King's Banner Podcast
Welcome to King's Banner Podcast. We got tired of the same ole answers when we started looking for help when it came to our walks with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help you in your Christian walk.
King's Banner Podcast
Bible Study That Actually Changes You
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You can read the Bible for years and still slide past it like it’s background noise. We feel that tension and we name it: if we’re rushed, we’ll keep living on the same “highlighted” verses while whole books stay closed, confusing, or easy to dismiss. So we slow down and talk about what it looks like to approach Scripture like Jacob approaching God: a real wrestling match, where you expect to be challenged, corrected, and changed.
We start with a simple conviction from Psalm 19: God’s Word is not just information, it restores, warns, and reshapes us. From there we get practical about how to read the Bible for depth. We lay out three lenses for Bible interpretation and hermeneutics: lexical and syntactical (words and structure), theological and canonical (how the whole Bible informs the passage), and cultural and historical (stepping into their world without letting “culture” cancel the text). It’s a built-in set of guardrails against eisegesis, reading our agenda into Scripture.
Then we put the method to work in John 2, the wedding at Cana. Instead of stopping at “water into wine,” we notice why John calls it a sign, why a wedding matters in the Bible’s storyline, and how faith and obedience show up in the servants’ costly work before they see the miracle. We also talk about tools like commentaries, lexicons, and Blue Letter Bible, why context matters more than quick word studies, and how to keep reading so Scripture interprets Scripture.
If you want richer Bible study, clearer doctrine, and a way to read hard passages without dodging them, this one is for you. Subscribe, share it with a friend who’s stuck in the skim, and leave a review with the passage you want to learn how to read better.
New Studio And Life Updates
SPEAKER_01Hey everyone, welcome back to Navigate Podcast. You can see we're in our brand new studio. It looks fabulous. Congrats, uh, congrats to Fred on his amazing uh amazing skill at putting it together. This was a Fred ism. Yeah, it's definitely a Fredism, and I'm here for it. I'm here for it. It's pretty awesome. It's legit. Yeah. How are you doing? You know, I've been I've been doing all right. It's uh surviving. It's been, you know, just hit the ground running. Everything is busy and everything is good.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to children, pregnant wife, all the things. It's real life. Yes, it is. Yeah. You're surviving though. Good. Yeah. Okay. Now, what about what about you? You uh you've been on top of things? Yeah, doing good. It's been a crazy season, just working on planting, meeting a bunch of people. I feel like I'm uh like I'm um like a high school kid that's really ugly that gets turned down by a lot of girls on a daily basis. Like when we're just going out, inviting people, praying for people, talking to people. I feel like planting a church is getting very comfortable with rejection from the average person just all the time. You just like you get swole on it. You just keep going and you keep getting it. You don't exactly, exactly. But man, God's bringing together a really cool community, solid people, and never the people you think constantly blown away, like who God is bringing in, what they're what they're doing, the hearts of people, it's just awesome, man. It is also feels like everyone is pregnant, you know? Even the men. All of them.
SPEAKER_01It's it's wild. If you have a pregnant wife, sometimes you feel it. Yeah. Holla, you know?
Why Some Passages Feel Useless
SPEAKER_00What else? What are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_01Uh, so I want to talk about getting more out of the Bible. Like, um, my wife and I have been going through the Bible starting in Genesis, and like there's a lot of stuff you can get through from everything just going through, but you get to like first Kings, and it's talking about Solomon and how he's now the king, and he's you know, killing all the previous guys who were there, and it's like, what am I supposed to take from this in my day-to-day life?
SPEAKER_00So please just so when I take a new position, fire everyone. Yes, that's what most people do.
SPEAKER_01I mean, unfortunately, that can happen.
SPEAKER_00It's turnover, you know, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so yeah, so in general, like there's a lot of really good stuff in the Bible, but oftentimes we turn to those passages we know best. To like, oh, let's let's jump in.
SPEAKER_00Like most people do the thing too, where it's like if I have a bunch of stuff written down or underlined or like highlighted, I'll read all the stuff that I've highlighted or underlined, and then I'll skip the other sections and just keep you know what I mean. It's like you're going back to try to mine old fruit because you're just not in the mood.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's actually that specifically is one of the reasons among a couple others that I've been really hesitant to start highlighting in my Bible because I don't want to I'm gonna ruin it. I don't want to see a highlight on the other page and then skip this entire line of text.
Highlighting Versus Skipping Hard Texts
SPEAKER_00I gotta tell you, I gotta, I gotta push back a little bit. Oh, a hundred. All right, because I think um I think like reading the Bible is supposed to be like what Jacob did with God. You know what I mean? It's a wrestling match. You're gonna get hurt. It's yeah, it's me like, okay, I know there is something here. And I think the heart posture of like, all right, God, I'm not letting this go until you give me something. I'm not letting this go until you bless me. Like, that should be our posture. So I think um you can fall off the horse either side here, okay? But I would say if you have a Bible and you're not marking it up, you don't have a pen and a pad next to you, you're not doing stuff in the margins, you may not be wrestling. You may not be working through it or engaging it. I mean, even in a regular book that you're reading, you should uh you should be marking it up. You should be, you know, circling or underlining when there's statements that are made that are explaining, you know, what this chapter is about or the center of it. Like we we should do these things. Now, it could be that people just don't know how to read anymore. And I would highly recommend how to read a book by Mortimer Adler for anybody out there who is like, I want to get better at this, I want to learn how to get more out of the stuff I'm reading. How to read a book, fantastic book by Mortimer Adler. Um, I think it's mandatory reading at Dallas Seminary, actually, before you even get there, you got to read this book or you're gonna have a hard time with everything else. I just feel like the that's just an ironic book in general. It's funny to watch people see you reading it. You know, it's like, do you do you know what you're reading? Yeah. It's yeah, okay, but the other side of the horse is the person who spends so much time uh like systematizing how they read, uh 40,000 tabs, you know, 36 colors, everything is this way and that. Like, I don't, I feel like you're spending more time on your system than maybe actually trying to wrestle and pull stuff out of it. Maybe not. Maybe those people are just freaking on it and getting after it, you know. But and it but whatever you gotta do to get to a place where you're wrestling with the word of God and getting after it, yeah, do that. You know, do that.
