Flagging words in the Bible means that you are really paying attention to them while you are going through Bible study. It is like slowing down and noticing the actual words that are being said, and sometimes the text itself becomes like a neon sign. The repetition itself will show you what to notice in Bible study, and that is what today’s lesson is all about. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. We recorded this series of videos for an extension ministry of a Bible college, and so I just hope that it is a continued help. You can check out the other videos to get yourself caught up to this point in the series, and stay tuned for our next video in the series after this. So with that, I hope you enjoy this lesson and get into God’s Word.
Flagging Repetition
Hello, and welcome back. This is class number 15 in our Bible study series. In the last class we were talking through the interpretation portion, actually getting to the study of the Scripture, and we said that step number three was flag words. So you are first going to read a passage, you are going to reread the passage, and then, as you are reading through the passage and rereading through the passage, there are going to be certain words that you should flag along the way. You should note them, come back to them, dig a little bit deeper, and see if there are other connections you can make. So in this lesson today I want to talk all about flagging words. We will spend the entire time looking at lots and lots of different examples of what flagging words might look like. Now, some of the words you might flag are things that repeat themselves. For example, in Psalm 136 you will see words or phrases like this that repeat themselves over and over: “O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.” So when you come across something like that, obviously there is going to be something to that. There is going to be some emphasis the author is trying to make there, and so you note that. There are also times where there might be a repetition of what they call a polysyndeton. Poly is many, and syndeton is bound together, so these connecting words, these conjunction words. Many of the verses throughout the King James Bible just have this beautiful language because of these connecting words that repeat themselves over and over: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” I like the repetition of these connecting words. It could have been that the verse just said it without the word and. I mean, the verse could say, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness; let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and every creeping thing,” and it could have just flowed like that. But I like the and emphasis over and over. There is that constant reminder: it is not only this, but also this, and this, and this, and everything. So I like that. In Luke 14, verse 21: “So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” I love those repeating words. Revelation 21, verse 8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” That pretty much sums everybody up. I mean, that is covering everything. So those repeated ands will help us start to see, wow, it is not just them, or them, or them, but it is all of them. That pretty much includes all of us together, and that shows through those connecting words there. Romans 8:35 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” There are so many different things in this list, and it is a question: could any of these things separate us from the love of Christ? And the answer is no, of course not, none of those things can. But the repeating of the word or through there is really special.
Repetition for Authority, Education, Repentance, and Detail
The next one is for authority. Sometimes authority is emphasized through these repeating words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” There is that repetition. There is that, “Hey, truly, truly, this is absolutely from God,” and those repeated words are grabbing your attention. They are shouting out at you that this is authoritative. So repetition is for that. Sometimes repetition is for education. Joel 2:13: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.” Now, many of those phrases might not seem altogether different from each other. They each have a little different flavor, but they are very synonymous. You see that in there, and it seems like, well, maybe you could have made the point with one or two of those phrases and left a couple of them out, and you would still get the idea that God is gracious and merciful, and you would not have had to add the extra phrases. You might say, “Well, could we not cut this down a little bit?” But the repetition of those different phrases gives us a little bit more, I guess we could say, education, a little bit more flair, a little bit more understanding of God, through all the different aspects we are looking at Him from. So that is a beautiful thing to pick up on, those kinds of repetition. Psalm 119 also educates us on the Word of God. Every single verse in that beautiful Psalm is about the Word of God. It is focusing on our relationship with the Word of God, and the repetition of the different ways it talks about the Word of God is just absolutely beautiful: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways. Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.” Already in those seven verses: testimonies, ways, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgments, and then statutes again in verse 8 of Psalm 119. That is a beautiful way of helping us understand all the different ways of looking at the Word of God, and Psalm 119 is a great example of repetition. So those would be words that you would flag as something unique to pick up on. Sometimes repetition of the same types of wording, not necessarily the same exact word, but the same way a thing is phrased, really helps it become something beautiful just in what it is: “For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” So you see it over and over, just in three verses, and the phrasing goes on: I will do this, I will do this, I will do this. It is this repetition of I will, I will, I will. What a beautiful flow a text like that has. Many times emphasis is given by repeating phrases or sayings to really drive home a point, so that men will repent. “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” Luke chapter 13 says a couple of different times. “Ye must be born again,” Jesus told Nicodemus a couple of times in John chapter 3. “O ye of little faith”: we see that repeated toward those