Language II: Grammar & Figures of Speech
Randy Peterman · Oct 26, 2008
How to Study Bible (2008), No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926114533138

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

All right, well, this morning we're going to cover grammar, which is honestly a topic that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about as an adult, unless the Microsoft Office software tells me otherwise. Just for clarity's sake, last week we talked about, or my dad taught on word meanings and how to determine more deeply the words and understand what they mean from the Greek or the Hebrew and really maximize your understanding of the words. To contrast that, I wanted to talk about grammar and or define grammar. Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the rules governing the use of any natural language. So when we talk about grammar in the Bible, we need to understand English grammar as we're reading the translations we have.

Greek grammar. and we'll talk about some of the tools that are available for that in a few moments. And Hebrew grammar. Now I will tell you that of people who could teach you about Hebrew grammar at all, I am not one of them. I took Greek in seminary and I never got around to taking Hebrew, so I am not going to try to come up with something to tell you about it because I would be faking it or lying, which is not good for Sunday school class, or anywhere else for that matter. But grammar also is intertwined and importantly integrated with language. You have to understand the words, but the words are not separate from the grammar.

So just because last week you learned some good tools on how to dig deeper into the words doesn't mean you can ignore grammar. In fact, there's places... No, no, no. Greek words, you can't just rely purely when you're doing the observation stage. Remember we talked observe, interpret, apply? You cannot just do a word study and then jump to interpretation. It's also important to consider the grammar or the way the words interact with one another.

Yeah. It can make some things that may be seen clear, much clearer. That's a verb. It's great if you have what they call it. You see a parsing. It's like parts which is a term. It means you define the subject for all parts of speech. And you can. I mean, that's really that opens the door so much. Sure. A combination of the word meanings and where they fit in the sentence.

On the next page, we're going to actually go over the verbs and the nouns, and we're going to take a look at one particular piece of scripture in Ephesians 2 that is really pivotal. By the way, if you've got your handout books, we're on page 15. But it's important to understand the grammar and understand how the languages work based on the structure and the rules that are part of the language.

One of the questions I have here that I've written for myself to ask you is why would we look at grammar? We use English grammar, at least in most common conversation, naturally as adults. So we don't think about it. But why would we look at grammar? What does grammar reveal to us? What does it highlight? author's intent was and what his purpose was in writing a particular book of the Bible. So the only way you can really come to grips with that is to understand the grammar of the time so you know what actually his actual meaning was and what he really meant. And that's why we have so many denominations today because there's a lot of ways Yes, the truth has revealed. You all right? Okay.

A slightly humorous example, but one that I think is important, is have you received in your inbox for your email spam from the notorious Nigerian 419 spammers where it's you know I am you know the the minister of such-and-such who is the you know somehow related to this person who has money and that person wants to transfer money to somebody else but they want to use your account to do it maybe you've gotten one of those messages okay I work in in the mail industry and it's my job so you don't get that but periodically it gets through. The The nature of those emails is always humorous to me because the grammar is horrendous.

But they don't speak English natively normally, and if they did, they probably failed some classes. But part of what I find amusing about that is that they're trying to communicate the concept, and if you read it, you can generally understand what they're saying, but they're not obeying all the rules of grammar. One of the things that's neat about studying the scriptures is that the Greek language is very consistent about its grammar. And so it's very easy to learn the grammar and follow the structure of the grammar and start to be able to piece together how the sentences were structured. Because if the word order was less of an issue, it had more to do with the way that the words, the word is morphology, but that's not easy to describe, the way that the words had their prefixes and suffixes and were compounded in the tenses that were involved. And that was what brought a lot more depth or brings more depth into understanding the grammar in the language.

I'm not going to delve into that further. Let's go through this bullet point list here that's on the first page. For most, the goal is to understand God's Word and not become expert grammarians nor to become fluent in Greek or Hebrew. Grammar is only a step along the way.

When I'm using when I'm doing Bible study and I'm doing the observation step, I'm always using references. I brought a stack of references which I've moved off the table so that everybody could sit around the table. But we'll go over those if there's there's more time after we run through the few pages that are here. But there's great texts, and you can look it up. You don't have to memorize all of the grammar things so that you have them mastered to start using it. And the cool thing is that as you use it, you'll start to memorize how those things work.