SPEAKER_01You actually we kind of talked about this recently, yeah. And you told me, um, you know, if if you are not highlighting your Bible, you're not leaving a legacy for those that come after you that might read that same book. Yeah. Um and like talking about my kids, like I would love one day for my kids to go through my Bible and see where God spoke to me and what he used to to have an impact on me. And it really it it kind of shifted what I was thinking about because I'm I'm not just reading to read, I'm reading to top.
SPEAKER_00You're mining for gold that God willing somebody else, you know what I mean, can wrestle with and find later on. I have this book that I love. It's notes from D.L. Moody's desk. That's all it is. It's all of his notes from like just stuff that he had, stuff that he was wrestling with when he was reading through the Bible. He was taking notes about the different texts and different things. And it's funny because it's not a book that's like overly, you know, it's not complete. It's not like you're getting something where he finished a book. You're getting like his thoughts, the questions he was asking, the stuff that he was working through. I love that. Like, I'm like, ah, I feel like I'm I'm engaging with the wrestling match that he was in, and then I get to take the torch and keep carrying it. But I do, I want that for my kids. I feel like every two, three years, something like that, I get a new Bible for that reason. I got a stack of Bibles, and I want my kids, you know, and when I finally die, you know, probably later than they hoped.
SPEAKER_01Next week.
Marking Your Bible As Legacy
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They will have uh, they'll have Bibles that they can go through and they can see dad's notes and pick up on stuff that he was working through. I mean, I have parts of my Bible where it was like I had notes and later on I crossed it out and said, This is wrong. You know what I mean? And you go back to it later, and I've been working through it. And yeah, like there's a there's a really good thing there where you're leaving a legacy of how you should study, you're leaving notes, you're leaving thoughts, those things are good. But yeah, man, when it comes to like getting more out of it, I just start by saying busyness is the enemy of depth. You know, like if you're not making time to actually study the Bible, don't be surprised if you're not getting much out of it. And that sucks.
SPEAKER_01Because I know we're a very busy. So it should take you longer to read a chapter of the Bible than it would a chapter of a of a novel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it oftentimes it's um it's not something that you're reading through, it's something that you're trying to get into and untangle. It's uh it's an old piece of literature, man, from a different culture, a different time. There's all kinds of stuff going on. And if you're not willing to wrestle with it, you're not gonna get a lot out of it. I think it was Howard Hendricks who said that um the Bible doesn't yield its fruit to the lazy, you know. Um, but taking the time to actually wrestle with scripture, get into the text, sit in it. And I I do this weird thing. You don't have to do this. But obviously, God is with us when we're reading the word. In my head, I like to like picture somebody in the seat next to me, you know what I mean, that is helping me read this. Okay, what do you got for me today, God? Like, what are you sharing with me? I know I know you have something for me. And I think just reminding my heart that, man, the Spirit of God is with me right now in this room as I'm opening this up and trying to get into it reminds me that this is a conversation I'm supposed to be having, not just homework that I'm doing. Okay. You know, I want to have a conversation with God. I flip open to Psalm 19 right away because I love this. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever, the judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether, they are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. And I So I'm gonna finish this. Okay. Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults also, keep back your servant from presumptuous sins, let them not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Like starts with Do you see the value in what God has said?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so let's let's break it down then. Like if I am someone who is just really trying to dig into this, trying to put this into practice, and I open up to this text and I read it, how would you how would you advise I go about doing that? Like, what am I looking at here? What am I what am I trying to to wrestle with?
