Well, if you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and this is one of a 20-part video series that we did for an extension ministry of a Bible college. So I just hope that today’s lesson helps you grow in knowing Jesus better, and after this lesson, get into God’s Word. Go home and study God’s Word. Enjoy this week’s lesson.
Getting to the Root
This is lesson 17 in our Bible study series, and before expanding to get all of the branches of the tree, I want to take a whole lesson today and just look at four different examples of getting to the root, getting to the heart of the idea. We have been talking about reading the passage, rereading the passage, flagging words, whether they are repeating words, or unknown words, or words that you think summarize what this is about, starting with a general word, getting a little more specific with a phrase, and then completing the phrase into more of a fleshed-out idea, where there is a subject and a verb and a complete thought. Now, there are a lot of different ways we can go about this, and there is not necessarily always going to be one right answer. There are a lot of different ways you will word your sentence that other people may not. The whole point is to try to come up with the idea of what God is saying in the text. Now, the specific words are going to be your words. They are not going to be inspired, although sometimes you might be able to boil down the text into the actual biblical words as well. You might actually pull a sentence out of the Scriptures and say, “This whole passage is actually about just this one verse.” So a verse itself might be the summarizing sentence that you arrive at in step number six, or it might be your own words. But today I just want to show that this can take a whole different approach, and I want to look at several different kinds of passages. Here is an example from the book The Big Idea Bible Study that we went through with our church. We are going to look at one of the examples from the Gospels, an epistle, a parable, and a narrative, so different genres of Scripture, and a different way to approach each of these a little bit, but basically you are going to have a lot of similar ideas here.
A Gospel Example: Matthew 20
Okay, so we have the text here. Let’s just read it, for example. Matthew chapter 20, verses 25 through 28: “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” While I am reading that, I am automatically thinking, okay, what is this talking about? Well, Jesus called them unto Him, so it is Jesus talking to His disciples here, and this is not a parable. This is just one of Jesus’ teachings. So if we are starting with the observation phase, then we want to see what is going on here in this Gospel. Okay, this is Jesus calling unto them and saying the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them. Well, why is He saying this to them? If you look a couple of verses before this in Matthew chapter 20, our passage starts at verse number 25, but in verse 20, just a few verses before: “Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.” And when the ten heard it, the other ten disciples, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto Him and said. So in the verses before that, Mom comes up and says, “Hey, can my two sons sit on Your right and left?” and the other ten disciples get real jealous of them: “How dare you? We want to be the most important. We want to have authority. We want to be the main ones who sit beside Jesus in the kingdom.” Now, that is the context of this passage that we read. So Jesus calls them unto Him and says, “Well, the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion.” So it looks like they were wanting to have dominion. They were wanting to have authority and rule, sitting on the right and left of Jesus. They wanted to be the next rulers beside Him, and He says, “Oh, no, the Gentiles are all about dominion. They are all about power.” “And they that are great”: there is a word that I would flag if I were doing a Bible study on this. I would say, man, they are talking about greatness, “and they that are great.” Well, their greatness comes from authority: “they that are great exercise authority upon them.” So the world’s kind of greatness comes from power, authority, dominion. But there is another key phrase that Jesus says: that is the world, “But it shall not be so among you.” So Jesus’ disciples are different from the world. The way we respond is quite a bit different. You are different from the world. They want authority; we handle it a little differently. “But whosoever will be great among you”: there is the same word, great. He is saying they are great by their authority. You are great how? “Let him be your minister.” Man, that is powerful. This is so good. I am not on the screen here where I am showing you the Scriptures, but these are the words I have highlighted or flagged, these words or phrases. Jesus called them unto Him, and they are all about dominion and authority, but it shall not be so among you. Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, the servant. That is what minister means. “And whosoever will be chief,” there is another word for greatness, chief, the master, the leader, “among you, let him be your servant.” Man, that flips everything upside down. The lowest ones were the servants, I thought, and Jesus says, “Well, no, that is greatness in My kingdom. The Gentiles say authority is greatness. I say serving is greatness.” “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,” there is the word ministered again, “but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” That is a powerful statement there. That is incredible, that Jesus turns things upside down. So if we are looking at this whole passage here, then we are looking at Jesus answering a mom who wants her boys to have authority and dominion and power, and He says, “That is not the Christian’s way. In My kingdom, the greatest among you, the chief among you, is actually the greatest servant.” So if we are looking at this passage and saying, what is this text about? Well, there are a lot of words that might jump to mind. There are a lot of things you might say: well, it is a passage about authority; it is a passage about the disciples; it is a passage about Jesus. And we might think, okay, those are all true, but really, what is the point of this passage? What is God trying to get across to His disciples? What is Jesus trying to teach His disciples, and what are we supposed to be learning from this passage as well? So if there is a word that summarizes this passage, that is what I would answer here. I would just say it is minister, or we could say servant. So I would say minister or servant would be the word that summarizes everything about this. But that is not saying everything about being a minister or a servant, and so if we expanded that to a phrase and got a little bit more specific about this text, then what is this actually saying about being a minister or a servant? Well, this is also talking about the greatness of a servant. They are looking for greatness; Jesus is talking about service. So if we were expanding servant or minister here, we could say ministering to others. I need to make this a little bit smaller, do I not, so it fits on here. I hope you can still read it on the screen here. I am going to make that about 40 or so. Okay, so ministering to others, or we could also say the phrase would be greatness in serving. And I am going to make this box a little bit bigger too. So if we are expanding this idea, what is this passage about? Well, it is about greatness through serving, or it is about ministering to others, or serving others. You could phrase it a few different ways. But then, if you are expanding that to an actual sentence, what is this passage about? I would say it would be something like, greatness is in serving others. If that is the rock, if that is the nugget of truth that you are taking from Jesus’ teaching, then if you are summarizing this in a sentence, you could say, what was this passage about? Well, it is about greatness that comes through serving others. That is the idea Jesus was trying to get across. If you really want greatness, it is going to be in being the lowest one on the totem pole, being the one who is the servant. So that is a simple idea of saying, okay, we start with a word, we expand it to a phrase, and then we expand that to a sentence, and we get what is trying to be passed along.
An Epistle Example: 1 Thessalonians 1
Okay, I am going to jump over to the next page here. The next example is from an epistle, 1 Thessalonians 1:6 through 8. Here is the epistle: “And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost: So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing.” This is a wonderful passage where the Apostle Paul is writing a letter to this baby church that he loves dearly. He is as a nurse that cherisheth her children to them. He is like a father to them. He is like a mother to them. He loves this church. He is so excited for how God worked in their lives, and so he is writing them a letter. If we reread this passage, we see the word followers. They were followers of Paul and of the Lord, and they received the word. They really got it, and part of the proof of them getting it is that they received it in affliction. Even though they are being persecuted, they still received it with joy of the Holy Ghost. So in uncertain circumstances, circumstances that seemed to be going against them, it was obvious that God had worked in their church and in their life, because they received the word in affliction, with joy. “So that ye were ensamples”: you were like samples of what should be. You were examples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. So that whole region of the country had heard about this church and their faith in Christ. “For from you sounded out the word of the Lord.” So they received it, and then they were sending the message all over the place: “not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad.” So they were being witnesses all over the place, “so that we need not to speak any thing.” So they learned to be followers of Paul, and then they received the word so clearly that they started to proclaim it, and through their proclamation they were examples to everybody. They were this powerful witness, this powerful voice, everywhere they went. So if we are looking for a word or a phrase here, I am going to add another text box here and start typing some of the ideas. Okay, so we have a word that would summarize this. What would this text be about? We could say maybe it is a text about being followers, or being ensamples, or examples. Maybe it is a passage about sounding out. You know, my thing does not like that word. I am going to say, “Learn this spelling.” That is a good Bible word right there, ensamples. So maybe this passage is about being a follower, being a follower who becomes an example, or maybe it is a passage about witnessing, or a passage about internalizing the gospel so much that it changes you. What we are seeing is that this is a church that Paul could look at and say, “Christ has changed you,” and others could look at them and say, “Wow, Christ has changed those people.” So I would say maybe our word would be example, or ensample, to use the Bible word. But if we are starting with that word and expanding it to a phrase, giving it a little bit more detail, then let’s bring this down here and say examples of the faith, or examples in their faith. So it is saying, yes, they were examples, but examples of what? Ensamples of what? We could even phrase it like this: godly examples. We could say it a number of different ways. We could