Well, today is such a fun lesson, because we are going hands-on with some of the very books I use in my own Bible study. We are going to show you the books, show you some of the computer software I use, and really work through this idea of observation and explain what we mean by observation in the book BIBS, Big Idea Bible Study. Hi, church. This is halfway through our 20-part video series on Bible study, and we are working through the book BIBS, Big Idea Bible Study. I wrote that about ten years ago for our teens. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, and here is a video series of lessons I recorded over a year ago for an extension ministry of a Bible college. I just hope it helps you grow in knowing Jesus better, and that you can get into God’s Word in a deeper way as a result of this. So enjoy this week’s video.
Genre
Hello, and welcome back. This is class number ten of our Bible study series, and I am really looking forward to today, because we actually get to dive into a few books that I think will really be a help for us when we are learning how to do observation, how to get the big picture we started talking about in our last lesson. I really enjoy getting into the actual study, so I want to look at some of the tools of the trade, some of the tools of somebody who is involved in Bible study. We are going to try something a little bit different today and actually try to show you some of the books here, and pull in another screen here and show you some of the Bible software tools I use. So I really hope today can be a blessing to you. We are halfway through the series now, with this being lesson number ten, so let’s dive right into it. We started talking last time about the observation stage, the big bird’s-eye view, flying high above the text and looking down before actually diving into the Scriptures themselves. We are taking the bird’s-eye view, and there are a lot of different things we can observe while we are up there. We talked briefly last time about the word genre, the different style of writing the book might be in. We see genre in life through all kinds of things, and we interpret different genres differently. For instance, if you go to the mailbox and pull out the letters, well, I get tons and tons of junk mail, so I sort my mail. I get a big stack of letters, and I stand over the garbage can and look at each letter that comes in, and if it is junk mail, it goes straight in the trash, straight in the trash, straight in the trash. That is how I sort junk mail. Then if I see a letter that seems to be a personal note, I will set that aside, because I am going to read that differently. And if this one looks like a bill, I am going to put that over here, because I have to process that differently. So when we read letters, we notice that we handle them a little bit differently because of the genre, because of the categories they are in. The same thing with music. You listen to music differently, and certain music sets different scenes. There will be different cultural music that sets up a scene. There will be a circus-style happy music, and that will set a scene. And there is the scary kind of music, with the minor tones. Well, you are not going to use that scary horror music if you are making a film about cute little babies laughing. The music itself has a genre to it. It sets a different scene. It has a way of interpreting the scene. So we understand genres in music, and we understand genres even in checking the mail, and we understand genres in literature also. You do not read Hamlet by Shakespeare the same way you read a text message on your phone. You do not read poems the same way you read a textbook. They are all read differently. With the Scriptures, we have different genres that all of the books fit into. You might be reading many of the first books of the Bible, and they would fit into the genre of history, or narrative. They are going to be very story-driven. They are not going to give a whole lot of detailed how-tos. They are not going to be very instructive, like we see in the New Testament: “Pray without ceasing,” “Search the scriptures.” We are not going to see a lot of these rapid-fire instructions, to walk in the Spirit and all of that kind of thing. We are going to see a big story, and sometimes we have to read several chapters before we see the idea of that story, because it is history; it is narrative. There is a genre of law, and we have to understand how the law fits into our study and where we fit into much of the Jewish law that was written. There is a genre of wisdom, and that would include things like Job and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Those are going to be the pithy sayings, snippets of wisdom from God, and you will read that a little bit differently. It will be a little bit more disjointed. Not all of it will flow together like some of the narrative portions do. There will be poetry in books like Psalms and Song of Solomon. Lamentations will include portions of poetry. Sometimes a poem will be mixed into a book, and you will read the poem differently from the rest of the book. There are books of prophecy. The genre of prophecy has some of its own rules, so you need to interpret those carefully so we do not get off doctrinally. There is the genre of apocalyptic literature, and that is going to be story-driven narrative with some of that prophetic kind of writing. This is where we are going to get into some of the obviously allegorical, pictorial kinds of pictures we see in certain portions of Scripture, Revelation, Daniel and such, and you have to be able to discern what is literal and what is the apocalyptic kind of genre there. Then there are going to be the parables, and we will read the parables a little bit differently. There will be a main point that comes out of each one. Not every part of the parable means something, but if Jesus gives the interpretation, for instance, that is the meaning of the parable, and we do not want to stretch those too far. An epistle is very straightforward. It is a letter from an apostle to a particular situation or a person, so we will read an epistle pretty straightforwardly. I think those are some of the easiest to interpret, because they just say what they mean. And then there are going to be romantic sections of Scripture. There are portions of Ruth and Song of Solomon that will have timeless poetic romance focuses to them as well. So the genre makes a big difference.