Busyness Kills Depth In Scripture
Psalm 19 And Valuing God’s Word
SPEAKER_00I think every text you're you're starting out just by trying to grasp what what is being communicated here, and then don't just walk past it. And I think we're we're at a place oh man. If you've been in church for a long time, you walk right past crazy stuff in the Bible because you've read it so many times now that it's doesn't hold the same weight that it should. This last Sunday, I was trying to explain the difference between being in a thunderstorm versus seeing a thunderstorm at a distance. Yeah. Or being in a storm versus being on a mountaintop when, like, you know, the electricity in the air is making your, you know, your hair stand up on your arms. Thunder cracks, man, it's like it sounds like a log just split open next to you. I mean, it's a different thing to see it, it's another thing to get into it. And I think when we read this one in particular, it's like trying to communicate to you. Do you see how valuable the word of God actually is? Do you want wisdom? Do you want fear of the Lord? Do you want to actually understand what he's saying? Look, do you do you want your soul to be restored? Do you want to be wise? Do you want uh uh your heart to be rejoicing? Do you want your eyes to be enlightened? Like, do you do you want to get this? This is where it's found. Yeah. This is this is where you want to go. Who can discern his errors? Acquip me of hidden faults. Well, you're gonna need the word of God, right? That's um, what is it, Hebrews, Hebrews chapter four, right? Dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. Um, it's really important. And I would say this the Bible talks about itself as a double-edged sword. There's one other thing that is used uh in scripture, as far as I know, that talks about being a double-edged sword, and it's the tongue of the adulteress in Proverbs chapter five. So either you're gonna get the world into your bones and in your heart, or you're gonna get the word of God into your bones and in your heart. And maybe um maybe we can just give some practical stuff today. So I'm gonna go to a text and let's just like let's have some fun with that, right? So, John chapter 2, the miracle at Cana. This is uh very famous, very well known text. I'm gonna read it, let's dig into it a little bit, okay? On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine. And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come. And his mother said to the servants, Whatever he says to you, do it. Now there were six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, Fill the water pots with water. So they filled them up to the brim, and he said to them, Draw some out now, and take it to the head waiter. So they took it to him, and when the head waiter tasted the water which had come which had become wine, and did not know where it came from, but the servant who had drawn the water knew. The head waiter called the bridegroom and said to him, Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine. But you've kept a good wine until now. This is the beginning of his of his signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Okay. So cursory reading. What do we have here? Jesus turns water into wine. Jesus turns water into wine. All right. If you read this story at face value, it's just another thing. Yeah. It's another miracle he did. It's cool. All right. What I'm doing anytime I open up the word is I'm trying to look through three distinct perspectives to try to pull from the text what's there. All right. So there's something called exegesis and there's something called isegesis. Exegesis is pulling from the text what's there. Isegesis is reading things into the text that are not there. Yeah. That's what you want to avoid. All right. So what we're doing first is we're looking at the lexical and syntactical lens, which is ultimately just saying, hey, words, their structure, their meaning.
SPEAKER_01Well we get the word lexicon and syntax.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah. But language. It's it really is simple. Words, words and their meaning, their structures. Yeah. Then you have the theological canonical lens, which is how does this pertain to the Bible itself? The canon of what is God saying? Yeah, the canon and theology. How is the rest of the Bible informing this? Another a good question to ask is where else have I seen this? Whenever you're looking at this text. And then the last one is cultural historical. I I want to try to understand their culture, get into their heads a little bit, put myself in their shoes. So, like, let's let's do this for a second. All right, so we start. On the third day, there was a wedding. Okay. Third day seems to be somewhat important in scripture. Yeah, yeah. Maybe, you know, I don't know, the the resurrection, right? Maybe there's something there already. We have uh a wedding, and this is the beginning of Jesus' miracles, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so what's the significance of a wedding?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, you've got Christ and the bride of Christ. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00Where else do we see this in scripture? The big picture is the final day is the the wedding feast of the lamb, the bride of Christ, the bridegroom. Okay, so we have the first thing that he's doing is ultimately a picture of the final thing that we're doing as well, which is super cool. Um, you have like words used, okay. So, like syntax, the lexical aspect here. Yeah. John tends to use the word signs instead of miracles. Everybody else says miracles. Why is it significant that he uses the word sign?
SPEAKER_01And instead of just walking past that, ask yourself the question why does he use it differently? I mean, a sign isn't a miracle, it is something amazing. A sign is meant to show you what's coming. Yeah, it's pointing to something else, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you have all of these different things that Jesus does in the Gospel of John, and John is trying to say, this is not isolated, it's pointing to something else. And you have this editorial explanatory comment later in John chapter 20, where Thomas says, you know, unless I put my hands in in the in his hands and or my fingers in his hands and my hands at his side, I'm not going to believe. Jesus shows up, tells him to do it, and then he drops to his knees and he says, My Lord and my God, curious mu, kaiho feosmu. That like it's a big statement. And then John says, Everything that was written in this text is so that you would understand that Jesus is God, that he truly is Lord and God. And so when we're reading, okay, sign instead of miracle, this is supposed to be pointing to something. It's giving us a little bit of liberty here to think broader about what's actually going on. All right. So we have signs instead of miracles. We have the third day when this is functionally happening. Let's let's have some fun. Let's put ourselves in the text for a second. Let's smell the air in uh Cana this day. All right. All right.
SPEAKER_01So, I mean, I I maybe this is jumping ahead, but I I look at you know, Mary coming to Jesus and saying, you know, do this thing, and him saying, It's not yet my time, and yet still doing it. Like this, I I always am curious about the significance of that because it seems like Mary is pushing him into something and yet it's Christ. He's not gonna do something that's imperfect.
Three Lenses For Bible Reading
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like Yeah, I mean this this whole thing screams faith, right? Yeah, she knows who Jesus is. He's like, Yeah, lady, it's not my time. She's like, No, no, no, no, no. This is this is happening. I know this is happening. I need you to take and if you think about the significance too of a wedding in the middle of bumfrick nowhere, you know, like what is this, what does this tell us about the heart of God? Uh that that his first miracle wasn't something that was for some special person in some serious circumstance. His first miracle was for a couple of nobodies that he didn't know out in the middle of nowhere. You know? So if you think God isn't gonna do miracles for you or you're just this or you're just that, I mean, this whole story is kind of telling you, yeah, no, God cares about the little stuff too, like if there's wine or not at a wedding. You know, I think it's important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, we we expect it to be screamed from the mountaintops, but in a very literal sense, it kind of is, in that no one can hear you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's yeah, it's dude. Okay, so we have um water pots that are set there for purification. Okay. There's something interesting there. What is Jesus doing? You know what I mean? He's the He's the purifying agent, he's the thing that's actually going to make us clean, uh, which is, you know, kind of a big deal. Wine in the Bible is also used as a symbol for joy and blessing. And so when they say the wine ran out, geez, that's kind of interesting. You know, the the God that um brings joy and hope in the middle of difficult circumstances takes water and turns it into wine, is another way of saying takes uh takes brokenness or what we're running out of and actually supplies, you know, brings joy, brings hope.
