Well, if you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench. I am a pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and I recorded this whole series of videos over a year ago for an extension ministry of a Bible college. So I just hope it is a blessing to you and helps you grow in knowing Jesus better. With that, let’s get into today’s lesson.
Compare Scripture with Scripture
Hello, and welcome back. This is class number twelve of our Big Idea Bible Study series, learning how to interpret the Scriptures for ourselves, and this is the fourth lesson in which we have been looking at the big picture, what we have been calling observation. Last time we were talking about keeping the Scriptures in their context, and this time I want to finish up a little bit of the topic we started last time, and then, if we have time, I want to look at four different passages and see what observation looks like in different books of the Bible. Talking about observation, we said last time that we want to keep a passage in its context. That is very, very crucial. We want to make sure we are reading exactly as the author intended within that text, within that context. And yet at the same time, I guess a second rule to that would be to compare Scripture with Scripture. That is important as well. We do not want to take only one little text. We want to view the entire Bible as unified. We want to look at all of it together, because it is a unified book, so everything should be able to work together. There should not be contradictions within the Scriptures. We believe the Scriptures being one book means that it is all unified, from one Author, and because of that we can compare Scripture with Scripture, and that is a good habit to get into. A good reference Bible, like we talked about last time, with some of the cross-references down the center column, would be good to use for cross-references. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge would be a good book to use for a lot of those cross-references, to see which Scriptures compare with one another. Obviously, once we are doing the cross-referencing, we want to make sure that whatever passage we go to, we also keep that in its context. So first we look at the context of this passage, and then, if we are referencing another passage on a similar topic, we want to make sure that is still in its context, of course. While we are doing that, we are developing sound doctrine. We are not just getting focused on one little area of the Scripture, but we are seeing all of Scripture together. For instance, if you are doing a scriptural study of the topic of sanctification, there is one passage that talks about sanctification, and somebody says, “I found the key to sanctification.” But I do not know if there is just one key to sanctification, because when we look at all of the Scriptures on sanctification, or see where it shows up throughout the Scriptures, we see that sanctification is putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Sanctification is not grieving the Holy Spirit. It is about walking circumspectly. It is about not fellowshipping with evil. It is about redeeming the time. It is about putting on the whole armour of God. So sanctification does not necessarily have only one key. There are a whole lot of different aspects all over Scripture when you cross-reference the Scripture and see the different aspects of it. So that is cross-referencing, for instance, on sanctification. How about prayer? There might be some false doctrines out there, like “name it and claim it,” and they will pull out one little verse, and you read that verse and go, “Well, that seems to be what this verse is saying.” But then cross-references in the Scriptures reveal to us that we need to pray according to the Father’s will, and James even tells us that you can pray for the wrong thing sometimes, that you can pray wanting to consume it upon your own lusts: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” Those are the wrong kinds of prayers. So that is cross-referencing. I am in a series right now in the book of 1 Corinthians. I am preaching it to the church I pastor, and we are in 1 Corinthians chapters 12, 13, and 14, dealing with all of it, and chapter 14 especially deals with the topic of tongues. If you are looking just at the book of 1 Corinthians for tongues, you might get the idea that maybe tongues are still valid today. But we look at all of Scripture. We look at Acts chapter 2 and see that tongues were languages people understood, and we see in the rest of the New Testament, in the books written later, that tongues are not even mentioned later on. So we understand from all of it, we get the big view, that tongues were for a time, were for a sign, were for a short period of time, but that they have ceased, according to 1 Corinthians 13. So there is a lot of cross-referencing you can do throughout the Scripture. Evangelism might be another topic. Somebody might read the verse in 1 Corinthians, “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” and they might look at that and say, “I am going to compromise my beliefs. I am going to go to some seedy parts of town. I am going to do some things that may not seem very Christian, but my intention is to see people saved.” We look at that and go, wait a minute. Galatians tells us, “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” I do not want to compromise my Christian beliefs and accept worldly practices just in the name of evangelism. So we see cross-references all over the place that keep things in their context.
