometimes several English words or one Greek word, just like I said, I would like to eat it, is one Greek word. Then it says which words are actually in the Greek text and which words are inserted for English understanding. Sometimes we have to do that in order to make the English sentence understandable. And then parentheses, and this doesn't happen too often, Parentheses around Strong's numbers for Greek words that are in the Greek text, but not translated into English.

It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen once in a while. The place where it happens most often, and there'll be a way that we can look at it, the definite article that we would translate the, like the Bible, the floor, the ceiling, is frequently in the English, not translated from the Greek. where you see where it talks about God but doesn't have the in front of it in the English frequently that is in the Greek has a definite article in front of it but if you were to translate it in English would sound funny and there's a reason for it but we'll get into that later my point is all these things that are peculiar to the Greek language are things that in reading the English are just kind of invisible, aren't they?

But this will allow us to look at those things and to have better understanding of them. Now, all these good things that it will do, two caveats. It won't always give all the information that you might want. There may be things about history or culture that are not revealed just in the Greek works. But that's true of any language. The other thing along with that is figures of speech. One of the things that happens is if we just look up the raw words, we don't always understand what is meant if we don't understand figures of speech.

If I say, you know, this guy drives me up a wall, and if I don't know English very well and I'm trying to figure out what that means, And I start looking it up. By the time I'm done, I'm going to go, huh? Because it doesn't make sense. If I understand the figure of speech, all of a sudden, ah, now I understand. The same thing happens in Greek.

So there are places where this Word Study New Testament, because it tends to focus on words and not on whole phrases or figures of speech, it won't give you that. So that's one caveat. The other thing is There are a few places where there are notes in the bottom of this Word Study New Testament that I wish they just left off. Because rather than being an insight from the Greek, it's the author's own interpretations that he's thrown in there, and to me it would be better off if he just left it. But anyway, but those caveats are still a real valuable tool.

All right, now the next thing we've got some contents down there, and let's just kind of page our way through it so you get oriented. We're going to be taking a look at this. The first page is kind of in landscape mode. And this gives us an indication of this is from the first chapter of Acts.

And one of the things that you're going to see there is there's going to be these smaller letters. And if there were one thing that I wish they'd do a little differently, those letters are in the original because this is actually blown up a little bit. In the original, they're kind of tiny. But what they do is they're a grammatical code. And they're going to tell us about the particular structure of that word. So you see those little letters. For example, the first one, the, that has A-R-T. That means it's a definite article. And we'll take a look at what those letters mean and how you figure out what they are.

The next one are these numbers. And one of the things that you'll notice, some of the numbers are bolded. Easier to point up here. Some of the numbers are bolded, and some of them are not. And you'll look at that contrast between the two. The ones that are bolded show up in the dictionary in the back.

And the ones that are not bolded are not in this dictionary, and that's one reason for you know, suggesting this because it has everything. By the way, these are kind of massive to haul around, but real handy to study. Okay. Okay. Now, next page, page three. This is It says their asterisks in the text indicate word clusters, which are discussed in the explanation of general format. I'm just going to explain them here so you don't have to read the explanation of the general format.

All it's really doing is if it has words that have the asterisk between them, that means it's multiple English words representing one Greek word. So for example, there in this, for instance, they have assembled together with, is all one word in the Greek. You'll have similar examples, you know, let's see, where's a for instance here. In verse 3 here, not be once named is one word in the Greek. Here's another for instance, which are not convenient. It's all one word in the Greek, okay?

Okay, now, the next item down there, italics are used in the text to indicate words that are not found in the Greek but implied by it. You see that example? And you'll find that, how many of you have seen that before in some of your Bibles? Have you seen some italics? If you've seen some italics, it means it's implied. Wherever I see that, I try to read it without those italic words and see what it means. Because sometimes somebody might think it's implied, but sometimes the meaning actually comes through more clearly without it. So that's something to check on. OK, the next one there, it says keys. Those are the ones most of the time I'd say ignore them.