SPEAKER_01But it's digging into that a little bit more and the cultural significance of that, yeah. You know, wine being biblically a a sign of joy, you look at like Greek mythology and the god of wine and like Dionysus and revelry and debauchery and everything, and it's like just looking at other religions and their attempt to pervert the perfection of the Bible. It's just a very interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00But if you if you consider the aspect about wine, you'd have to be reading other parts in the Bible to pick up on how wine is used. You'd have to be reading other parts in the Bible to see the significance of what day it happened, you'd have to be reading other parts of the Bible to understand the significance of a wedding. You'd have to be understanding the rest of John to pick up on why he's using signs instead of miracles. There's this cycle that you're walking through where when you read the Bible, it's never the same book the second time you read it because you're a different person and you have different eyes every time you're reading it. Every time you read the Bible, it's gonna show you more of the Bible. Every time you're getting into it, and not just this, but you're also in a different circumstance every time you read the Bible. So because you're never the same person when you read the Bible, the Bible is always gonna be speaking to something that you maybe didn't see before. It's really important that we don't just walk past the Text because we think we know it. Because there's always something new going on in there when you're a different person every single time you're reading it. So don't just blow past stuff.
SPEAKER_01I feel like you sitting it you like going back to your sermon this past Sunday, you really hit the nail on the head of being desensitized and blowing past things when you talk about the story of Jesus going out on the water and walking on the water of the boat and then like carrying on and and how we don't stop and read Jesus right past walking on the water. Like we our our desensitization to that because of this superhero mentality and like just it's too much marvel, you know.
Digging Deep Into John 2
SPEAKER_00Wild. Yeah. Yeah. And it, I mean, even even simple stuff like in that story, it says uh he meant to pass by them. Well, that's interesting because you have a couple of other places in the old testament where God passes by, right? So you have this picture of Jesus walking on the waves, which is in a very real declaring himself to be God. I'm the one who is the king of the water and the waves. I walk on it if I want to. I break the law of physics anytime I want to. At the same time, using the same language that's attached to other texts where God specifically passes by. Okay, I think we have something more being said here than just whatever my cursory reading was. But like bring it down to the ground floor. Six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification containing 20 or 30 gallons. Okay, that's a lot of water. Yeah. Um 1500 pounds, I think is the math on that, or close to. All right. You where do you go to get water? Do they have a tap in the house? No. How much work did God ask them to do to get this done? You know? Like, how bad does this suck for these waiters who are like, no, no, no, Jesus, we need wine. What we need wine, not water. We need wine, water. Here. Go get the water, fill the pots. How heavy are these pots? I mean, that's a I mean, it's a big old clay jar. Yeah, yeah. It can't be light. This is a ton of work that he's asking them to do. And then if you put yourself in the sandals of the person who has to scoop out the first glass of water and take it to his boss, the head waiter, the person who is responsible for this team, who is asking for wine, and you think it's water. You know, I gotta, I gotta take the glass and look like an idiot in front of my boss and probably get fired. Um, you know, that I've I've done all this stuff. But sure, Jesus told me to do it. So I walk to the boss and I give him the thing, and he drinks and is like, this wine is great. Your jaw at that point is hitting the floor. Yes, it is. It is excellent wine. That's why I brought it to you. You know, like this is a this is a like that's a massive amount of work and faith that they were called to have in that moment to trust Jesus, to not only take these stupid jars, go out to the well, fill them with water, bring them back, and then be shaking in your boots the entire time, walking to the front, knowing that I have water in this cup and I don't even know what I'm doing. How quickly does this speak to what Jesus is asking us to do in our own lives? You know, like so many things that you don't understand. We started with Mary's faith in the beginning, asking Jesus to do these things. You know, she saw some stuff or she wouldn't be asking him. Oh, you know what I mean? And then these guys having to exercise obedience, because when Jesus gets involved, you're like, okay, but then he starts telling you to do stuff that maybe doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, and it seems like a lot of unnecessary work that you shouldn't have to go through. But this is what he's gonna get done. You know what I mean? So they they take the water, and then this guy ultimately says, um, hey, most people uh like to serve the good liquor first, and then they get everybody drunk off the bad stuff later uh when everybody's already had a couple of glasses of the good stuff. Yeah, now it's just all the same, which obviously speaks directly into uh, you know, a culture that we know nothing about and and doesn't make any sense with what we're like today, right? Um, I mean, people are exactly the same. But Jesus made really good wine, which you know says something. Jesus isn't cheap, he's not drinking Boons Farm. There's something, there's something better going on here. But when we sit in the text a little bit, and I'm sure there is way more here. But the goal is to work through words, their meanings, the significance of those things. I want to work through the theology of it in general. Where else am I seeing this in the Bible? What where else am I seeing the same kind of stuff? What is this teaching me about in this particular circumstance? Man, if I'm pointing to anything, I'm like, dude, faith has a lot to do with this particular passage. Yeah. And then I want to get into the culture of it. I want to get into like the, I want to get into the their shoes and like smell the air that's there, hang out with these people, and start to think through the actual circumstances of what was happening so that I can I can begin to understand at a deeper level some of what was going on here that John wanted us to see. That if we're not careful, we walk by and said he turned some water into wine, really cool.