Jesus was calling to repentance, over and over, “O ye of little faith.” So sometimes it is for repentance. Sometimes it is for compassion. Sometimes words are repeated to show how much He cares. Sometimes words are repeated to show how many times God tried to call His people to repentance, so that He leaves us without excuse. He can point to the words of Scripture and say, “I invited you to repent and turn back to Me here, and here, and here, and here.” The repetition is really good for seeing things like that. Sometimes repetition shows up in individual words of Scripture. If you are reading through Leviticus, you will read the word blood 88 times, and in Numbers there is atonement, or I mean separation, 17 times throughout the book. So certain words will be repeated. Sometimes it is a doubling of the words that emphasizes a certain aspect. Christ will reign forever and ever, and those repeated phrases help us get it: not just forever, but forever and ever. I mean, it really drives the point home when we see repetition like that. The devil will be tormented forever and ever, in Revelation 20:10. The saints will serve God forever and ever, in Revelation 22:5. So sometimes it is a repeating word like that. Sometimes it is the statements themselves that are repeated: “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” a couple of times in Mark chapter 9, or “at the commandment of the LORD, at the commandment of the LORD, at the commandment of the LORD,” in Numbers chapter 9. Over and over they are coming back to these phrases that they repeat, and as you are doing your Bible reading, you can just pick up on those times the phrases are repeating. Sometimes it is to give a little extra detail. For instance, if you are reading through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, very few of the parables will show up in all four, but many of the parables will show up in two or three of the different Gospels, and you see different aspects of them. Maybe it was a common parable that Jesus taught in multiple places, so one time John is talking about a time when Jesus taught it, and another time Luke is talking about another time when Jesus taught it, and they might record different words or different ways Jesus taught it, because it was a little bit different crowd He was preaching to. So when we put them together, we see other aspects of these same stories and parables that Jesus was teaching. We see repetition across the same story being told multiple times. We see repetition in doctrine as well. We will see the same doctrines taught through many of the Epistles, and when we put all of the different passages together, it helps us get the biggest picture, I should say, of whatever doctrine that is. If it is salvation by grace alone, well, you can turn to Ephesians 2, or you can turn to Titus 3, or you can turn to Romans 3, and you can get the big picture of salvation by grace through faith. You can learn a lot about the deity of Christ through, yes, the individual verses, but if you follow that over all of the verses that talk about the deity of Christ and you see the repetition, then it really, really helps in your own Bible study on the deity of Christ. So repetition is a beautiful way to study the Scriptures.
Words to Define
As you are flagging words, as you are reading the Bible and pulling out words, it is not only repetition that you are looking for. You are also going to be looking for words to define. Now, the King James Bible has words that sometimes we do not use in everyday language. In Matthew chapter 7, the Sermon on the Mount, He is saying to take care of the beam out of your own eye before you take the mote out of your brother’s eye. The beam there is like a telephone pole. It is like a rafter in your house. It is a big giant log. So He is saying, make sure you do not have a telephone pole in your own eye, this problem in your own heart. Do not be hypocritical and try to fix somebody else’s tiny, tiny problem until you have taken care of the major problem in yourself. And a mote would be a word that you would define and look up. That is just kind of like a little splinter. So defining words is something we need to do. If there is a word we do not commonly understand, one we do not use in everyday language, then it is good to look up the definitions of those words. Some of those words might be something like prevent, in 1 Thessalonians 4:15: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” Now, in our language we use the word prevent to mean we are going to stop somebody from doing these things, but the Bible usage of the word here is just to precede, to come before, to come suddenly or before the expectation. So it is saying we shall not prevent them, we shall not go before those that are asleep. So look up words like that, because sometimes the words in English change over time. “The word of God is quick.” We know this verse. It is a real common verse, Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Quick we might think of as fast, like a cheetah, but quick here is like the quick of your fingernail. If you touch underneath your fingernail, it makes your whole hand come alive. You jerk your hand back quickly. So quick here is talking about being alive, and that is what the Word of God is: quick. Another example would be 2 Timothy 3, verse 13: “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” Now, this is not like a wax to remove hair, or the wax of a candle, or anything like that. Wax just means to grow, to increase, to progress worse and worse. So looking up definitions like this is really helpful in understanding these words too: “shall wax worse and worse.” Matthew 27:15. Let’s see here, Matthew 27:15: “Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.” And wont is not the same as the contraction won’t. This is not saying will not; “was wont” just means this was his custom, this was his habit, this was what they did. So when we look up words like that, it helps us understand certain words. Sometimes names themselves, these proper names, have unique meanings to them, and specific definitions, like a dictionary of Bible names, for example, are going to have the meaning of each of these names. Methuselah means “when he dies, it shall come.” Bethel means “the house of God.” Jacob means “heel catcher,” tricky supplanter. So even by the names of these Bible characters we can see where the story of their life is going, and having a good Bible dictionary to understand proper names is a really good habit to get into. Just look those names up as you are defining words.