One example that I found really common in discussions amongst believers is the discussion of things like, is that Aorist tense? That's the one Greek tense that most believers, especially around here at Holly Hills where we're concerned about our position, the once-and-for-all nature of various tenets. That comes up. That's a grammatical rule that's part of the Greek language.

You don't have to memorize all of them, but they are great tools. And so that was good for me because I was like, shoot, I have more to memorize? You can do it slowly. You don't have to do it all at once. The basic message of scripture has been translated into English for us already. A lot of us have our Bibles here, and this week I remember mine, which is good.

Being translated into English means you've already got the advantage of hopefully being able to understand it in a language that you understand. But we can go and look at the grammar for greater insight potentially. One of the coolest things when I took my first seminary Greek class was that I came home and I was able to go into the Greek And I was just excited and elated to discover that it said exactly what my English translation said. It's not like your English translation is hiding a bunch of mysteries that the Greek would have revealed to you, but it's sometimes that there's insights that you can understand more deeply. But your English translation is probably not a bunch of junk that you should say, well, it's not reliable. There's good stuff there.

We need not carry all the information about grammar around in our heads, which I brought up with point number one. There's good references available. Many of the insights from studying the grammar of the original language of the Bible can be gained from a few key principles. The good thing is that learning a few key principles means that you're going to be able to deal with 80% of the situations by learning 20% of the rules.

The problem is that there are other areas where you don't want to just blindly apply everything. You need to be discerning. There are a bunch of different references. My dad's got a list here. I don't have all of them myself in my own library. I've got a stack that I've brought that are from my library.

How many of you have seen, there's one, there's a corresponding New Testament and Old Testament. This is the Complete Word Study of the Old Testament. It's also available in the New Testament. It's basically a really, really useful tool for starting to understand in this case, the Hebrew grammar and syntax, and how those worked.

This one's interlinear, so it also has the King James text with the Hebrew morphology. Again, the morphology has to do with tense and the implications of the way that the word was structured in the English. I'm sorry, in the Hebrew in this case, or the Greek. And then it's also got a lexicon and various English references as well in the back.

So this kind of a reference is really handy, both in the Greek and the Hebrew. I don't use this one as much because I don't understand the Hebrew morphology, but the Greek is really handy. For those of you who are like me who want really fast and easy lazy references, that's a joke, but there's no such thing as a lazy theological reference that's worth using. This is the linguistic and exegetical key to the Greek New Testament.

The Rogers family, this is a father and son, went through from Matthew to Revelation and they picked out generally key words in each verse. It's chapter by chapter, verse by verse. You can follow along with your Bible. And they picked out key words and put together rather terse notes about what makes that word significant in the context of the verse or the passage and why you might want to do further study on that word.

But it's really handy. I don't know if you guys want to pass this around. We can look at it afterwards. It will be in my recreation. Actually, he's the CEO of this company. So yes, it's related. It's based on his work. I mean, it's so overwhelming when you think about it. Even for the rest of your life, it's a table and study. And then you get another one. And here's the thing.

Instead of feeling like it's overwhelming, because that was my first thought, The way I look at it is an exciting opportunity to see the character of God in His revealed Word, His infinite nature and His infinite character being revealed in His Word, so that we can continue to study and learn. The observation and the interpretation are subjective, not subjective. So there is a clear intended purpose and meaning, but the application and the appropriation could be indefinite, as long as you're alive. And as history and culture and technology changes, the application or appropriation might change as well.

But the nicest thing would be, it's not that you go through the whole Bible and spend your whole lifetime going through every word, say, possible, but if somebody tells you something, or you hear something, you can double check and go back to the scripture.

These are similar. This is the Greek lexicon, which tends to be more of a dictionary, but this is, and this is what Stan was referring to, Zodiates, the complete word study dictionary. This is one that I strongly, strongly recommend every believer consider getting. It actually is key to the King James Version of the Bible, but it goes into the grammar and the language of each word, and then it also tries to do a brief reference and grouping of the different Bible, New Testament in this case, Bible study passages that have that word and the way that that word can be used grammatically. So it's a pretty neat tool. Again, it's not the only tool you should ever use, but it's a really useful tool to have in your library.