SPEAKER_01Well, and even if you're you're walking by it in your own study, like if I'm in my life struggling through something and I'm like praying for God to do a miracle, praying for a work a moment in your life when the wine ran out. Exactly. And I I come to this text uh and I'm just going through the motions. I'm not going to hear the spirit speak to me through this text and and tell me that if you want a miracle, you do have to put in the work. Yeah. God isn't asking you to do these things superfluously. He's asking you because he's going to do something incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And like it's really easy for me to go through in that and miss that.
SPEAKER_00If you want to, you know, see miracles, if you want to say you have faith, you actually have to take steps of faith, right? And sometimes those things don't make a whole lot of sense. I can't imagine the disciples um felt on a daily basis like Jesus was actually accomplishing something. Probably felt like a whole lot of random miracles to a bunch of people that didn't actually appreciate it, and then constantly waiting for him to actually make that move and finally get rid of Rome and rule the world. You know what I mean? In the way that they thought things were supposed to go. This is theoretically why Judas bailed, right? Waiting for this long enough doesn't happen. Finally, he sells Jesus out to get something out of it because he didn't feel like he was getting out of it what he hoped to get out of it, right? But only waited like three days. Yeah, yeah. It would have been, would have been a little easier. But the uh when we're talking about the Bible man, I'm looking for verbs. Oftentimes in a text, I'm looking for action words. What is this, what was he telling them to do? What is this telling me about where we're supposed to go, what we're doing, what what's the what are the things that it's functionally telling me to apply, lest I just get a big head and feel like I learned stuff, but didn't actually walk away with anything that I was supposed to do. It's also important that you understand genre. So we're in a biography, if we're reading a gospel, yeah, but if you're in first kings, we're in we're in narrative, we're in history. We're it's a different way of reading than like poetry or apocalyptic or you know, different uh you have wisdom literature, you have uh, like I said, you have apocalyptic or prophetic literature, you're gonna have uh epistles or letters that are written. All of these things we're supposed to approach in slightly different ways. And if you don't understand what type of literature that you're reading, you may not actually understand the Bible itself. You got 66 books written over 1600 years, I think 40, 40 authors, something like that. I mean, you got a lot going on. And the reality is it's referencing itself all the freaking time.
SPEAKER_01So if I'm a young Christian looking at this, where do I go to find this stuff? Where do like what am I doing here?
SPEAKER_00I tell people when you're starting in like the um, if you're just starting to read the Bible, I'm a big fan of starting with the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Genre And Letting Scripture Interpret Scripture
SPEAKER_00Um the Augustine said that the Gospel of John was a ocean, uh was a puddle for children to play in or an ocean to drown elephants. You can go really deep, or it can be a very simple, cursory reading where you're still getting a lot out of it at a basic level. But I would say if you run into a question in the Bible, keep reading. Because the Bible will usually answer itself. You will you will find answers to the majority of questions that you're asking by simply just continuing to read the rest of the Bible. But understand that, like any movie that you watch 15 minutes of in the middle, now you may have a lot of questions or misunderstand some of those texts. I had a guy one time who came to a Bible study and was freaking out because we put bacon in the bread, and he was a brand new Christian and it was reading in Leviticus and found out that we're not supposed to have this because it's unclean and freaked out and proceeded to rebuke everybody in the Bible study for eating bacon. And it was a well, we had a different Bible study that night. You know what I mean? We got to walk through Acts chapter 10, and no, no, this is why we do these things. But um, snapshots are never the full picture. And when we're coming to the word of God, it's not something that's trite, immediate. Isaiah and Jeremiah both have this awesome quote where it says that God is looking for men who will tremble at his word. Like when we approach it, we should have a reverence and a respect for it. And again, you're approaching God. You're about to wrestle with him, you're about to like get into this, and it's probably gonna break me a little bit. And when I read this, like Jacob, I'm probably gonna walk away with a little bit of a limp because if I'm reading it right, I'm understanding more of who God is, and I'm understanding a little bit more who I am. And it's important that you see Jesus in the Bible. So, like a question you should always be asking is where is Jesus here? But just as well. Isn't that eisegesis? Well, this is one of those areas where the Bible actually tells us to do this. So in John 5, I think it's 38 through 40, something like that, he's talking to the Pharisees, and he says that you search the scriptures diligently because you think that in them that you have you have life. But these are actually the scriptures that testify to mat testify about me, but you refuse to come to me to have life. So he's literally saying, hey, the the whole Bible is all trying to reveal to you who I am. And you're going to them because you think the words themselves are what are gonna save you, but all of them are signs, they're pointing you to Jesus, the incarnate word, which is why you know, John 1, he's the logist. And the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And even if you know something about the culture at the time, John using the word logos was like massive. Okay, so like for the last thousand years, the Greeks have been wrestling with finding the reason for why there's rationality in the universe, finding um finding the unmoved mover, right? Aristotle's for anything to exist, there must be something immovable that has always existed for anything to have being at all. Um, there, you know, we have all these different philosophers coming up with different words and trying to hone in on how do we know what we know, where does it come from, questions of epistemology. And they narrowed it down to this word, the Lagos, the wisdom, the internal wisdom, the thing that's always existed. And John is starting out his gospel, primarily writing to a Greek audience, saying, in the beginning was the Lagos. And everybody's like, right, correct. And