Cross-References Define Words and Fill In Details
We also want to do cross-references to help us define and understand words. Sometimes a word may not be very clear in one text, but you look at it in its context, and then you look at the other places it is used in the Scripture, and you start to piece those things together. Two lessons ago we talked about the tools of the trade, and we showed on the computer how you can use a Strong’s Concordance, how you can click on a word and see not only the definition of the word but also where else in Scripture it is used. That can help you understand a word more fully, because of the cross-references. You can see, “Oh, it is used here, and it is used there, and I am getting a better sense of the word based on how it is used throughout Scripture.” So cross-references help with that. Cross-references also help when it might look like there are contradictions, or there is missing information. We have four different accounts of Jesus’ life. We call them the four Gospels, and part of the beauty of the Gospels is that we can take all of them together and fill in some missing parts of the story. It is not that there are contradictions; it is that we are not seeing it all from the same perspective. But when you do the cross-references, you start to see, “Oh, okay. He was describing this aspect of the story, and he was describing that aspect of the story.” They are not contradictory. They are adding details to one another, and that can actually be a beautiful thing. One passage might talk about the rich man and say it is impossible for a rich man to get into heaven, and we might go, “Oh, what does that mean? You cannot go to heaven if you have any money?” And we see from the comparison with another passage: well, no, it is the rich man who trusts in his riches. No rich man trusting in his riches has ever been granted entrance into heaven. That is not where his trust must be. So comparing Scripture with Scripture really helps us with that.
Cross-References Expose False Teaching
It also helps us with false teaching. I mean, there is Acts 2:38, which some people will latch on to: “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” “See, it says baptism for the remission of sins.” Now, we look at the rest of Scripture, and baptism is never used in a way that takes somebody’s sins away. So we look at the phrase “baptized for the remission of sins,” and some people might say, “Well, baptism in order to get remission of sins.” But we just say, well, no, we know from the rest of Scripture that baptism is because of the remission of sins: I have remission of sins, so I will get baptized. So cross-referencing helps you understand baptism in its full picture. We understand from 1 Corinthians 15 that the complete gospel, as Paul preached it in 1 Corinthians 15, is the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” That is the gospel, and it does not mention baptism. First Peter 3 calls baptism just a figure, an image, a symbol of our salvation: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Some would say, “Well, ‘with his stripes we are healed,’ so we ought to be able to lay our hands on somebody and heal him supernaturally, to have this healing.” But we understand from cross-referencing, in 1 Peter chapter 2, that the healing from Christ is the healing of sin, and that is forgiveness: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” We also see all over the Scriptures, and especially in some of the later books that were written, that there was no on-demand healing. Even the Apostle Paul himself was sick, and others they ran into in the course of their lives were sick. So with some of these false doctrines that are taught today, we can get the fuller understanding from the Scripture through cross-references. We want to make sure we are emphasizing what the Scriptures emphasize, and not going beyond that as well. So cross-references will help us see those things. Back to the Gospels: the sign above Jesus’ cross when He was hanging on the cross. Each of the Gospels has a different phrasing, a little different wording, and so we look at all of them to see what the entire sign must have said, for example. It is no contradiction. It is just fuller understanding, and that can actually be a wonderful, wonderful thing. So cross-referencing Scripture is important for the big picture.