Instead of going to the verbs, because I haven't had it, but if you go to the Greek and the Hebrew, You can look at, supposedly, the ending of the verb, and you can tell whether it's a preposition, or a participle, or whether it's pretty nominative, or whether it's active, or present, or passive, all that stuff. Well, instead of having to know all that to go through and learn Hebrew or Greek, you can actually go to that, and it makes reference, I think Dan will probably do this, makes reference to Strong's. And you actually can look up one of the little numbers, go to the Strong's, what that word says. If you go to a verb, which is so fun to read, and you just look up the verb, and you go back to the sociatus, and it tells you how, like, aorist, it'll tell you aorist subjective, for example. You can go to the back of that book, and it'll tell you every place it says the verb is aorist subjective, this is what it means. It's usually simple, completed action of the past. So that would be in the background.

So this is a really good resource. It's not that you have to forget them. The way that I've learned to approach this is to get your foundational understanding in place and get comfortable with the tools on that level. Talk to someone else who might have experience and then dig a little deeper or find other resources or read some of the prefaces and how to use this book stuff in here. I don't exhaust the resources that are available just in this one published book. There's more that could be done with it.

Often it's a limitation of my time and not that the resources aren't there. That's one of the things that I think as a believer is fascinating is we live in a time and an age where we have so many resources. and their beliefs. continually come out with more and more and more and more and yet they keep going back to the scriptures and they find out that they are consistent that they do mean the same thing that they were written by 66 authors but yet they're all saying basically the same message just in a different way and to a different time and a different maybe purpose but yet it can be broken down through all these books and then still holds true you wouldn't be able to do that with the Well, the Jehovah's Witnesses have a totally different translation. In fact, it ignores the rules of grammar, which is an interesting problem. They swung by my house this week, and I was in the middle of something at work.

I didn't have a chance to talk with them. The problem is that they believe I'm a liar from Satan, so they don't listen to a word I say. Well, if you're not a Jehovah's Witness, then they think you're their liar from Satan, You know, if I say something and you believe I'm a liar from Satan, it doesn't matter how true that statement is, you're going to go, liar from Satan, liar from Satan, he's got nothing good for me. And so you can't make any headway with them on that level.

You have to present, you have to get to know them and present grace and live it out and establish something with them beyond a theological argument most of the time. Not all the time, because the Lord, the Holy Spirit is the one that draws people to salvation.

Anyways, that's a rabbit trail that I would love to get onto, but let's move to the next page, page 16. We're going to take a look at Greek verbs, or words of action, or being. As Stan mentioned, and I'm sure that all of us have discovered in one way or another, use in a sentence matters a lot. A verb is important because it conveys action, but also with the Greek, when we dig deeper into the verb words, like we talked about aorist being one of the examples, the tense of the word matters because it brings with it a weight and a sense of who's doing it. Is God doing something to you and it's passive? That's an important thing. Do I have to do this, or is God doing it? God's doing it. Oh, I can rest. Imagine that. But you have the verb that carries with it.

Now, the example sentence is from Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, and you can turn there in your Bibles or just print it out. But Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, he says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not as a result of works so that no one may boast. The Greek word translated you have been saved is sozo or sozo like the word also translated you have been saved in verse 5 in a form that conveys you plural okay the all and a completed past action with ongoing results on into the future implying permanence. One of the places where grammar matters a lot, and I don't want to go into rabbit trail with this, so if we start to get way off track I'm just going to rein it in, but I want to bring it up because it's important.

What is the gift of God? Looking at the grammar, is it the grace or the faith that is the gift of God? you need to look at the grammar and take a deeper look. Take a deeper look at the grammar and look at the structure of the language and the words. Is the faith the gift of God or is the grace a gift of God?

And that's an important thing. Theologians have argued back and forth. Well, that's the position that we hold. The theologians have argued back and forth whether it's faith or grace. The position that we hold at Holly Hills, and I think makes most sense, obviously, that's why I hold the position, is that it's the grace that is the gift. Some people would say, well, I'm waiting for God to give me the gift of faith.