The Author
Another bird’s-eye view we are going to look at, besides what style of writing, what genre it is in, is the author. Who the author is, and how that factors in. Obviously the Holy Spirit is the Author of the whole Book, and yet He uses human instruments, so we sometimes see a particular setting from the Apostle Paul, or Peter, or James. Second Peter says, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” So we know the Holy Ghost is the Author of Scripture, and yet He used human authors as well, human instruments, to pen His Word. David was a musician, so he is writing a lot of the Psalms, which are songs, and we see him going through times of struggle, and we see that come out in the writings he has written. The Apostle Paul was a devoted theologian before he became a Christian, so he brought his Judaistic understanding of the Old Testament, and when it got unlocked by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, he still had all the wisdom of his training and his background, and yet it all came clear and made sense. So much of his writing has a much more theological tone to it. Neither of those authors, David or Paul, was a robot. They were not just writing mindlessly, as though they had no control. But neither were they writing of their own accord either. This is the miracle of the Scriptures we have, in that we are reading God’s Word to us, God’s thoughts to us. When we understand the author, when we hear their words and see their thoughts and almost feel their feelings while we are reading the books they wrote, that personalizes the Scriptures. I used to think of the Bible as though it was just people in Bible times, and they were on a different plane. I did not view them the same as I viewed every other human. I thought they were super-Christians. I thought they were so much better than me, like I could never be one of them. And yet when we look at the Scriptures, we see that they are real people. They are normal people, just like you and me. Seeing the Scriptures through the eyes of the human authors helps to humanize the Scriptures, and that is a good thing to do. We do not have to mysticize or mythologize the people of the Bible, because they were real-life people, just like you, and they went through the same kinds of struggles you go through. They had the same issues. They had the same fears. They had the same determination. They were just humans, just like us, and they chose to walk with the Lord, and God used many of them really, really mightily. So seeing the human side of the Scriptures humanizes it and helps us look at the Scriptures in a more realistic kind of way.
The Background
So we can look at the author, and when we are doing the bird’s-eye view, we can also look at the background of a text. When I was in Bible college, my pastor spent so much of the sermon time, much of his sermon, on background, and I grew to love it. I grew to love what was going on in the Kings and the Prophets, as he would go through 1 and 2 Kings and then jump to the Prophets and get all the background information of what was going on, what king was reigning, and which prophet was prophesying at the same time. I love the background information. To me that makes the Bible come alive, when you can see what has been going on. Why did God need to write this portion? What is the issue in the country of Israel at this time? Why are Israel and Judah splitting up, or whatever the case is? Why are the Pharisees trying to attack Jesus like this? Why don’t they like Him? Who are the Sadducees? You get questions like that answered by looking at the background situations, and I just really enjoy that kind of approach. If it is talking about the kings, there is a royal family there, and there is a heritage, and there are sons and daughters, and there is fighting going on. Those are just examples, again, of looking at the background of a passage to get the bigger picture and seeing, “Man, every person involved in this text I am reading has some story.” You have a story. I have a story. You have a life you lived before this moment, and everybody in the Scripture you are reading does too. Go back and look for the background: who is this person in the story? Is it just a character, like in a movie, or is this a person? When we start to think of the Scriptures as real-life people, it just makes the whole Bible come alive. I love it. So look for the background information. Do not let a text live in isolation.