There are occasionally some insights, but also some things that I would profoundly disagree with, and it seems like The guy had a really good idea in developing this keyword study New Testament, but he also had an agenda or a few things he thought, boy, I've got to tell them about this. It wasn't something that came out of the Greek, but just something this guy had to be in his bonnet about. Anyway, the next one, these titles that you see, subject headings, sometimes those are handy to find something. You know, if you're looking, where's this in here, you know, and you know it's about here.

But they can be real, they can be a real negative when it comes to actually interpreting the text. And one of the things you'll note as we get along in this, I took one of the headings out in what I gave you in the handout because I felt like the heading actually made it harder to properly interpret the passage. Because the truth is, are those headings in the original text? No. Paul didn't say, hey, I think I'll put a heading here. The Holy Spirit will come. See, they're not in the original text.

So if we're not careful, we can end up making it tougher to understand what was originally said instead of easier. So they're handy to find things, but I personally would rather they wouldn't put them in for the sake of study. Okay. Next one down the list. Adverbs. Sometimes function as prepositions. In such cases, a grammatical notation add has been placed above the English text. That's not a big deal, and we won't run into that too much. And the parentheses notation we won't run into very often either. OK. Now, any questions so far? Huh? Clear as mud. OK. Aren't you glad everything you read doesn't have a bunch of letters and numbers above it, right?

Makes it a little bit wild. Let's begin by going to page 5. It has a big Arabic numeral 5 there, and this is Ephesians 5. So what's the first word in English there? Be. Simple enough. One of the things you notice, what's the word right after that? Is there a code above ye? No. How come? Because be ye are together. Be ye are together in the Greek. Remember what I said, I have a Greek verb and either an action or a state of being is a verb. So be ye the ye is built into the verb in Greek. So you're not going to have a separate word for that in the Greek. You're going to build it right in.

Yeah, Donna? So then if it was not in the text, then the ye would be a night owl? Because the ye is built into the Greek word that's behind be. Is it always? Is that what you're saying? Yes. The pronouns are built into that. So because of that, it's not an italics. It actually is a part of the Greek text. But it's built into the verb. No, and it's not an italics because it is in fact built into the Greek verb. When they drill you through the Greek verbs in a Greek class, what they'll do is they'll go through and drill, okay, if it's I did this, then it's one form.

And if it's you did this, that's another form. And if it's he did this, that's a different form. And if it's not I but we, that's another form. And if it's you plural, that's a different form. And the reason I do that is because it's one word, but it has the pronoun I, you, he, All that is built into the verb. So the yee is not implied, it is built into the verb.

So they only see one code over bee. Let's take a look at that because that's a good question. What are the letter codes above those? P-I-M in both cases, right? And the number code, 1096, is also there. And notice this is be not ye, but it's basically the same other than the not that's in front of it. The ye in verse 7 is actually built into the verb be. B-E-N-O-T. Right. B-E-N-O-T would be another way to put it and to make it like the same structure as the first verse. Good.

You get the point there? They're identical, and the letter and number codes reflect that. Yes? Well, because the pronouns in Greek are built into the verb, then we know that the E is connected to the B there. That's where it's related. And you'll notice in both verse 7 and in verse 1, the therefore is the same one, same number, right? But let's take a look. Let's go back to the B. We want to make sure we get to each step here. Verse 1, be ye, okay? P-I-M. Now, what's P-I-M? You know, it seems like every field of knowledge has its own acronyms.

What's that? Oh, I'm sorry. Our son, Ed, went to Universal Technical Institute down in Phoenix, and of course the initials are U-T-I. And we'd tell people that our son's going to UTI and those with a medical background, they'd say, oh, we know what UTI is and it means something entirely different. So it's one of these things. Be careful you don't read an acronym into this thing. It's got a particular code. But let's keep your finger in here. Let's turn back to page 9.

Okay, and what do you see PIM stands for? Okay, so the P stands for present and the IM stands for imperative. Now, if you are wondering, it may be very apparent what that is to you. If you're ever wondering, well, what does that mean, the numbers below that explain what that is. And that's what the rest of the pages in this are, is explaining those numbers. But let's look at this PIM, Present Imperative Active. Present means, it says be right now, right?

So you could translate that. Actually, a friend of mine uses this Word Study of the New Testament to do his own translating. He's translated a goodly portion of the book of Revelation using the word study New Testament. Done his own translation. So it's powerful. Here's the way this comes across.