It's kind of a contorted view of that. I haven't been given the gift of faith, so I can't believe. Yeah, well, and one of the consequences, and that's really what we want to look at, is if you don't do the looking at the grammar, we don't look at the structure and the language, the consequences can be pretty severe. Because, you know, it's one thing is that if the gift is faith, that means that I can't believe until God gives me the gift of faith, so that God is choosing to not give me faith, and he's therefore not giving me the gift of salvation.

Well, what is saved, then, in this sense? The word saved. I'm almost thinking that it was referring to saved. Well, salvation is a result of the grace through faith. Saved through faith. This is the rabbit trail. But the issue as we look at the grammar and see this, being saved from the consequences of sin and death? Are you not asking what the definition of saved is?

Or are you asking... No, I'm just trying to figure out what you're asking, the sentence structure. Well, I'm not actually literally asking it, it's a rhetorical question for a future study. But what I'm trying to do is point out the fact that the grammar matters because it builds sentence diagramming and building the sentence structure and understanding how all that works helps us understand and clarify the meaning and the intent of the author. Because it impacts your theology, because by one assertion that the gift is grace, then only God has the authority to give us grace for salvation. If God is the one giving us, or by authority gives us the gift of faith, then if I don't believe it's God's fault. I'm not asserting that's true, I'm saying that's a consequence of a misinterpretation because you didn't look at the grammar.

So what's the antecedent? What would you place it with? If grace is a gift to God or faith is a gift to God, it's a question that, and actually I think I have something actually from Hal that I might bring in next week. I think he diagrammed this sentence, and it's very clearly that it really has to, it can be placed by grace, not by faith. When you ask it the grammar who is having grace and who is having faith?

Yes well you could say that but I'm not yeah the thing is that you're the one believing it. By virtue of being created in his image he gave us the ability to have faith but But again, when we look at this, you can see how grammar matters. It's not just a simple thing where, ah, grammar. Grammar-shmammer. You know, you've got to care about it.

Because we've got more to go on, I'm going to stop there and leave that with all of the loose threads. This is the Complete Word Study Dictionary and the main editor was Spiros Zodiatis but if you look up on Amazon.com or if you go to your bookstore and say the Complete Word Study dictionary.

If they don't have it, then you should be able to get it online. The other one is the Old Testament. You don't want that one. Yeah, I don't have that one. Let's see our time. We're going to make sure we keep going. Number two on page 16 here is the New Testament Greek has a form of verb known as imperative.

The imperative verb almost always carries the sense of must, as in you, plural, must love one another, in 1 Thessalonians 4.9. In the English translations there are places that might come across either more forceful than the Greek implies or less forceful than the Greek text implies. For example Matthew 28 19 go therefore and make disciples go is not an imperative and actually has the sense of as you are going But make disciples is an imperative If you've heard, you know Matthew 28 19 uses the Great Commission It's kind of like you need to go out and do this.

You need to be making disciples wherever you go Or you need to be you need to go out specifically to make disciples rather than wherever you go make disciples and what's interesting is I've had some discussions with various people who have different opinions on evangelism and I'll say if the Lord puts me next to somebody on an airplane because I travel to Texas relatively regularly for work if somebody puts me on an airplane and I'm there and I have the opportunity to share the gospel I'm going to share the gospel and then I'll give them my email address or whatever try to keep in contact with them Here's my phone number.

But if I don't keep in contact with them for whatever reason they choose not to stay in contact with me, that's fine. I'm going to attempt to make disciples of them by staying in communication. I need to be responsible to train them up as well on some level or help them find a church where they can get trained up.

Because he says make disciples, imperatively. You know, that's a sense, and we can go over the dispensational discussion over whether or not this applies to believers. But the verb tense for imperative, it's important to see that the go is not the imperative part, because you are going to be going. unless you're an invalid or you're one of those computer geeks who spends his day in his basement like I do. You're going to be going and I still get out of the house periodically so I am going on occasion.

But Christ says make disciples and that's the imperative. Number three on here is Greek nouns. Words that are persons, places, concrete or abstract things such as the truth. They have a definite article, the equivalent to the English word the. The pen, the paper, the cup of coffee. When we deal with mounds, it's important for us to understand the mounds, simply because as we talked about before, you need to find out who this applies to when we talk about our interpretation.

