How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Apr 21, 2002
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 29
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262242156163

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

What I'd like to have us do is begin going through John chapter 3, the first 21 verses, okay? So this will sneak up on the question that was snuck up on me, and that is, what did I mean by this? John 3.16 may not mean what we think it means. So anyway, what we'll do is we'll get there eventually, but we want to make sure we proceed in order here. Yeah, a few months from now we'll know whether we're saved or not. Okay. Anyway, what we intend to do here is to go through John 3 as kind of an example.

We've been spending some months now looking at, you know, how do I study the Bible? And kind of taking a look at example passages and whatnot, kind of special instances and looking at different tools. I want us to kind of pull this together And there's sort of a dramatic analogy that we can make that might be helpful.

Think of yourself as Columbo without the cigar, OK? And probably. Anyway, the point being, what you're looking at doing is in the same way that Columbo is looking for who's the real culprit, OK? We're looking for what's the real interpretation here. And so we're looking for all the facts. We want to be able, just like Colombo doesn't want to go to the prosecutor and say, hey, there's five people here, one of them did it, I have no idea which one. That's not what the prosecutor wants to hear, and that's not what Colombo wants to tell the prosecutor, right? Instead he wants to say, no, it's this one, and here's the reasons why, and here's all the evidence, right?

That's essentially kind of what we're doing the equivalent of here. We're saying, this is the interpretation that is the right one, because we've looked at all the different parts and pieces that go into it, and it's conclusive. This is what was intended to be said when it was written. That's what we're aiming for. People who want to find another meaning in Scripture will certainly find it, won't they? But we're not trying to find a meaning. We're trying to determine what exactly was meant. Not just any meaning will do.

So as we look at this, let's take the cigar out of our mouths and ask a lot of questions. And essentially, we've got the three steps, right? You've got observation, interpretation, application. And our observations are going to lead us to questions. The observations are going to lead us to questions.

So really, if we say we're going to start in John 3, what do we need to do first before we even dive into John 3? The big picture is, where is this? If I were to take somebody who knew English but knew nothing about the Bible and said, here, read this story. They're going to say, who's Jesus? Who's Nicodemus? Who wrote this thing? Who's he writing to?

And those are the exact same kind of questions we have to ask. So rather than just start diving in, we need to make sure that we've asked all those kinds of questions at the outset. So let's do that. What I've given you here is the reference and then a bunch of lines beneath. And then each line there in the verse, a bunch of lines beneath. And the idea is that you can get questions down. I've come up with some that I've cooked up on my own, but I guess one of the points is maybe you can think of some others. What are some observations, questions that are going to lead us to the right interpretation, the right understanding, the full depth of meaning in the passage? So let's take a look here first at the context, and let's start real big.

Where is this taking place? Where is John 3 taking place? It's taking place in Jerusalem, okay, and how do we know that? It says right here. Ah! And where does it say? Well, in verse 2. Ah! At the end of chapter 2, right? Okay, alright. So we have that. Here it is in Jerusalem. Do we have an idea where Jerusalem is? Suppose somebody didn't know. How would you tell them? Yeah.

You might find a map in the back of your Bible. You might find on the Internet. You might find it in like a Bible atlas, Bible dictionary, something of that sort. The bottom line is you could go to a map and show somebody. Even a present day atlas because it's been there for a long time.

Pardon? You would think so, but the ignorance out there is amazing. Yeah, I heard a survey recently, like one out of five people surveyed in their early 20s couldn't tell you who Dick Cheney was. And excuse me, only one out of five could tell you wrong part of the statistic.

That's amazing. Anyway, so, you know, that's that's one that just, you know, just kind of get a sense. Where is this? This is a fairly easy one. Sometimes you may have a tougher time. You know, you read Carchemish. Where's Carchemish? You know, you may come up with some names that are a little harder to pick out. This one, fortunately, is a little easier to identify. You can look in various places to find that. Here's the next question.