Verbs, Pronouns, Connecting Words, Questions, and Exclamations
As you are flagging words, you might look for words that have great activity to them, verbs that are moving somewhere. What is going on in this verse based on the verbs? Or it might be pronouns, a certain he or she. I was doing a Bible study like this, studying this exact class with some of the men from my church, and one of the guys was studying Psalm 55, and the psalm was jumping in between David, and David’s enemies, and then God, and each verse was focusing on a different aspect of that. One of the verses, because of the pronoun, just said his words were smooth as butter, and it kind of seemed like it was describing God, and it seemed like a good thing. Then we looked at the pronouns a little bit more and realized, wait a minute, it is not talking about God; it is talking about the enemy of God. And it changed the whole verse and flipped it upside down from what we had originally thought. So just make sure you understand the pronoun he. Well, who is he? Is it talking about God, or David, or David’s enemies? Who is the he it is talking about here? So really watch out for the pronouns in a passage. You flag words that are connecting words. If you see the word therefore, someone said, you need to look up and figure out what it is there for. You need to find out. Therefore and wherefore, or words like yet and for: those words will connect different passages of Scripture. So it is not just staying within that one little phrase, those four or five verses. If that portion of Scripture starts with the word therefore, well, then there is a whole portion of Scripture before that which shows what was leading up to that passage, so find those connecting words. You might come across questions in the Scripture, and what are the answers to those questions? I like looking up exclamation points. If there is an exclamation point in Scripture, what is it that made the author so excited? What is it about that passage that is so exciting? So flagging words is just a really, really important part of Bible study.
Flagging Words in 1 Corinthians 13
I love doing Bible study by just focusing so much within this one realm. I am talking about personal Bible study, and then even study for my own sermon preparation. Yesterday, for example, I was preaching from 1 Corinthians chapter 13. It is an iconic passage. I am preaching verse by verse through the book of 1 Corinthians, and so yesterday we just happened to come to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and most of my sermon was basically just doing a bunch of Bible study on these words I had flagged in my study. So let’s look at 1 Corinthians 13: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” You look up those words, and it is just this loud, annoying sound, a tinkling cymbal. So if I do not have charity, if I do not have agape love in action for other people, even though I am a gifted person, no matter how gifted you are, if you do not have love, it is just empty noise. It is meaningless. Verse 2: “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” Man, that sounds like a super Christian, does it not? But if I have not charity, I am nothing. I am empty. It is meaningless if I have all kinds of faith and all kinds of gifts, and I can preach a great sermon and all of that, without love. It is empty. It is nothing. Verse 3: “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” Man, what if you gave everything you had, to the ultimate end, and still that kind of sacrifice would in the end really mean nothing? It is empty without love behind it, the biblical charity here. Well, what is charity, then? It goes into this description of love in verse 4: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” “Charity suffereth long.” It is just going to suffer for a really long time. That is where God says we can love our enemies. We can suffer the way Christ suffered on the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Jesus suffered. Stephen suffered: “Lord Jesus, into thy hand I commit my spirit.” I am sorry; Stephen said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” He is having the spirit of Jesus Christ. He is suffering a long time, “and is kind.” “Charity envieth not.” He is not jealous of everybody else. “Charity vaunteth not itself.” I highlighted a couple of words, and if you just look up some of these words, it is a braggart, to brag or to boast. So these are words of bragging. If you are constantly talking about yourself and all of that, well, that is not coming from love. That is coming from you just showing off about yourself all the time. So those are the words you would say. “Is not puffed up”: and puffed up is just what it sounds like, to inflate, to blow, or to puff up. That is the attitude of arrogance. So there are the words of arrogance, and there is the attitude of arrogance, and that is not love. That is the opposite of biblical love. Verse 5: biblical charity “doth not behave itself unseemly.” That is a word I do not use every day, so I had to look that one up. What does unseemly mean? Well, to behave in an ugly, indecent, unseemly, or unbecoming manner, to be disgraced, to suffer reproach. So it is kind of a rude behavior. It is a disgusting way of carrying yourself and expressing yourself, and