And we joked around about Judas went out and hung himself, therefore Go ye and do likewise. Actually, I think the first place I heard that was from Kurt's dad. But I'm sure you grew up hearing that on some level. What? Go hang yourself? No, no. Well, you did imply that on a few occasions as well when I sang about Kurt's sister. Well, no, no. What we're saying is that out of context, that's what happened to Judas. If you just say, I need to do what the Bible says, and you see Judas did it, Well, Judas hung himself. It's my turn. No. You have to have context and you need to look at the noun. Knowing the nouns is important. Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. If you're listening to the recording, do not hang yourself. The noun is important.

Because it gives us, lets us understand the concepts based on topic and understanding. The proof text or example text here is John 14, 6. Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. The definite article, the word the, is put there in the English, the way, the truth, the life. for our ease of reading and understanding.

But actually, in the Greek, may or may not be there or implied. So it's handy to be able to look at your language resources and determine, hey, what part of this? If you have the opportunity while you're sitting in the pew waiting for the service to start or it's over and you've got a moment, many of the pew Bibles or the New Testaments are actually interlinear. And you can open it up and look and see just here at church, hey, you know, this is a Greek word with an English parallel, and sometimes there'll be two Greek words with one English parallel, and sometimes there'll be several English words with one Greek parallel, but it's interesting to see how the two grammars are similar, but they're not identical. So we need to make sure that when we're looking at the nouns that we're looking for the definite articles and we're looking at the details.

I'm going to read part of the last paragraph on this page 16 here. Each of the definite articles are also there in the Greek text so that Jesus' emphasis was upon the singularity and the specificity of the way, the truth, the life, and the Father rather than the character or quality of each.

Okay, so he's not speaking about truth in general, he's talking about the truth. He's not speaking about a way to heaven, he's talking about the way to heaven. We can talk about various cults, well they believe there is a very specific way to go to heaven, and you don't know it. Because you're not doing their thing. Which is why I would say, what is truth? Sure.

He's speaking very generally, but it's, you know... It's saying that he would refer to what Jesus said when he said the truth. So, by the same, what is truth as a particular... Yeah, he's bringing out the... As a particular thing. Yeah. Not as a generic generality, but it is a specific thing. Yeah, it is a specific thing.

When you're dealing with For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't believe in hell. So if you don't convert over to being a Jehovah's Witness, the worst case scenario, your soul is snuffed out and you disappear. You don't go to hell. Well, that matters.

That's a very specific thing. Because we believe that there is a hell. It is real. It's a noun. It's a place, and that matters. But when you start looking at nouns, the nouns matter. You start looking at definite articles with nouns, and that brings, grammatically, that brings some sway to the text.

It helps you understand, are we talking about the principle? Are we talking about the thing? I'm going to go get some coffee if I make that general statement. What am I talking about? Let's make sure we understand the concept. If I say I'm going to go get coffee... What does that mean?

Now, Kurt happens to know me and my coffee habits. So he's going to go find some green beans. He's going to roast them in his roaster. And he's going to grind them in his bird grinder to a certain ground size. He's going to put his French press. He's going to put the water at 190 degrees. He's going to pour it into the right level and get the perfect mix versus whatever 7-Eleven is spooning out.

You have context. You have grammar. You have things. it's important to take into consideration the grammar because that helps you understand if I'm saying I'm going to get some Starbucks coffee or I'm going to go to Peaberry. All of those things, you have nouns that bring depth to the sentence.

John 14? 14.6? Okay, yeah. Sure. Oh yeah, it's definitely a description of his role in history. That's what I was trying to impact. And I just wondered by what you said there whether I had to break that down further. No, and I think that's... Those are all characteristics of Christ that are also very specific things too. And that's part of the importance of the theology of who Christ is, is the definite article actually, you know, looking at the grammar gives us a very specific knowledge of who Christ was in the timeline of history. Actually, the least translation of this verse has the Christ as the singular truth, the singular way, the singular life. So that the is very very important. more emphasis on, and I would imagine that if you look it up, that is, I am. I am, yes. He's even making it more specific. I am, as God, am, the only way, the only truth, and the only life.