When is this taking place? Was this last week? How do we know it's Passover? Back in chapter 2. So the prior context is going to give us a sense of where things are. Now, is this right before Jesus was crucified, or when is this happening? Ah, okay. Is this before Jesus started His ministry, or after? Okay, after. And how would we know that? How would we know that it's after He started His ministry? Okay.

He's already done some miracles, so we've already got some of that. And there's this guy named Nicodemus. What does Nicodemus call him? A rabbi? A teacher? So there's already some things going on that is enough to identify him, but as Tom said, it's still early. Still early in the ministry.

To give it a timeline here, Give it a timeline. Here's Jesus' birth, which is before zero. By the way, the year zero doesn't exist. It's a line, and there's one before and one after, but there isn't a year zero. Nobody lived there. Then, 12 years after that, here's Jesus in the temple. Then, finally, here's the ministry beginning in just a few years. Just to kind of get a sense here, when did this take place? How would you answer the question, what has happened before? We're not necessarily going to try to do that right now, but how would you go about saying what has happened already up to this point?

What has taken place? The miracle of Canaan has taken place. He turned the water into wine, so there's a miracle already. Alright, good. What else has happened? He's called some disciples together. And what else has taken place? Ah, John the Baptist has already been on the scene. Now see, the truth is you could go into quite a bit of detail, couldn't you? And the truth is you could use Scripture to back up a lot of it. So a lot of the answers to that would just come straight out of Scripture. Here's the account of everything that has taken place. Actually, you could start at the beginning.

He's been born, when did that happen? You know, you go into this temple experience, we have zero information in between. From the temple up to the time his ministry begins, there's really no information there. But there's still quite a bit of information even in the early part of the ministry, isn't there?

Here's something else. This is the book of John, where else could you go to find other information? the other Gospels. So now you've got not just John to look at, but you've got all four Gospels that you could look at to see what happened previously. And the truth is, only Luke and Matthew are going to tell you about the birth, right? So you have quite a bit of prior history, and some people have gone through and actually done quite a bit of charting on what happened when. Yeah? Well, and that's another thing, is of what had already taken place, what of those things had already been predicted?

Ah, now I'm back in the Old Testament, see? And so he came, and I'm talking about where he was born, Micah 5-2, born in Bethlehem, you know, getting into Isaiah. I mean, you could go into all those things, everything up until that time, about Christ, all the way back to things in Genesis. You could also go to some historical documents to look at timelines and where Jesus is mentioned in other historical documents. Yes, yes. Secular. Right. Secular documents and some of the other people referred to in scripture are referred to elsewhere.

So you could do quite a bit to get, you know, what's the background and history? And the truth is, don't we kind of do that with each other to get to know each other? And it's really a lot of our getting to know each other. What have you done? Where have you been? What kind of things? And a lot of it is, what's your past? What's going on?

And so that's a significant part of coming up to speed on what's transpired here. Now, let's talk about one other thing. We'll be getting into it a little bit more. But how about this Nicodemus guy? Do we have any history on him? We'll take a look at that in a bit. This is the first time he's mentioned, but isn't the last time. We'll see that in a bit.

But see, those are good kind of questions to ask. What brought me to this point? What brought me to this point that I'm looking at, that I'm studying about? Because all that is a part of the context. It's all that is a part of what I'm bringing into this point where I'm studying. So that everything makes sense and I get the full depth of what's going on. Ever walk into a conversation that you haven't been a part of and somebody says something and it's like, oh boy. And what happened? You didn't get the context. You didn't hear what was said prior.

And we want to make sure as we look at this, we understand what has happened prior. And basically, you could spend days, months in Scripture just digging up that history, couldn't you? Everything that has happened to bring Jesus to this place, where is that now? And even though this is the first time Nicodemus has shown up on the scene. It tells us some things about them. We'll look at it in a little bit and you can do some digging on that. Let's move on to the next thing.