expand that phrase to be examples to others, or just being godly examples. So what is this passage about? Well, it is about being a godly example to other people. That is the phrase. That is the summary of what this passage is about. Oops, I zoomed out here. So we have being a godly example, and then, if we are to expand this to a sentence, we could say the Thessalonians had an exemplary faith, right? Their faith was exemplary. They had a faith that had changed them, that had moved them, that had created such a stir that from them sounded out the faith to this whole region around them, Macedonia and Achaia. So what Paul is writing to them about is, “Man, we are so excited that you have this exemplary faith. You have this faith that has changed you, that has molded you into such a special group of people.” So the trunk of the tree, the big idea that is starting to form here, is that the Thessalonians had an exemplary faith. And again, you might word that differently. You might be pulling some other aspect of the truth of this passage out, but I am just trying to get an idea of what this passage is and boil it down into words that we can understand and take hold of. Oh, there is an M here.
A Parable Example: The Good Samaritan
So the next one is going to be a parable. A parable is like a short story with a spiritual meaning, and so let’s read this, and along the way we will flag words. So a lawyer tempted Jesus. He tried to trick Him: “Well, what is the law?” “Well, you know what the law is.” Yeah, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So this includes the context here. We will read it: “And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” So he is not asking Him real questions. He is just trying to trick Him. “He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?” So He knew that he knew the law: “How readest thou?” He is asking him, “What do you think it is?” “And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” So he got the part about loving God right, and thy neighbour as thyself. “And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.” If you are able to love God perfectly and love your neighbor as yourself perfectly, well, then that pretty much sums it up right there. “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?” He is trying to get the right answer here. So he focuses in on that second commandment, trying to trick Jesus, and he asks Him, “Well, who is my neighbour?” And instead of just answering him, Jesus goes into the story of what we call the Good Samaritan: “And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.” If you know the story of the Good Samaritan, a priest passes by, a Levite passes by, and then a Samaritan, the one who was supposed to be the enemy of the Jews, takes care of this Jew who had been beaten up and left for dead and robbed of all his goods. He patches his wounds, and he puts him on his own beast, and he takes him to an inn, and he makes sure that he is taken care of, and if there is any debt incurred on his stay there, he says, “When I come again, I will take care of that.” That was just an outrageous story for a Jew to hear, a story about a Samaritan, because that is not the way it was supposed to be. So at the end of telling the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks this question in this verse. He says, which now of these three, the Levite, the priest, or the Samaritan: “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” So the question the lawyer asked is, “Who is my neighbour?” and Jesus says, well, maybe that is the wrong question. Who is being neighborly? Who was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? “And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” He that showed mercy on him, the one who actually showed love and care and kindness and compassion and mercy on him. “Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” So when he is asking about who is my neighbor, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan and says, maybe that is the wrong question. Showing love to your neighbor is not about figuring out who the nice people are that you can go be nice to. It is about what actions you are showing to those who are unlovely, who cannot do anything for you, who cannot do anything in return. So for the word, we would maybe just say this is a parable about being a neighbor, or it is a parable about love, or maybe it is a parable about mercy, and all of those would generally be good words that summarize what this passage is about. What is Jesus trying to teach through this story? What is Luke trying to teach through writing this story of how Jesus dealt with this lawyer? Well, he was trying to teach love, or he was trying to teach mercy. So it might be that this is a text about being neighborly to people. It might be a text about showing love, or expressing love, or what being a neighbor actually looks like. It might be a text about loving strangers, or those who can do nothing for you. Those would be any of the phrases that you could expand this word to. It is simply getting more specific in answering the question, what is God saying? What is God trying to convey through this text? And we would say, well, this is Jesus teaching us what the law actually means, or what being a neighbor actually looks like. So if we are looking at a sentence, if we expanded this even more, or got a little bit more specific, if we had a subject and verb, then we could say, we should show love to others. If we are summarizing what this passage is about, it is not about, “Well, who is my neighbor?” Jesus is saying, no, we should show love to others. We should show mercy to others. That is what the law is. That is what the law says. So expanding these from a word to a phrase to a sentence, again, has many different ways it can be accomplished, but I am just showing a few of them here.