the Lagos was with God. Yeah, this makes sense. And the Lagos was God. Okay, I can get on board. And then the Lagos became incarnate and dwelt among us. Okay, now wait, what? What just happened? What's actually going on? Like he's he's communicating to a bunch of people who would have just had their mind freaking blown, explaining what's actually going on in this scenario and what he's actually saying. He's saying, hey, the thing that you guys have been searching for for a thousand years, the the thing that we've all been trying to describe and write about and chase after and figure out how to explain and understand, he became a person and he was here. And I'm trying to show you him. That's that's what I want to reveal to you. So there's this, there's this ongoing conversation. Again, you're looking at words and their meaning. You're looking at the canon itself and theology. What is this teaching me about God? What does the rest of the Bible say about this? And then the culture on history. How are we bringing those things together? We walk right by stuff that's like greet each other with a holy kiss. Okay, so I'm supposed to kiss people now because that's normal. What about foot washing? You know, all right, so where do I wash feet? How does this work? Where do I go to find that culture context? Where do I go to finding? So a lot of it you're gonna find in the Bible. A lot of it. Like if you're reading through Leviticus, you're gonna understand the significance of baptism in a different way. If you're reading through Deuteronomic law, you're gonna understand a lot of the reasons for why they did the things that they were doing in this particular culture. If you're in Exodus, you're understanding the entire process of sacrifice in the temple and why it was set up and what it was there for. And then you're gonna go to Hebrews and it's gonna tell you how all of that was a representation of Christ and what he has accomplished. Now, listen, there's commentaries out there, lots and lots and lots of them, and I would recommend you get many commentaries. Uh, guys like R.C. Sproul are fantastic. Guys like John MacArthur's uh commentary is fantastic. If you get Warren Wersby's commentary, you get Clark's commentary, you can get Matthew Henry's commentary. There's a lot of people who have spent a lot of time trying to help you unpack what's going on. Now, there's different types of commentaries. You have like exegetical commentaries, which are primarily dealing with the language. Yeah. You're gonna have uh like a preacher's commentary, which is gonna be a little bit more of a heavily application. How do I communicate this? You're gonna have cultural commentaries that are dealing explicitly with the culture and this time and this place and how we understand it. And you run into stuff in the Bible, um, uh things like a hapax legomena, which is a word that is only used one time in the Bible. So it's hard to find context for that particular word. Um, so we'll go to extra biblical resources, like different writings and things that were uh around the same time period to try to find context for this word so that we can understand it better within the Bible. There's uh there's different stuff that you can go to. Blue Letter Bible is gonna be a great place for people to do.
SPEAKER_02What was that word again?
SPEAKER_00Happax Logomina? Do do do do no no um yeah, but you're gonna find different stuff like that. Like Logos is one of my favorite tools to use uh for anybody who's interested. And there's important, it's important that you know a little bit about the tools that you have. I get bugged every time somebody brings up Strong's uh concordance because a word that you get from Strong's is gonna be a gloss. It's not gonna take into consideration the context of the word. So this is like a simple one. Uh you could have a trunk of a car, a trunk of a tree, um, a trunk that's a trunk of an elephant, a trunk that you're loading stuff into. All of those things are accurate ways to use that word. How do I know which one it is? And people like that people love to talk about agape love. That's the love that God uniquely has for us. It's a godly love. Listen, I gotta tell you, the Bible uses agape in a panoply of ways. It's not just godly love that God has for us. It's used all kinds of different ways in in scripture, and it shouldn't be said, oh, that that's what that means. It's not always what that means. Sometimes it has different meanings in different places, different contexts are gonna are gonna show different things about how different words are used, and you need to understand the context for how that word is being used in that particular circumstance. Um, there's a great book I would recommend by Lohan Nida. Um, it's a it's a lexicon based on semantic domain, which just means hey, we're we're giving you a dictionary for these words where we've taken into consideration the context in which it's used, meaning not just the context that it's used in that scripture itself, but also the person that was using it. How one person might use a word in the Bible versus, you know, how John uses a word may be different than how Paul uses a word, right? So uh one I brought up a bunch of times, but I think it's super helpful is John 3 16, for God so loved the world, you know, that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed in him shouldn't shouldn't perish but have eternal life, right? That seems pretty clear. Great, great, right? Uh the word world, the way that John uses it in his gospel and in his epistles, generally is not talking about the globe. No, it's talking about the world in contrast to God. Like, think about it this way: worldly. We have the world and we have the kingdom. We have the world and we have righteousness, we have worldliness and we have godliness. It's it's juxtaposing these two ideas. So when we read John and we see that this is how he tends to use the word, I think it's 80% of the time that that word is used in John. The context is not talking about the globe. It's talking about with regard to darkness, worldliness, brokenness. So when we read God so loved the world, we shouldn't be thinking to ourselves about the globe, although there's other texts that we could go to. We should be reading it saying God so loved the broken, the messy, the downcast, the messed up. And to me, that that takes it like a whole nother elevator floor down. Yeah. You know, it's it's not just yes, God generically loved everyone. It's making a statement about the reality of those that he loved and how scandalous it was that he cared about those people who were part of a godless system and who were very much downcast and broken. Um, simple things like that matter a lot.
SPEAKER_01You're you're reading it more like the same context as as when Christ sat down and had dinner with sinners and tax collectors and all these things. It's exactly like that.