Instead of just be, it's right now be. Right now you be, because it's talking about it's now, not eventually you're going to be, not you were, but right now. Now, the next part is imperative. Now, how is that different from anything else? What does imperative mean? It's a command. If we want to make something imperative in English, in other words, if we want to communicate, this is a must, how do we do that in English?

Pardon? Yeah, there's basically two ways that we do it. And one way is we do it with voice emphasis, which is hard to do in writing. OK? We say, you know, and in fact, kids learn to pick up on this pretty quick. You know? Randall Eric Peterman, get here right now! Now, I didn't say you must, but he gets the idea. OK? And it has to do with tone of voice. OK? When you're writing, that's tougher to do.

You can underline it or do it in italics or something like that. Is that an exclamation mark? That could be. But whether it's an exclamation mark behind it or not, here's the way they do it in the Greek language. Rather than saying it real sharply, rather than putting a must in front of it, They build the imperative into the verb. You get the difference there?

In other words, we say, you must do this. If you want to write that out, that's the way you make it mandatory. You must do it. You shall do it. We add an extra word in there to show that it's mandatory and or we use emphasis in our voice. We do other things to try to tell people this is imperative.

In the Greek language, they just simply have a verb form. Oh, if I want to tell somebody this is a you got to do it, we'll just build it into the verb. Isn't that interesting? So that's the way they say it. So when you see that imperative, that's what it's talking about.

You could translate it into English, must. So this one word, be, that we've seen so far is we could translate that into English to get the full sense of that word, be. You must right now. That conveys in English that one word that we have translated here as be. You must right now is the meaning behind that. Okay, back to page five. Now, the next one is therefore, and yes? One of the things that that is that young women can watch the board. Yes. Okay, good. I'm glad you brought that up. I was about to skip past it. Boy, I shouldn't have. Thank you.

There are three voices in Greek, and that's not high voice, low voice, and middle voice. The three voices are active, middle, and passive. And we have basically the equivalent in English, only we tend to add words again to convey it instead of having it built into the verb. Here's the for instance.

Active. Vern hits the ball. then pulls his leg muscle, anyway. Active voice, I hit the ball, okay? I'm carrying out the action, that's active voice, okay? Middle voice, I hit myself, okay? I'm acting back on myself. Passive voice, the action is happening upon me from action outside of me. The ball hit me. Okay, passive voice. See the difference? Active is, I'm active, I'm doing the action. Middle, it's coming back on me, I'm doing it to myself. Passive, something outside of me is making it happen. Now, little voice can't get through somebody doing it to us also, wouldn't that need to be a little voice? No, no, that would be a passive. If somebody did it to me, then that would be a passive.

Here's the place where it makes a difference. Here's how it makes a difference. When you look at salvation, those Greek verbs are given in passive voice. Why? God is the one doing the saving, okay? And that's valuable. It may seem like a slight nuance, but that means that my salvation depends on somebody outside of me. It's God that does the saving, not me. We'll get into this.

Ephesians 2.6, you've been seated. Guess which voice that is? It's passive voice because you didn't do the seating. You aren't seating yourself. You have been seated. Somebody else did it and it's God Himself. So that's where these, whether it's active, middle, or passive voice starts to make a difference. Is it this or that?

One of the other places that I brought up previously in the past, John 10.28, Jesus says there, I am constantly giving my sheep life. I am constantly giving them life and they cannot, middle voice, take themselves out of eternal life. You get that?

The middle voice. Here's Jesus actively giving life. They cannot take themselves out of eternal life, and nobody else can take them out of my hand. Jesus is speaking in the active voice. He's saying they cannot of themselves lose their salvation, middle voice, and nobody else can take them out passive. You see that? So you've got all three all in the same sentence.

So it does make a difference. As a matter of fact, doctrinally, sometimes just which voice it is can make a huge difference as to which conclusion we end up drawing. OK? Let's move on there. I'm glad you asked about that, though. That's good. Followers. Boy, that one's got a complicated code above it, doesn't it? So let's keep our fingers here and turn back to page 8. It looks like nine even. It starts off with a PR. What do we find out from PR? Predicate. You say, what on earth is a predicate? How are you going to find out what a predicate is?