A Narrative Example: Daniel 1
This last one I want to look at is from Daniel. Oops, I went a little too far here. Here is Daniel chapter 1. Oh, man, here, there we go, there we go. It is way over here. Daniel chapter 1 and verse number 8. Maybe your passage is just one verse like this: “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.” If we did our own study of this passage, you would realize from the observation that Daniel was removed from his homeland and taken to Babylon. He was indoctrinated in the ways of the Babylonians. His language is changed. His family was removed from him. His friends were changed. All of the godly influences are gone from his life. His name is changed. Everything about him is changed. He is in a pagan school trying to indoctrinate him in the ways of the pagans. And so what we see is that Daniel purposed. If we are flagging words, I would look up that word purposed, and it means to be set in concrete, to choose for life. “He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat.” So they changed his name and his housing location and his friends and his schedule and all of that. He had no control over those things. But Daniel said, in the thing that he did have control over, this is the portion of the king’s meat. They were going to change his diet, and as a Jew he knew that he was to be separated from the world, and even though he could not change the other aspects of his life, he requested. That is the word requested there. He requested of the overseer of the prisoners he was a part of that he might not defile himself. There is that word defile again. It was referenced earlier in the verse; twice in this verse it is talking about defiling. And he felt like it was a violation of the holiness of who he was called to be as a separated Jew, that eating the king’s meat would have defiled him. So this would be a passage, a text, a lesson about, I would say, if we are saying one word, defiling, or the defilement of the world, or we might even say it is about purposing in your heart. It is about decisions that you make for the Lord. Those kinds of words would be a good summary of what this text is about. So if we are expanding that to a phrase, then we would say something like Daniel’s purpose. This is his goal in life. This is what he purposed to do. Or Daniel purposed in his heart. You could even take the exact phrase from the Scriptures and say, what is this verse about? Well, it is about Daniel purposing in his heart. If you looked at different aspects of it, then it would be something like not being defiled. That could be another phrase, not being defiled, and I am going to make that a little bit smaller here too, so that it fits on this line here. So Daniel’s purpose, or not being defiled, would be one other aspect, or we could say this is about keeping from sin. This is a passage about protecting yourself from sin. So again, there are several different ways you could phrase these things, and if you expanded it to a sentence, you could say, what is this passage about? Well, Daniel purposed not to defile himself. That is essentially what this passage is about. What we will do in the next lesson is say, okay, if this is what God is saying, Daniel purposed not to defile himself, then we want to say how he did that, and we will look at the rest of the verses and fill it in with the branches of the tree. But we wanted to look at several different examples today of different ways you could look at these passages and say, “Okay, now I see what you are saying, Pastor Ryan. You are talking about word, phrase, sentence, and all that. I kind of see how it can work in different passages.” So we did a real quick overview of a lot of these kinds of passages, and I hope that clarified some things. Again, next time we will expand on that and give an even bigger picture as the tree comes together. So God bless you; we will see you in the next lesson. Well, thank you for watching this video from our 20-part series on Bible study. I realize this kind of content, or our Baptist perspective, might not be for everyone, and I do not want to waste your time, but if you did find it helpful or enjoyable, would you subscribe to our channel? We are releasing videos every Monday at noon Pacific Standard Time, and I just want to help you bring the Bible home. So we will see you maybe in person this Sunday at our church. That is it for now. God bless you, church. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