Okay, are they under the dispensation of law or the dispensation of grace in the context here? Remember we did a kind of a study on dispensations? Which one? Tom? We're looking at the law but we're not talking about the dispensation of somebody in Boston. Okay. I hear you. Okay. Okay, we're looking, Tom says, we're looking at the law. Anybody disagree? Affirmations? Does that make sense? This is the law, and this is frankly an area where you find a lot of Christians going off in different directions.

It will radically impact how you interpret passages, in some cases more than others. But if you look at things from the law as applying now, directly, then you could end up with conclusions like, boy, I had better get building that temple right now. You might come to the conclusion that if you read Haggai, that's your number one priority. You better get building.

You see that? So discerning this question is important. Are those who believe at this time in Christ He's going to be talking about believing. Are those who believe at the time this was writing about, are they in Christ? Yes? They're looking forward to it.

Ah, okay. Alright. There hasn't been any spiritual baptism. Ah, okay. If we look at the phrase, in Christ, and one of the handy things these days with these, you know, computer CDs and whatnot is you can put word pairs and phrases in, not just like a concordance where you look for individual words, and you can look for in Christ. And one of the things you'll find out is it didn't show up yet. Yeah, Tom? Yeah, they're asking the question in Acts 1, verse 6.

Are we going to nail the Romans now? Is now the time you're going to establish your kingdom? Are we finally going to push them out? I mean, that's what we thought was going to happen, right? Good point. Just kind of getting a sense of what am I talking about now? Because sometimes Christians can get real mushy on this subject, and you end up with an understanding that's skewed. Alright, do the other Gospels have this same account? I see a head shaking. Winnie? No. And how would you check that out? Pardon? Okay, go back and look.

Is there an efficient way to do that? A Harmony of the Gospels is one. Various people have come up with a Synoptic Gospels. I've got one by Thomas and Gundry that I use. What would be another way to find out if other... A concordance, okay. Nicodemus, good point. Alright, and what would be another way? Internet, computer, alright. And what would be another way? No fair. Ask Winnie.

How about cross-references? A lot of your Bibles, if they've got a cross-reference column or footnotes on the bottom, the cross-references will tell you the other passages where that applies to. You look at it and there aren't any cross-references to Matthew and Mark and Luke. Probably aren't any, especially if you look down the whole passage and you say, hey, none of this corresponds. Some Bibles will also, in the Gospels, give the corresponding sections in the other Gospels.

So those can be helpful. See, the bottom line is there's about a half dozen ways you can answer that question, even aside from asking Vern, right? So you can get a sense, is there something else that I have that helps me understand this? It will be a part of answering the question, what happened before, too, won't it? One of the things we find out is that what happened prior to this is Jesus had driven out the money changers. So he'd already done something radical early in his ministry. Now let's ask some questions.

What about John? Who's John? He writes this gospel. Who is he? That's one good point. If I look him in a concordance, what am I going to find? John the Baptist, right? Good point. One of the things that you'll find that's interesting is here's a book that's called The Gospel of John. John's name is not in it except for John the Baptist. John the Apostle's name is not in the book. Only in the title.

Interesting, huh? How would you find out about John? This is the guy that wrote it. You want to know about who is writing this thing. How would you find out? Tom? Okay, so the other Gospels will mention his name directly. That's one good way to find out. Good point. Okay. All right. Anything else? How else would you look that up? Some commentaries and what else? Ah, he wrote other books. What were the other books that John wrote about? 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, Revelation. 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, Revelation. So you've got four of the books.

Something else I would suggest, and there's various versions of it, even some that are like public domain. They've been around long enough, but just a Bible dictionary can be real handy. because you can look up people and places and items and names and things like that.

So part of this asking questions in the same way that our friend Colombo, without the cigar, is going to say, OK, I got a question. Where do I get that question answered? We're doing the same thing, aren't we? We're going through and saying, OK, I've got a question. That's fine. Now, how do I get an answer to that? And so we're going to keep looking.