Seeing Christ and the Trinity
Another big-picture view we want to look for is Jesus Christ. We can see Jesus Christ in the Old Testament and the New Testament, not only in His person, for instance in the Gospels and the stories about Jesus, but also in the Psalms, in the Prophets, in Genesis. All through Genesis we see Jesus Christ as a type, as a picture, as the Creator, as the One involved in the picture of Abraham and Isaac, and even Joseph. In so many ways we see Christ all throughout the Scripture. When Jesus was walking on the road to Emmaus with the men, Luke 24:27 says, “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” That was hermeneutics. He was expounding unto them the things concerning Himself. So Jesus says, even of the Old Testament, “This is about Me.” So we have a big observation view of Scripture where we are finding Christ in the Scripture. Revelation says, in Revelation 19:10, “And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” So the prophetic passages, or even the spirit of the Scriptures, are found in Jesus Christ. First Peter 1:11 speaks of the Spirit of Christ being in the prophets: “Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” So we are seeing Christ in the Scriptures. That is a big view of things. We are also seeing the Trinity, not only Jesus Christ, but seeing it through the lens of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, or God the Holy Ghost, throughout the Scriptures. I was preaching recently in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and in those first few verses the gifts of the Spirit are from God the Father, from God the Son, and from God the Holy Spirit. So we see the Trinity all throughout the Scriptures. That is a way to observe the Scriptures.
Doctrines from Silence, and Patience
When we are looking at the Scriptures, we do not want to make doctrines out of silence. Sometimes we will say, “Well, the Bible does not say anything about this,” and we do not want to build a whole doctrine around that silence. That might mean it is an area of liberty. It might mean that because the Bible is silent in this area, we actually need to be more careful about it. Paul said that about meat: “Man, we have liberty in Christ, but if eating meat offends my brother, then I am not going to eat meat while the world standeth. I am just going to refrain from that. I am going to limit myself out of love for others.” So in these places of silence we are not going to build huge doctrines out of those things. Another thing we have talked about is patience with Scripture, just being patient with the observation side. It is going to take time to piece a lot of these things together, but we want to start from that big picture.
Observing Philemon
Now I want to take four different books of the Bible and look at what each of these books might look like when we are doing some observation. I am going to look here at Philemon. If we are doing observation like we talked about a couple of lessons ago, when we were talking about the tools of the trade, we said let’s get a little overview of the book. For the book of Philemon, for example, I will just go through this: “The epistle to Philemon was a private letter written by Paul during his first imprisonment at Rome, A.D. 62. The focus of the letter is giving proper understanding of the Hebrew fugitive law found in Deuteronomy 23:15-16.” “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.” He is not upsetting the social norms of his day. He is working within the systems he has there. There were still the laws on the books for the Hebrew people, and right or wrong, this issue of slavery, of bond servitude, was just the system they were living in, and Paul is bringing Christ into the system they were living in. “It reveals how Paul acted in strict accordance with the requirements of the law in dealing with Onesimus, a slave who had run away from Philemon. First, Paul gave him shelter in his own hired house.” I do not know how Paul found Onesimus, but apparently he bumps into him in the course of his ministry while he is away, and he finds out that Onesimus knows Philemon, whom Paul knew. The overview says, “He did not betray him as a fugitive, nor did he send word to Philemon to come to Rome and take Onesimus back. Further, Paul instructed Onesimus in the gospel, eventually leading him to a saving knowledge of Christ.” This is remarkable. “Then he sends Onesimus back to Philemon as a trusted messenger and brother in Christ, bearing a request for Philemon to grant Onesimus his freedom. Paul did not accuse Onesimus of wrongdoing by running away from Philemon. Instead, Paul stated it was because of the merciful providence of God that he had departed from Philemon. Paul desires Philemon to receive Onesimus back, no longer as a servant, but as a beloved brother and partner in Christ.” Now that is a change of events. “Some suggest Onesimus had stolen something from Philemon and had run away because he was afraid of the punishment he would receive. Paul graciously offered to repay this and any debts that Onesimus owed to Philemon, and so it is commonly believed Onesimus was received.” So we see an overview of the book, and then when we actually get into the book, it says, “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer, And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house: Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” So here is Paul, the writer. Here is Philemon, “our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,” somebody he apparently knew, a