Tools For Word Studies And Context
SPEAKER_00It's the same idea, not just you could you could almost read it and say, God so loved the worldly. Like the messy. And who is that? All of us. Us. Us, right? The broken, the messy. Um and we see that throughout throughout the scripture, right? The people that Jesus has the hardest time with are the people who think they have it all figured out, um, and the ones who are self-righteous and whatever else. And he's got the you know, the eight woes that he walks through. Woe to you, you know, for you you heap massive burdens on people and you won't lift a finger to try to help them. He he loves the broken, the messy, the downcast, and he's he's doing a work in their lives. And then there's other stuff too. Like when you think about words and their meaning, the Bible supercharges some words. Okay, so uh the word seed in the Bible goes a long way. Like starting in Genesis, you know what I mean? The the seed of the woman, yeah, you know what I mean? The serpent will bruise his heel and he will crush his head. This is called a proto-evangelium. It's the beginning, first picture we have of the gospel. But if you trace that with Abraham's seed, David's seed, this we're looking back from Genesis and we're following this word and finding out that this seed, this offspring, is going to fulfill something massive. If you follow the word kingdom, you follow the word messiah, you follow the word rest in the Bible, you know, the longer you read it, the more you realize, oh, this has like eschatological ramifications. This is talking about no longer rest in God doesn't just mean I got my sleep. No. We're talking about a massive topic that has taken on more meaning. And we understand these things because when we use the word like mask or um what's a what's a hot topic today? Vaccination. Yeah, there you go. There, you know, whatever you want. But something that's like, this is charged. Mask doesn't mean what it used to mean. Vaccination doesn't mean what it used to mean. You know, there's there's a lot going on culturally, and it's taking taken on a lot of meaning at this point. Now, words don't mean words don't ever mean less than what they mean at their base level, but oftentimes they can have more meaning that the Bible has been dropping into this word over a long period of time, so that by the time you get to Jesus, you're like, oh, I can trace it from the very beginning all the way to this point. He's a fulfillment of something massive because this word has been taking on meaning throughout all this time. So that by the time Jesus says, um, you know, they say, Are you the are you, you know, who are you? And he's, you know, ego a me. Um, I am, I am. I am that I oh, I can go back to Exodus and I can say, Oh. When you know, when when Jesus says before Abraham was. Ego a me. Yeah. I am, I am. And they pick up rocks and try to stone him. You understand that they got, he's saying, I am the I am, which is the same thing that God says to Moses in this moment, I am, I am. Which he was saying. That's exactly right. But if you if you misunderstand it, you might be like, why did they pick up rocks to stone him? Yeah. What was the point? Why did why did that happen? Well, because according to them, it was either blasphemy or true. And for them, it couldn't possibly be true because they were right. You know what I mean? So little things like, again, little things become really big things the more you read your Bible, the more context, the more culture you're picking up from reading scripture, the more time you're spending understanding the genres that you're reading, the words and how they're growing in meaning, the theology of the Bible and what it's trying to communicate. When you come to one text like a John chapter two, suddenly you should be able to sit in it, wrestle with it, and pull stuff out of it. Like there's a fun game you can play if you're nerding out. It's called 30 for 30. Just I have 30 minutes and I have to find 30 fresh observations from this text. And I can't walk away. The first 10 are really easy. Those last 20 are gonna be tough and you learn a lot. Okay. Find stuff that you didn't think you were gonna find. There is stuff in there. I didn't realize it, but when you push yourself, challenge yourself, there's a heck of a lot more in there than than what you think. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, you brought up um the the genres. Yeah. Um, and talking through this, basically you can read the Bible and just keep reading and pull all of like a whole bunch of stuff, or you can, in addition to that, you can get concordances, you can get all the like you have so many things to do, but the Bible still, like, you don't have to be a scholar to go and read the Bible and get stuff out of it. No, but talking about genres, what's the best way to kind of recognize the genre you're in? Because like there's a lot of ways to misinterpret scripture if you're just looking at the wrong genre. Sure. I mean, I mean, I've I've seen um the militant um sexual revolution faction say the Bible is against homosexual marriage, but it's for rape, polygamy, you know, all these other things. It's like, okay, no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So there's a checks and balances system when you think about these three different lenses that you want to apply. So if I'm looking at the lexical, syntactical, theological, canonical, historical, cultural, they balance each other out and it's a way to check your own work. Because if the lexical, syntactical, and the theological canonical are not lining up with what you think is happening culturally, it's a you're gonna find out, oh, I must be wrong. Something is wrong in the way that I'm reading this. Like if you go to Timothy 2 12, okay. So if you go to I do not permit a woman to exercise authority over a man, she's to remain silent. This is a ah, everybody freaks out. Okay. And a lot of people would say this was cultural. We can go back and we can we can say that uh women didn't have as much of an education. This is why this particular text was here. It purely had to do with what was going on in culture at this particular time. Now listen, um, we can we'll dig into this, so stay with me. If you keep reading in that text, it says, Because Eve was uh confused first, she was tricked first, she was the person who actually ate the fruit of the tree. It wasn't Adam. So, like the the point that he's clearly trying to communicate here, he says this for it was Adam who was first created and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived. Okay, so if I just go to culture and I say this was happening at the time, so this must not mean this, but the very next thing that I'm reading talks about the canonical theological is taking me back to Genesis, then it can't just be cultural. No. There has to be something larger going on here to help inform the way that we're interpreting these texts. Now, I can go to other texts too, where we see some women are prophesying, uh, women are worshiping, there's couples who are