So that's why I keep asking, where would you find it? Where would you find it? Because that's the tool that you need to have. When I ask a question, where do I get the answer to the question? So that's what you need to be thinking about. Let's ask this.

Why is John writing? Let's assume that every writer writes for a reason. Why is John writing? This is a fairly long piece of writing, and he's writing in Greek. Why would he write this whole thing in Greek? Alright, he's going to tell us a bunch of things. Let me suggest to you John 20, 31. This is where he says these things are written that you might... So that would be one. And in there he says if everything that Jesus did was written, I imagine that you run the oceans dry. You couldn't fill all the books. The bottom line is he's giving us a critical sampling, a sampling of critical items that he's conveying to us here. So this is not, you know, every single jot and tittle, but this is a concentration of key events and sayings.

OK. OK. All right. John. Right, right, John the Baptist. Yeah, it's about John the Baptist. Yes, John the Baptist. Okay? Now, who is he writing about in this passage? Who is he writing about in this passage? Is he writing about Jews, Greeks, Romans? Who is he writing about in this passage? What's this passage about?

Jews, okay. And why would you conclude that he's writing about Jews? No, the Pharisees, or all the Pharisees were Jews. Okay, alright, so that's one reason, it's just the Pharisees, okay. And why else would you conclude this is a very Jewish context? What else would make...

He's the ruler of the Jews. Okay, so he's the ruler of the Jews, and what else would lead you to think this is a very Jewish context? Well, because Jesus is a Jew and he called him Rabbi. Ah, Jesus is a Jew, calls Him Rabbi. That sounds pretty Jewish.

Alright, and where are they? We already concluded they were in Jerusalem. And what time was this? This was Passover. This is about as Jewish as you can get. Okay? So this is real Jewish. And that's important for us to remember, isn't it? We're going to be looking. Anything that is said will be said in the context of Jewishness. Okay?

There are things that I could tell you in this room that in some groups I wouldn't want to say. for fear of my life. I go over to a mosque over in Mecca and start saying some of the words I've said this morning and I'd be dead in 30 seconds. The context that you're saying things in counts. I can say to you, I believe in the second coming and you know what I mean, but I can go over to a mall over here not too many miles away and say it out loud and 30 people might hear me and none of them have the foggiest idea what I'm talking about.

And what is it? It's context. That's what makes the difference. That's why you understand they don't. It's context. Same thing here. What Jesus and Nicodemus are saying to each other is in a context, and we have to understand that to interpret it correctly. Paul could not have the same conversation with the philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens. Couldn't do it because it's why? In a different context.

Okay. How does John refer to himself in this gospel? Now that we're asking questions about John. This goes back to some of what Tom was saying. Okay. Here we go. More to pass out here. So I told you that John doesn't mention himself by name, but John does mention himself several times.

If the name John shows up in the Gospel of John, it's not John, it's John the Baptist. It's not John the Apostle, it's John the Baptist. What you see here is that John had a few other terms for himself that he varies and mixes. He calls himself the other disciple, the other disciple whom Jesus loved, the other disciple several times, and then in one instance he calls himself another disciple, that disciple who was another disciple, was known to the high priest, we'll get into that in a bit, and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, that disciple whom Jesus loved, you see the pattern there? So John never refers to himself by name, but he uses this kind of identification. And it's an interesting thing, as you read through the Gospels, it's like nobody wants to talk about themselves.

And this ends up being a critical issue, as we'll see here in a minute. Now let's dig into the passage a little bit. We've talked about context, we've talked about who John is, And since I eventually would like to get done, I haven't gone into all the details, but we've talked about where would you find things, right? Now, John 3, verse 1. You read just that first verse, and here's one of the questions that comes up. What is a Pharisee? What's a Pharisee? Yeah, Tom? There we go. It is not a car dealership in Colorado Springs. I venture to say not. How would you find out what a Pharisee is? Look it up. Look it up where?