Date, Occasion, Culture, and Theme
When you are looking at the bird’s-eye view, when you are looking at the bigger picture, there are several things to be looking for. First, I would recommend just looking at the date, the date of the writing. When was this particular book of the Bible written? Is it Old Testament or New Testament? Is this before or after Moses? Is this before or after Jesus? What is going on around those times? We need to get our bearings in Scripture. You should have a mental flow of how the Scriptures go. Is Noah before or after Abraham? Is Abraham before or after David? Is David before or after Isaiah? I am not talking about the order of the books. I am talking about the Bible characters themselves. You should have a flow in your mind of every major Bible character and be able to explain how the Scriptures flow chronologically, and that will help us in piecing the rest of these things together. So look for the date. Look for the occasion of writing. Why was this book written? We need to stop and wonder that, and maybe wonder it out loud. Ask yourself: Why was this book written? Why is this in here? Why did this text need to be in the Bible in the first place? What is going on in their life that is also a problem in my life, or in our life, or in our culture? Those are the questions we need to be asking. What is the issue God is trying to fix? What is the fallen condition of mankind that is the same today as it was back then? What is the problem here? So we need to find those kinds of issues, the occasion of writing. Third, we need to look at the culture. Your culture might be different from mine. If I were to come to your country, if you are in a different country, I would need to understand what is going on in your culture if I were to spend any time ministering in your region. There are ways you understand things that I do not understand. The same thing when people come to America: there is a different culture. When people come to California from other states, there is a different culture even in our state compared to other states. Even in our city there is a kind of different culture. Even in our church there is almost a different culture compared to our city and compared to our state. Everybody has his own culture, his own understanding of life, in a sense. So we look at the Scriptures, and we want to understand the culture these people were coming from. I am preaching right now through the book of 1 Corinthians, and we see that Corinth, the city they were living in, was half wealthy people and half slaves or former slaves. It is a port city, so a lot of commerce is coming through the city, and many, many people are very wealthy. Some of the issues they were having in their church were the very things the city itself reflected. So if we know the culture of Corinth, we understand why some of those issues are going on in the book of 1 Corinthians. There were sexual sins, and there were rich-person-versus-poor-person sins, and there were legal sins. There were all kinds of issues going on in that church, but it makes more sense when you understand the culture of the people. So looking at the culture is very, very valuable: the culture of Nineveh, the culture of Jerusalem, the culture of Rome. Those will help us understand, no matter what age we are living in. Somebody in the Middle Ages, or somebody in 2022, can look through history books and find out the culture and learn a little bit more about the Scriptures. We can also look at the theme of a book. If you are looking at the bird’s-eye view, then we want to look for themes, common repeating ideas that happen throughout the book. The theme might show up in a survey book you are reading through: the theme of God’s sovereignty, for example, all the way through the book of Esther. There are going to be different themes that pop up. Genesis is going to have many themes. First Corinthians has many themes to it. Maybe there are big broad themes; maybe there are more narrow themes. But whatever it is, I encourage you just to start by looking at the big picture, at the observation stage.
Start with Your Toothbrush
Start with whatever tools you have. You may not have a whole bunch of books. You may not have a huge library. But start with what you do have. One of the chapters in my book just says, “Start with your toothbrush.” If you want good dental hygiene, then use the tool you have, and it might be a toothbrush. You might become a dentist one day, with all these specialty tools, where you can get your teeth really clean and all of that, but that is maybe for a future time, maybe for a little bit more in-depth kind of study. I would encourage you to start with your personal hygiene, right, with what you have, the toothbrush. That is the everyday kind of cleaning, brushing your teeth. The same with Bible study: start with what you have. If you have a Bible, then start reading your Bible. You do not have to have a whole bunch of in-depth Bible study tools, as though you are a specialist, or you are going to be pastoring a church or starting a Bible college. You do not have to start with all the greatest software out there. Just start with what you have. The routine kind of cleaning is what gives your mouth the best kind of hygiene, and the routine kind of Bible study, just the everyday kind of focus on the Word of God, is going to be the best way to do it anyway. So start with a Bible. Maybe you have a concordance, and we will look at one of those. Online Bibles will be another good tool. You might be able to use books, and we will look at some of the commentaries and the survey books in just a little bit, but start with what you have. If your pastor is a good resource, then go to your pastor and ask him questions and seek wisdom from him, and seek the Scriptures themselves, and seek out a good study Bible, and figure these things out as closely as you can. Now, there is a warning in using all these tools. You can use the wrong tools. You can use too many tools. So we want to make sure we are using the Bible as our main tool. Let it be the main focus of our studies. But there are other tools we can use. None of these will be infallible. None of these will be perfect, except for the Bible, but I think they will be good tools we can use in our studies.