Yeah, and that's a fantastic and important example of the consequences of grammar on your theology. Because if you make it more generic, then who's Jesus? Well, he's a really nice guy. Well you're saying you're the only way. Your religion is the only way to heaven. Jesus said it very explicitly and there's not an ambiguity about it. It's very explicit.

We're almost out of time, so I want to take just a few moments to take a look at figures of speech that's on page 17 there. Some of these you're going to be familiar with, and some of these are probably lesser in familiarity. The first one is, for example, a simile, 1 Peter 5.8, Be of sober spirit, be on the alert, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion. So it's good to understand that the Greek has a similar structure to our English to make comparisons like that. It's important that you can make the distinguishment that this is a simile rather than explicitly saying that Satan is a lion.

In other instances, the figure of speech may be unique to the culture in or to which it was written. One figure of speech pattern that is used in both Old and New Testament is this. The work of God in the physical realm, such as in creation, is often spoken of as being done by God's hand, or is called the work of His hands. And there's some example passages, Job 10, Psalm 19, 1.

It's the work of God's hand. Does God have hands? No. He did in the incarnate Christ, but He is spirit. God is spirit. So the work of his hands is a reference for our finite minds to be able to fathom the infinite God in our context. Yeah, it's a personification. When God does something in the spiritual realm, it is spoken of not made with hands. Made without hands are similar terms.

Let's step back. There's some text there. Let's step back. When we talk about the book of Revelation, you're going to see Christians respond in all different ways. You're going to either find people who are prophecy junkies who love it, or you're going to find people who are scared.

I personally used to be scared spitless of Revelation because it was full of figurative language. And I did not feel like I had the cultural and historical tools and knowledge to be able to deal with the robust language. Now, as I've learned from God's Word and I've learned from good teachers, it happens that much of Revelation quotes the Old Testament. So you need to go back to the Old Testament and also understand what the authors were saying there.

And you start to learn that, oh, I have tools. This isn't scary. I need to be able to go and look at the references and find out what the grammar might be or is this a figure of speech? What's happening in the text? But it becomes a whole lot less scary when you realize, oh, I've been given tools. I've got a consistent method. I can deal with it. Bud?

One of the revelations I've heard too is it's symbolic. You can't, you know, literally take all of it simply because it's symbolic. It's telling you something, but that's all it is. Yeah, it's all in symbols and I can't know what they are. Well, and the thing is that it's inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Why would God waste his time on utter confusion? Hey, I'm going to give you utter confusion. Let's finish this off with chaos and confusion. Is that the character of God? Not at all. Instead, we say, oh, God had an intended purpose and meaning, and even, heaven forbid, that I actually have to put some effort into understanding the Bible. Why doesn't God spoon-feed everything to me so that I can be a babe in Christ? No. There's depth there. But you end up doing it because once you have faith, you long to learn more. Sure. Absolutely. You long to do it. Well, you should.

That should be part of what I think is neat is that as a believer, God draws me and He takes me in my process of sanctification. He says, right now, Randy, you're going to learn about grace. And so I learn about grace. And then I've learned about grace in a general overview sense, and God's going to specifically teach me elements of that over time. But then He makes me hungry and draws me to the next thing. Why? Because the Holy Spirit knows my innermost being.

He knows now is the time. Randy's going to announce, learn about this and study this. And Revelation You know, is now the time for studying Revelation? For some believers, no. For other believers, now is the time to study Revelation. But we've all, as believers, been given the Holy Spirit. And we've all, as believers, we've been given intellect to be able to study God's Word.

And it makes the book of Revelation where, yes, there's figurative language. Yes, there's comparison. It's not an insurmountable task. though some have, as Butter pointed out, some have said, oh, it's all figurative, you can't understand it. Well, yes, if you take the presupposition that it's all figurative and I can't understand it with you as you read through it, it will be figurative and you will not understand it. But that's not the same thing as systematically and methodically looking at it. We're almost done. The bell's going to ring soon. So I'm going to actually skip the last half of page 17. I'm going to cheat and jump to page 18.