Okay? You could look it up in a concordance and see all the places where the word Pharisees come up, and that'll show you how the Pharisees interacted in each context, and that would give you an education by itself, because it comes up repeatedly in all the Gospels and into the Book of Acts.

And who was a Pharisee that wrote a good portion of the New Testament? Huh? Well, then they were rulers, yes. But Paul was a Pharisee, okay? Turns out, and on the flip side of the handout, this is the one with all the colors on it, is a kind of a quick summary on Pharisees. And so that summary kind of gives you an idea. There was in ballpark about 6,000 Pharisees during the time of Christ.

And these were specialists in the law. They were one of a number of religious slash political groups. What were some of the others? Again, context counts. The Sadducees was another group. Good. Can you think of another? The Scribes was another kind of group. The Scribes, I mean, it was just like copying.

As a matter of fact, their name actually means counters. in the original, because they would sit there and count the letters and count the words, and at the end of each book they would write down, it's this many words, it's this many letters, it's this many to the middle, and they would endlessly count to make sure this chapter had this many and this chapter had that many and this, letters and numbers, and if it was not right, they would be, because they couldn't just do the little undo tab, you know, on the computer, They would have to actually trash the scroll. Yes, they would destroy it. They would destroy the scroll if it was an error. They had formulas as to the ink that they used and procedures that they went through. It was all very heavily spelled out.

What's another group? We mentioned the Sadducees, so we've got the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Scribes. Are there other groups? The Essenes, yes, and they're a group that you don't find by name mentioned in Scripture. There are places in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, and you have heard that it was said, some of those, you have heard that it was said, is the Essenes' teachings. But they were kind of a group that pulled off to the side, pulled out of society, and so you didn't hear about them a lot, and the name is not mentioned. Okay, and what's another group?

One of the disciples was called Simon the Zealot. So the Zealots were like, hey, we're for Israel, and these blasted Romans, we're going to carry on guerrilla warfare against these guys. So here's another group, and their inclination is a little more towards the political end, isn't it? Another political group, the Herodians. Caharad was a guy that had a lot of influence there. There was a family line that had been there since before Christ was born. Several generations in Scripture are mentioned. So that's another group. So here's the Pharisees, just one of these various religious slash political groups that was active there in Israel.

We easily fall into it, don't we? Sure, and habits we don't even think about. I could wear my tie in such a way you'd all be looking at me funny. And where have you seen a rule about here's where all the ties are supposed to be worn? But we catch up on those and that's a good point. We easily develop them.

So here's the Pharisees. Aside from what I've handed out, and I gave a reference for this, you could also look up again in a Bible dictionary. That'll tell you about Pharisees. I handed out a CD earlier. And I'm trying to, I think it was Pharisees, maybe another. Anyway, I did a search on one of these questions I had here, either Pharisees or Nicodemus, 200 hits on the CD. So the point being, there's lots of information on there and lots of different files as well. people have written whole books on the subject. What was a Pharisee? So you could dig into what was a Pharisee and have a far better understanding of what were these guys. Now, here's another one. It says in that verse, it says a man. Now, is that a male or just a person?

Yeah, how would you check that out? How would you find that out? Huh? Okay, and it's just generic, and how did you know that? Okay, but how did you find it out? She had the inner linear, right? Okay, so you could look it up in inner linear if you recognize the Greek letters. And what's another source that would tell you that this is anthropos meaning, you know, person. Right, and what else could you look up? Where else could you find that? Okay, but how would you find that that particular word is is anthropos? You'd have to know to look it up in Vine.

A strong concordance would help you, and also the complete Word Study New Testament that we're looking at. So you could look at any of those, and that would help you determine, is this a person, or is this specifically a man? Now, we happen to know otherwise, that he was a man, male, because he was on the Sanhedrin, which we'll ask a question about in a bit. But in some cases, that may make a difference in how you interpret things. In this case, it's not as critical. Here's another one. Nicodemus.