Christian, probably a wealthy businessman. “I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers, Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints.” So Paul is saying, “I know you love people. I know you have faith toward the Lord Jesus, and love toward all saints.” Meaning, you have faith in Christ, and love toward all the saints. “Philemon, you are a very loving person, right?” “That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.” “I sure hope your faith is working in you, Philemon.” He is setting him up here. He has not told him he has met Onesimus yet. Maybe Onesimus is the one actually carrying the letter back to Philemon. We do not know. But he says, “I know you are a brother in Christ. I know you have true faith in Christ. I know you love people. I know you love brothers in Christ.” “Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, Yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds.” “I want you to listen to me, Philemon. I beseech thee for my son Onesimus.” My son? Well, yeah, apparently he led Onesimus to Christ. “Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me: Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels.” “Onesimus has been a friend in the past. He ran away from you, but now he is back. He has been profitable to me and to thee. So, Philemon, you need to receive him back. You need to forgive him. I know you love Jesus. I know you love people, and so you need to love Onesimus too, even if he has done you wrong.” “Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel: But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly.” “I wish he could have stayed with me, but I want this to be on you, Philemon.” “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?” “He is back to help you. He is back to serve you, and you know what is even better? He is a Christian now. He is going to minister to you in the Lord as well.” Verse 17: “If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.” “Philemon, if you love me, if you count me one of your brothers, if you really love me, Philemon, then take Onesimus back. He is a good guy now. Receive him just like you would receive me into your house.” “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account; I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.” Man, Paul is just backing Philemon into a corner: “I know you are saved. I know you love people. I know you love Jesus. And since you love people so much, you should love this guy who has done you wrong too. I know he did you wrong in the past, but if he stole something from you, go ahead and put that on my account. That is okay. I will take care of it. I am not going to bring this up, but I am bringing this up: look, you owe me, Philemon.” “Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord.” “Boy, it would be so good if I heard that you responded well to Onesimus.” “Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say.” Man, he is really giving him no out here. He is really just laying it on thick: “You are going to do more than I say. You are going to love him. You are going to show him so much kindness. Oh, I know he did you wrong, but you are going to forgive him, and it is going to be great.” “But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you. There salute thee Epaphras, my fellowprisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.” And I love it. I love it. So with the overview of the book, if you read just a little bit of the history of the book, it sets the whole book up as basically saying, “Look, your faith in Christ should lead to a love for your brothers, no matter what they have done to you,” even in the case of a servant who had run away. There is just something really special about that book when you read it in light of the observation, in light of the bigger picture.
Observing Leviticus
Now, going on to the book of Leviticus, for example. Let’s see, Leviticus chapter 1. I have preached through Leviticus before. It is a strange book to preach through, but Leviticus is a book of laws. It is talking about holiness and feasts and sacrifices, so it is about being holy before God, and we see stories of strange fire, of how they were not being holy. We see Leviticus starting off in verse number 1, saying, “And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.” And he goes on and on and talks about all the different offerings they are going to offer, and feasts, and the tabernacle setup, and making sure they do things right. There are a whole lot of rules about doing things God’s way, and we might look at that and say, “I am not even sure what the point of that is.” But it is interesting. Here is the Lord speaking from outside, out of the tabernacle of the congregation. Now the next book of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers chapter 1: “And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying.” So it is interesting. Leviticus starts with God speaking out of the tabernacle, saying, “I want you to be My people. I want you to be a holy people, set apart. I want you to be My people, and I will be your God, and here is how to do it.” So Moses lists out all these sacrifices and the feasts, making sure they are God’s holy people, and already by the next book we see God speaking to them from within the tabernacle of the congregation. So God moves in. He apparently approves of what they have done. They followed God’s prescription, and God has marked His approval by moving in. That is a big observation we can take from the book, and that is a really beautiful thing.