Philippians 4, 8 and 9 here. Paul wrote, Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever honorable, whatever righteous, whatever pure, Whatever lovely, whatever of good repute, if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."

And you'll see in the brackets the word is put in there in our English translation for clarification. But this is poetry. Now here is one of the things that I love about God's Word. God's Word is full of all kinds of writing styles. There's poetry. One of the best, all-time best messages I've ever heard taught, as far as just presentation and communication of ideas, was actually in the Psalms. And the guy who was teaching it went over the literature aspect of it. This is poetry. And the grammar and the poetry...

Poetry and grammar are intimately linked because grammar normally has a prosaic structure, but when you're talking about poetry, Sometimes there are intentional breakings of the rules of grammar, and sometimes it's there as an artistic value to... I'm going to use the word exploit, but that could be negative. I'm using it in a positive sense. Exploit the grammar for communication.

When you read through the Psalms as a poetic book, as a believer, but as a believer reading a poetic book, there is beauty in the words. And it's inspiring on an emotional level to read the text of the scripture because it is artistically inspired by the Holy Spirit. I can't think of better art than art that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. And it is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I took a poetry class in college and I remember reading what was wonderfully descriptive language and it was awesome to read the descriptive, beautiful, eloquent language and say that was neat and it was man-made. But then to go into the scriptures and or maybe for example reading through Isaiah chapter 53. There's this poetic writing of the Messiah who is to come. I still cry when I read through that chapter because it's so intense.

But the grammar and the language there is bringing into it a poetic nature. And so it's important because it is poetic that we look at the grammar in the context of poetry. It's similar to figurative language where you want to make sure you're understanding this is poetic. There's going to be sometimes allegory intentional to describe something on two different levels just like we did with the simile with Satan as a roaring lion. It's going to be a comparison that is sometimes would be beyond what you would normally make of the comparison, but it's a richness of the language.

David writes about himself dying in the Psalms. Obviously he didn't literally die because he went on to write other Psalms, but the Lord gave him a prophetic vision of the Messiah. but it is poetic, and it is prophetic, and it's also rich, and you just need to, as a person studying it, looking at the grammar, looking at the language, you need to keep those things in context.

We should close, but before I do, I'm sorry, I missed one note on here which I should point out. So Paul left out the verb, the Greek equivalent of is, five times in a row for the poetry. So that's why there's the bracket for is on this page and why the word is in your English is for readability. It's not necessarily there in the Greek because it's part of a poetic form Paul chose to use.

We've covered all of, except for a small portion, all of what was in this handout. Are there any questions on grammar? Anything that's unclear? My sister says to me, she thinks that not everybody goes. Lots of people go, but I haven't. And I said, really?

And words truly are important, because it says no. It says so in the Bible. That will be very few that will go. It says that you cannot go unless you believe and go through Christ. If you believe in God, then everybody has to go through Christ. way it's written, it's so important, like you say, with words, to get that meaning, and that's really what it is, what you said. Most people, you know, think, well, who are we, you know, that everybody else is wrong, but ours is, but it tells you right from the word, you cannot go through, you cannot go to heaven unless you go through Christ, and it's so distinct the way they wrote it, so I guess, you know, it just tells you.

And I said that to my sister, hello. I used to not understand that either. But at a point when I found out that Jesus is God, then it all made sense. That was the piece of the puzzle that was missing. Because you can believe in Muhammad, you can believe in Buddha, you can believe in and what Dr. Smith has done in a lot of ways. And they may have been great people, but when you realize that Jesus was all God and all man, then that totally changes the concept. Because only God can forgive sin. So he came as man, and that's why this one is the only one that works. Because Jesus was God.

And until people understand that specific truth. Yeah. That truth. Singular. Yeah. That's probably why I like that term for it. It sings so well. It's real specific. You hear that and you didn't get it. It simply meant right. Yeah. It itself is the right dimension. Yeah.

Let's close in prayer and we can keep chatting if we need to, but let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that you just continue to impact our study of your word as we evaluate the grammar. Help us to see those things that your Holy Spirit may open our eyes to the value of how you structured the language for us to be able to know your intended meaning and purpose. Thank you, Jesus.