What does his name mean? How would you find that out? How would you find out what his name means? Bible dictionary might help with that. And sometimes just looking up in the Complete Word Study New Testament may be another thing that would give you a clue. Good, good point. It's one that has found its way into some of the Book of Names, and that may be another source.

It happens to mean ruler of the people. Nicodemus, ruler of the people. Which bits? Because he's a Pharisee who is a ruler of the people. Why is Nicodemus only mentioned in the Gospel of John? If I start looking this up in a concordance, there are multiple references to Nicodemus. The Gospel of John is the only one that mentions him. How come? Matthew is actually written pretty well to the Jews as well, and his name doesn't show up there.

Is there another reason we might come up with? You're onto something, But we need to nail it down. Yeah. I'd like to suggest something that might give us an insight. If we want to find out more about Nicodemus, what we find out is that it's all in the Gospel of John, about him personally. We can find out about Pharisees and the Sanhedrin and the rulers of the Jews, but if we want to find out about Nicodemus, it's there in the Gospel of John. Let's take a look at a passage that I think gives us a clue. And I scratched out here Roman because it's actually not in the original text.

So the cohort and the commander and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him. This is out in the Garden of Gethsemane, actually a few years later. And led him to Annas first for he was father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year. Incidentally, the ossuary, the bone box of Caiaphas has been found and located, been identified. Historically confirmed. Now Caiaphas was one who had advised the Jews that it was expedient for one man to die on behalf of the people. How's that for something to say? Now, here's the thing to get into.

Simon Peter was following Jesus and so was, remember, another disciple. Who's another disciple? John, okay. Now that disciple, that disciple meaning another disciple, was known to the high priest and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest. And look what John does. But Peter was standing at the door outside. Why? Because Peter had no clout.

But so the other disciple, John, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the doorkeeper and brought Peter in. John knew the high priest. He was a high priest family and was well enough known that he was even known to the doorkeeper and they had the clock to get Peter in. John was connected with these guys at a high level. You see that? He was able to pull something out. Peter otherwise couldn't get in, right? Peter is otherwise outside. Strange, huh? Yes, yeah. Well, Israel is full of contradictions, and this is a strange one, isn't it?

But what you find is, here's Nicodemus, who's connected, and you find he's only listed in the Gospel of John. John is also the one that keeps saying, you don't see it in this context, but you see it, he has information on Caiaphas was the one who advised the Jews it was expedient for one man to die for the people, and he also keeps saying in other contexts that Caiaphas was the one who served as high priest that year. because they took turns each year. He has inside information and gives specifics on the high priests and the people in the Sanhedrin that the other Gospels don't give. If you keep following on, here's Nicodemus. When was the last time we read about Nicodemus? Yeah, after the crucifixion, there's Nicodemus and who else?

Joseph of Arimathea. And it turns out, you look at which Gospels list Joseph of Arimathea, who is also one of the Sanhedrin, and there's two Gospels and one of them is John. So this John knows a lot about these people. He's connected and able to get people in. So this is why John tells you about Nicodemus. and a bunch of other details about the Sanhedrin and the high priest, and then the others of them don't. He's got connections, and it's some kind of family connections, apparently, because he's able to just, you know, face and name recognition.

Oh, yeah, you're in. You want to come into the palace of the high priest? Yeah. Okay? Interesting, huh? Okay, so that's why we're hearing about Nicodemus here, and no other gospel has it. John knows the guy. All right, that's enough for today. We didn't get through half of what I wanted to, but that's all we can do. Unless you want to stay after. But anyway, let's call it good, okay?

Lord Jesus, we do thank you. Your word is indeed full of depth and riches. We could spend the days even digging into what's in this first verse. We just thank you that in it is not only just lots of facts and information, but the very salvation that we are in such desperate need of, and life with you, and we just thank you for it. In Jesus' name, Amen.