Observing Esther
How about the book of Esther? The timing of the book of Esther is after the seventy-year captivity. Israel had disobeyed God and had been put into captivity, and after the seventy years of captivity they were allowed to return to their land. The obedient Jews, the ones who knew they should be in Jerusalem, worshipping in their home country that God had provided for them, returned. Well, Esther is about a segment of people who did not return. For whatever reason, it may mean they were being disobedient. It may mean they were just caught up in their lives and all of that. But it is not necessarily a book written about that faithful segment. Matter of fact, in the book of Esther we do not even see God’s name mentioned. So from the observation standpoint, we look at this kind of bizarre story all the way through the book of Esther, and we see, “Wow, this does not seem to be a very spiritual book.” And yet we see the hand of God. Even though we do not see God’s name, we see the hand of God intervening over and over and over in the lives of His people, and God’s sovereign, supernatural protection over His people is evident not only through the individual stories of the book but also through the overall picture of the book, in delivering them from being slaughtered and wiped out by Haman’s edict. So it is a remarkable book about God’s provision for them, and it is just absolutely wonderful that we can learn from observation, “Look, God is faithful, even sometimes when we are not.” God is faithful to His covenant promises, and it is a beautiful picture of God’s faithfulness.
Observing Daniel
One last one I am going to mention here is the book of Daniel. I mentioned this book a couple of lessons ago, The World’s Bible Handbook here, which gives an overview of many of the books of the Bible. When you are looking at the book of Daniel from an overview perspective, one of the things we talked about looking for is the date of the book. When was the book written? That might seem insignificant. It might not seem like it is all that big of a deal. But we look at the dating of the book of Daniel, and as it says here, if we are reading an overview, it is dated in 605 B.C. Now, 605 B.C. is when Daniel claims to have written it. He himself said that he was the author. And then we will look at a verse here. Let’s see, Matthew chapter 24, verse number 15. Matthew 24:15 says, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)” These are the words of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ seemed to say, “This is from Daniel the prophet.” He said Daniel was the author of Daniel. So Daniel is writing from this time period of 605 B.C. And we see here that Ezekiel’s prophecy was generally accepted, and his prophecy mentions Daniel in Ezekiel 28 verse 3. We are in Matthew 24; let me check out Ezekiel chapter 28. Ezekiel 28:3: “Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee.” Okay, so Jesus Christ mentions Daniel, and Ezekiel mentions Daniel, and both of those would point to the date of 605 B.C., the sixth or seventh century B.C. Now, the critics will say, “Well, that is impossible, because the things Daniel talks about are so accurate that it must have been written in 168 B.C., and made to look like it was written in 605 B.C. Somebody in 168 must have pretended to be Daniel. They looked at history and just wrote a history book, but they made it seem like a prophecy book. Somebody is lying here.” So the critics will say the prophecies are too accurate. Nobody could have predicted the future as clearly as Daniel did. And yet we look at the vision of the statue, the head of gold, and then the other vision of the different beasts in chapter 7, and we see the head of gold representing Babylon, the breast and arms of silver representing Medo-Persia, the belly and thighs of brass representing Greece, the legs of iron representing Rome, and then all the different animals depicted in those same prophecies, the same world empires that came. So we look at Alexander the Great, and Darius the Medo-Persian, and Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian king, and then the great rise of the Roman Empire, and we see that it was predicted in Daniel. Critics of the Bible say, “Well, no, that is impossible. Nobody could have predicted that as accurately as that, so it must have been written much later on and then made to look like prophecy.” But we understand that Jesus Christ said it was Daniel, and Ezekiel said it was Daniel, and they have looked at a lot of the wording of the book and said, “Well, no, these words were not used in 168 B.C.; they were only used around 605 B.C.” So we look at that and say, well, we just believe that God knows the future, and He told Daniel the future, and Daniel wrote down the future, and it is perfectly accurate, because God is the Author, not Daniel. So there is a beauty even in this observation phase, where we are stepping back and realizing, “You know what? Even in the observation phase, we see some miracles happening. We see some important things from these big pictures.” So when we are doing the observation step, we never want to skip it. We always, always want to start with the big picture and see what is going on in this big picture. We are going to continue with some of that thought, and even start to narrow it a little bit tighter, in our next lesson. God bless you. 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.