Go back to school. I think I had that in junior high or something. Okay, so what are you going to look at to find out? You're going to look back in the section behind that under number 77. What's that going to tell you? It's basically giving an explanation of God. Right? Is that what it's doing? Okay, how about the next one? We've got AN and NN. What are those codes telling us? Let's look at page 8.

This is one thing I have to explain here. Anarthris. Now that sounds like a disease. Doc, I'm anarthris! Right? No, all it means is there is no definite article in front of it. That's all it means. Okay? That's easy, isn't it? In fact, why don't you write that next to anarthris? Because if you ever forget that, you'll be lost.

It just means no definite article. In English, we do it this way. I talk about the ball, that's got a definite article, right? If I say a ball, that's an indefinite article, which in Greek they don't have that. They don't have an indefinite article. Or I can just say ball, either a ball or ball, that would be anarthrosis.

So that's all that's talking about. So when it says followers, it means it's not the followers. Isn't that simple? That's not that difficult. So don't let that throw you. Now, the last part of that code there is NN. And let me just tell you ahead of time, NN just means noun. You don't have to look it up. You can if you want. I mean, go ahead. But it just means noun. So all I have here is this is explaining this followers. It's saying it's a noun. There's no article in front of it. Then is there something about that with followers? What does that mean? How would I look that up? Is there anything different about that than what's obvious in the English? So how would I look that up? Yes, there's a few different ways.

One is I can look at, because all these numbers you see are called Strong's numbers, okay? This guy named James Strong, a little over a century ago, put together this concordance for the whole Bible and all the words of the original language you put a code to. And that's what everybody is kind of standardized on, including what's here in this Word Study New Testament.

You can look it up in Strong's. Because it's not bolded, notice that difference from B? Because it's not bolded, it's not in the index in the back of this book, but it is in this complete Word Study dictionary. But even if you lack those, you could still look it up in Strong's.

It will give you some understanding of what that means. Even in English, we use the word follow in several different ways, don't we? If somebody is walking in front of me and I'm right behind him, I'm following them. But aside from the physical situation, we use the word follow also to have to do with somebody who is following someone else's teachings. Philosophical, right. Philosophical or spiritual.

And which of these meanings is he pointing to here? This is the second meaning, right? We're followers of God. And you can look in the original language to see if there's some particular additional significance to that. Now it says, of God. What are the codes above there? A.R.T. A.R.T. means there is a definite article in front of it. Yes, okay. In the original Greek, it has a definite article in front of it, which you would translate literally into English, the god. And here's an interesting feature.

In places of the New Testament, you'll see God, and it'll be lowercase, like the God of this world. And what it will typically have is no article in front of God. So it's just a God, any God. If it's the God of the Bible, the Greek will have a definite article in front of it. The Greek will have a definite article in front of it, and so that's what this is telling you.

Even though in the English we don't see that. We're not talking about any god, this is THE god. There are even places where it says THE THE god. It's making a distinction. Greek being the language that it was, The Greeks had no idea of this one singular God. That was not their understanding, was it? They had this pantheon.

So to tell people about not just any God, you had to put the article there, and sometimes twice, THE God, to emphasize, no, this is the specific one I'm talking about, not just any God, THE God. Yes? Yes, yes, they would emphasize. And that's really the reason, even for the first article, is really to emphasize this isn't just any God, because the Greeks had lots of them.

But this isn't any God, it's THE God. Alright, we've not gotten through the first line. We'll continue on, and I'm convinced, just because I've found it such a valuable tool, and Hal has as well. And incidentally, it's really interesting, Hal and I didn't meet each other until mid-year last year, and we didn't go to the same school, we didn't go to the same church, and yet it's amazing how many almost identical conclusions we've come to, and one of them is that this is a good tool.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the richness of your word. We thank you for the marvelous things that you put there, Lord. And you put them there because you love us. You put them there because you care for us deeply. And that, indeed, is a marvelous thing. We pray, Lord, that you would bring us to a greater and deeper understanding of your word that you wrote because you love us. In Jesus' name, amen.