love does not behave itself that way. “Seeketh not her own” is the next phrase there. I am not looking for my own betterment. I want to bring blessing and help to other people, and so charity seeketh not her own. “Is not easily provoked,” in verse 5. Well, provoked is movement toward a certain point, to sharpen or whet, to provoke or rouse to anger and indignation. So if your temper is easily set off, well, that is not of love. The next phrase I did not realize was even here until I looked up the definition of the word. “Thinketh no evil” is obvious, where true love is not really just thinking evil thoughts, and that is true too, but the definition of the word is even richer than that. The word thinketh here is to reason, to account, to impute, to number, to put together with one’s mind, to count, to occupy yourself with reckonings or calculations. So it is like an accountant term. It is being an accountant. It is computing. It is taking a list down of all the evil things that happen to you. And the love of a Christian is saying, “Well, I do not want to take inventory of all the evil things you have done to me.” If you say, “I repent,” then I am obligated to forgive you. If you say unto me, “I repent,” well, how long shall we forgive somebody? “Till seven times?” Peter asked Jesus, and He said unto him, well, no, until seventy times seven. So if someone says, “I repent,” you forgive, and you forgive, and you forgive, and to forgive means to drop the charges, to release yourself from remembering, from choosing to bring those things up. So biblical love, it says here, thinketh no evil. I am not going to hang on to the accounting of those evil things that were stacked up against me. The same way Christ forgave me, that is the same way I am supposed to forgive others. I am supposed to release those charges. I am not going to store up all of the evil things in my mind against somebody. That is biblical love, and that is coming just from the definition of the word: thinketh no evil, to take account, to take inventory. Well, I am not storing those things up in my mind. “Rejoiceth not in iniquity,” verse 6 says, “but rejoiceth in the truth.” “Beareth all things.” Now, what is bearing all things? I thought, well, does it mean bear ye one another’s burdens, that I am supposed to help other people? Well, it can mean that, but this word beareth here is interesting. It means to cover, to cover over in silence, to conceal, to hide the faults of others. Now, this is not sweeping sin under the rug or ignoring sin. That is not what it is talking about. This is talking about how gossip stops with you. I am not going to be one who spreads all this bad stuff about other people. I am going to be like Peter said: love covereth the multitude of sins. So beareth all things there is talking about covering over the issues that you perhaps know about other people. In a husband-wife relationship, for example, you know so much bad about the other person because you live together. You see each other’s faults and failures, and it is not that you go spreading that around to anybody else. You are covering those things up in love and working through them together. So that is beareth all things. “Believeth all things”: that does not mean you are gullible. That just means that you believe the best about somebody. You choose to have the right kinds of beliefs about somebody. “Hopeth all things” is that faith that I am going to see this through to the end, and that belief and hope is like looking ahead toward the future and saying, “Man, I believe God will do something. By faith I trust that God wants to change this situation for the good.” It may seem like they are against God. It may seem like they are rejecting God. But I choose to believe that God wants to work in their life. And sometimes that can get old and aggravating, but that moves to the next phrase there, which is “endureth all things.” I can stick this through to the end. I am going to endure. I am going to push through the agony. I am going to push through the suffering of waiting for my wayward child to come back to God, waiting for my spouse to turn things around, waiting for a good thing to come from this. Well, that is the endurance side of things. So I found it really interesting that just yesterday, and I am recording this on a Monday, talking about one of my sermons, the morning sermon of yesterday’s church services at our church was spent on basically this lesson we have been going through, flagging words. There are so many rich definitions of words. There are so many illustrations in words. There are so many beautiful pictures that come uncovered when you just look up words in their context. So in your own Bible study, I encourage you to spend time on that portion of Bible study. If you just had a Bible app open, or a big Bible concordance next to you, or a Bible dictionary, then just spend some time looking up words, flagging words and phrases throughout your Bible study time, and that alone will enrich your Bible study. I encourage you in that. We will see you next time as we look at more examples and then look at how to piece all of these words we are uncovering together into one big idea. Looking forward to the next lesson; we will see you then. 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.