Bibles, Handbooks, and Surveys
So I want to look at a few of these tools. It might just be that you have a nice Bible. This Bible I have laid out here is a paragraph Bible, meaning the verses themselves, you might be able to tell here, are not set one per line. Each verse is just laid one after another, just like you would read a book, unless it is a poetry kind of layout; then it is laid out like a poem. It has some of the cross-references down these sides, but you read it just like you would read a regular story, and I really like just reading straight from my Bible like this. You might have a Bible like that, and you just like to read straight through it, like we were talking about a couple of lessons ago. Or you might have a study Bible. A good study Bible will have a lot of good information in it. At the beginning of each book there might be a paragraph or two of some of the background information we were talking about a little earlier. It might have center references like this. It might have the date of the writing right here, and it might have these headings that show you what this section is about, what that section is about, and where some of the paragraph divisions are. So a good study Bible might give you those things we talked about: what year it was written, what some of the major themes of the book are, what to expect when you are reading it. It might have some notes down here at the bottom. For instance, this has the number one right here, which means verse number 6, and there is a little note down here about the Assyrian invasion. So it gives a little bit of background information right there. A good study Bible is very, very good to have, and you can ask your pastor for recommendations of what kinds of study Bibles to get. The book I was referencing earlier, Understanding the Bible for Yourself, has a whole chapter, a whole section, on commentaries and what kinds of good books you can use. But a good study Bible would be an invaluable resource, to have an approachable way to study the Scriptures in a new way. You might have some kind of handbook. This will be an overview kind of book that will give you the biggest pictures of what each Bible book is. The World’s Bible Handbook, for example: it is not the best book out there, but it is a good way to get an introduction to certain books. For an Old Testament book, you might see the name of the author, the period of his prophecy, what the book is basically about, a few paragraphs that summarize the book, the type or the genre, the character of the writing, the subject, a basic outline of what the book covers, a key chapter of the book, a key verse of the book, a key phrase of the book, a key thought from the book, certain prophetic examples from the book, seed thoughts from the book, and some devotional material, what they call “a little bit of heavenly manna.” So that is an example of an Old Testament book. This survey kind of book will give you a lot of good ideas on what was going on between the Old and the New Testaments. It will give you names of Christ, different studies, different maps that you see here, and as we go into the New Testament, how the New Testament is laid out. It will give a lot of big, broad overview kinds of things, and then it will go into the books themselves and give a really good overview of what to expect when you are looking at a New Testament book: again the name, the contents, a basic outline of the book, the occasion of writing, but then some of these really interesting tidbits we have here, like different carvings archaeologists have dug up and different coins they have found, actual images of things that serve to verify the Scriptures, archaeological digs that talk about the destruction of Jerusalem, for example, the things in the Scriptures verified by archaeology, and different original writings here. So we will understand about customs. We will understand why they talk about the upper room here and there, the science of certain things. There are just a lot of good, valuable things in a Bible survey kind of book, and every single book of the Bible has information like that in it. So a good survey book does not take you verse by verse, but it surveys the entire book at a glance. That is a good one right there. Jensen’s Survey of the New Testament is another good survey kind of book, with a lot of good charts that talk about what is going on at different times, different maps throughout, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the differences between them. There are the different periods of the Scriptures here, different maps for each of the books, a whole time chart showing when each book was written, the high priests during New Testament times, several detailed maps specific to the portion of Scripture you are reading, Jerusalem in New Testament times. If you cannot go to Jerusalem directly, then the next best thing is to see how it was laid out, how the temple was laid out. So a survey book is, again, not going to take you verse by verse through the Scriptures, but it will show you where the Sea of Galilee is, where the Jordan River is, where Rome is in connection with this, where Jerusalem is compared to Judea, what Galilee is, and those kinds of things. The survey-style books will take you book by book.
Commentaries
This next kind of book would be an overview kind of commentary that will take you, it says, verse by verse, but it is not going to show you word for word what is in each book. This is the entire Bible, with the words of Scripture in bold and then a little bit of explanation of what that verse means. So it will go portion by portion through Scripture. This says Genesis chapter 2, and then it will go verse by verse, but it looks at these verses in sections. Again, it is not going to go through every single word of the Scripture. It is not going to give you a lot of detail on each verse, but it will at least address each section of Scripture, and I like these overview kinds of commentaries for that purpose. At the beginning of each book you will see that it gives an outline of the whole book, and then the commentary with verse-by-verse instruction. So an all-in-one kind of commentary might be a good starting point if you need some quick answers and would like to get just one book that will cover a lot of answers throughout the Bible. It will not cover every answer, but a lot of them. You might go into more detail when you buy a commentary on a specific book. This one is by John Phillips, for example, on the book of Daniel. This is a commentary on one book that goes verse by verse, and it is even more detailed than the overview, whole-Bible kind of commentary. This one will give you more detail verse by verse and a whole lot of background information on the book of Daniel, for example, and then a really complete outline. Every single verse is detailed out here, lined out line by line. This is the outline of what to expect, and then when you get deeper into the book, it just goes: okay, chapter 3, verses 1 through 12, this next section, and chapter 3, verse 1. There are four or five paragraphs on just verse number 1, and then verses 2 through 7 get another full page and a half. This is a good example of a commentary that looks at the text in detail. People who have studied the Scriptures and studied culture and studied authors are going to be able to share their wisdom with you. So that is an Old Testament example. Here is a New Testament example, the book of Romans. The same author has also done one on the book of Romans, and the same principles apply. There will be the overview kind of outline he lays out here for what he believes is the structure of the entire book, and then he will start going verse by verse through the book, giving you several paragraphs on what to expect when you are reading the book of Romans. So that is an overview of some of the books.