uh like like doing ministry together at some capacity. But clearly we can't just take that text and say, because culture says this, we can erase it. And there's a lot of people who want to say homosexuality or these things, it was, oh, this is this came later, even the word for it came later, right? But the word here stays the same. Arsenicoites means a man sleeping with a man. Like that's that's what it means. And you could say, oh, cultural it was a different significant, you know, a significance in this area. And it's like, no, but if the theological canonical and the lexical syntactical are telling you the opposite of that, then you're just wrong. Yeah. And I would say if there's one lens that gets used uh to try to smash everything else or to take people to heresy, the cultural historical seems to be the most widely used to try to dismiss what's going on. Because you can almost go back to any culture and find something that helps you interpret it the way that you would feel good about. But if you're reading the rest of the Bible and you're seeing, huh, God entrusted these promises to the patriarchs, the families that he's using, the men are supposed to be leading, even in places like Judges chapter four with Deborah. A lot of people like to bring up Deborah and they're like, oh, she she was a prophet of God and she's leading, she's doing these amazing things. I think if you go back and look at the context, God tells Deborah that Barack is supposed to lead this charge, and then he doesn't want to. He's like, only if you come with me. And then she straight up tells him, Well, then I gotta tell you, God's gonna take the honor that was supposed to go to you, and now it's gonna go to a woman, which for him should have been a slap in the face. Yeah. That was like, hey, this is not the way that it's supposed to go. This is a dishonor for you. And the same story you have jail putting a spike through Sisera's head after After feeding him a bottle of milk. After she asks after he asks her, could you protect me? Could you cover me? Um, I'm thirsty, would you give me some milk? Would you put a blanket over the top of me? The whole story in Deborah is like the passivity and abdication of male leadership and how that's supposed to be a slander. Like men are supposed to lead, and it's it's wrong when they're not. Can God still use it? Yes, absolutely. But that's not ultimately how it's supposed to go. Did God pick any of the 12 disciples were any of them women? And they would be like, oh, but culture, so no, the whole Bible is communicating, like in from creation onward, this is what it's supposed to look like. And again, this is not one of those things where it's like the goal shouldn't be to go to the Bible and find our own agenda. I w or or go to culture and find something that will help me change what the Bible is saying. It should only really be amplifying what the Bible is already trying to communicate. And if you feel like it's changing the whole point, something is off.
Culture Claims And Hard Texts
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I I it this is a a good quote, uh albeit the origin of it is somewhat suspect, but uh, you know, you don't fix the Bible, it fixes you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't know who the original person was who said that's that's from a from a TV show. No, no, no, it's a it's a different quote. Oh, okay, yeah. It's um the the Bible is like a lion, let out let it out of its cage, it'll fend for itself. You know, it's it's not something you need to like guard and protect and try to be careful with. And I I would say you be careful in your study as you're wrestling with God, but you don't need to um you don't need to hide or dole down what the Bible is saying clearly. And if we learn this anywhere, man, the prophets are pretty clear.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like they were just savage about some of the stuff that they said. And in our world today, I think we're trying to make the word of God nice more appealing to a culture that would absolutely crucify him again. Yeah. You know? And I don't think you need to like, I don't think we need to think that way. I don't think your goal should be to defend the Bible. I think ultimately your goal should be to unleash the Bible and let it fend for itself. And um man, I think it's like 56 countries actively uh will like prosecute you for sharing the gospel. Um, more countries than that, like if you try to convert somebody, or um there's certain verses or certain texts where there's legislation now trying to keep you from sharing these things. We're gonna get into this this Sunday.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Unleash The Bible And Closing Prayer
SPEAKER_00But there's this text in Colossians that says, Paul, Paul, we are we are making up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, which is a weird thing to say. Like, what do you mean? He he was crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, um, ascended. What do you mean we're making up what is lacking? Well, well, ultimately, what it means is the world is not done trying to crucify Jesus. The world is not done trying to silence the word of God. And if you don't have a high opinion of the word of God, you're gonna be silenced. And worse, uh, you're gonna try to make the Bible feel more comfortable for a generation that doesn't need more comfort. They they need the truth. Yeah. And so um, as you're spending time in the word, man, it's your sword. Be diligent with your sword, be in the Bible, be wrestling with God, have a notebook, have a pen, be making notes, be wrestling with it. Don't just go back to the same text that you have always read because they're a comfort to you. Get into some other places, read some different things. There's some great Bible in a year plans that are good, but also like get into it and sit in it, do a 30 for 30, see what God shows you, and just get to a place where you're beginning to apply maybe some of these different tools to try to pull more out of it. And I think God is honored when we're we're will when we're willing to take the time to wrestle with him and try to understand more. I think the Holy Spirit's honored in that and and we'll give you more uh in your time with him. So awesome. Well, thanks. Hope that's helpful, guys. Yeah. Y'all have an amazing week. And um let me uh let me pray for him real quick. God, we just pray for anybody that's in the word this week that you would meet them, encourage them, strengthen them, Lord, establish what they're doing. And I pray in a world where everybody has opinions and uh everybody wants to silence the difficult parts of the Bible, um, that you would make us the kind of people who have some steel in our spine because we've spent time with you in your word and are willing to fight for what you've called us to fight for and willing to be different where the world um wants us to be silent. Do a work in us, and through us we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Right on. Have a great week, guys.