Strong’s Concordance and Bible Software
One of my favorites, besides just the Bible itself, and a study Bible, so that I can look at a few things at a glance, the next best tool I have and enjoy, would be a Strong’s Concordance. I have it digitally. You can get a printed copy of the Strong’s Concordance. It just shows you every single word of the Bible and where it is found. I have it set up where, if I just click on a word, for example, in this Strong’s Concordance, it will pop up the definition of the word right here. So “tongues,” glōssa. It gives the number it is found under in the Strong’s Concordance, which corresponds with Vine’s and all kinds of other Bible dictionaries, and then it gives a brief definition of the word. It shows how many times in the Bible it is used. In the Authorized Version it is used fifty times, for example. Then a brief definition: the tongue, a member of the body; or the tongue, a language or dialect used by a people distinct from other nations. That is a simple understanding of the Strong’s Concordance. Then you can search for “tongue.” If you click on that, it will search the Bible for all the verses that include the word tongue, and you will see it in Acts and Luke, and all through Acts and Romans and 1 Corinthians and Philippians. So you will be able to see at a glance everywhere in the Bible that word is used, and you will be able to see the definition of the word. So Strong’s Concordance is a good example. I am using here the Olive Tree Bible Study app, which has the Strong’s Concordance built in, and on the other side I have here the CWSB, the Complete Word Study Bible. It is very similar to the Strong’s Concordance. I can click on a word, again the word tongues, for instance, and it will show the Greek word it was translated from, from those original languages. Again, you can look up all the words in that form. You can click there and see the Strong’s words themselves, and you can see in this particular book, the Complete Word Study Bible, the number of times it is used in Scripture, and a fuller definition. If you click on “view full definition,” it will go through many, many references right there, and it will show you exactly what that word means, and then also, just like Strong’s, where it is found in the Scripture. So I love the Strong’s Concordance. I love using the Bible study tools we have here.
Use the Tools with Discernment
With any of the tools, do not lean on them too much, but do not ignore them either. I think it is fine to use the tools for what they are, as long as we are not overusing them and not neglecting the study of the Scriptures. We need to make sure, when we are opening any book, that we are judging every book by the Scriptures themselves. There will be some authors who are off doctrinally. There will be teaching in the books you are reading that is contrary, for instance, to what you are probably hearing at church. So we need to be aware of the theological position of the authors of these books we are reading, especially those I reference. They may be coming from an ecumenical kind of standpoint. They may not be Baptist, and they may have different views of the church, or of Baptist doctrine, or Baptist church ideals. They may use different Bible versions that we find to be in error. It might be that they bring some kind of allegorical interpretation to the Scripture and do not look as much at the literal interpretation. So we have to be aware of where the authors are coming from, the theology they are espousing, and the kind of textual criticism they might be bringing to the book. We have to think, “Man, I do not want to lump all of these theological viewpoints together, and I do not want to be influenced by what I would see as false doctrine, and I do not want to read after these authors who are heretics,” and all of that kind of thing. So we have to be really, really careful and discerning. But there is a kind of gift God gives us, and that is the wisdom of God, being able to exercise God-given discernment in those instances. So while we want to be careful, we also do not want to neglect other books to the point of never being able to exercise our God-given discernment. These are some of the tools of the trade. These are some of the ways you can get that observation, that overview, that big broad view of a book. So I encourage you to use the tools wisely and well, and I am looking forward to looking more at observation, and more as we narrow it down into interpretation. We will see you next time in our next class. God bless you. 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.
