Well, I am really excited about today’s lesson because in this video I go through a real-life example of how to study a passage. Now, the passage we are studying today is just a two-verse Psalm, but you will get the idea of what finding the big idea in Bible study is supposed to look like. 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. Hello and welcome back. In our last lesson, we started talking about some of the examples of how to flag words and get into the minute details and actually find some of what is going on in the middle of a text, but this time I want to start piecing some of those things together and actually look at the whole bigger picture. I am not talking about the biggest picture of observation, but actually piecing together some of those smaller details that we are finding in the flag words section and seeing how they fit together.
You Cannot See the Tree for the Leaves
Now, you might have heard the phrase, “You cannot see the forest for the trees.” And so, that is just a phrase that means, man, if you are staring straight into the bark of a tree, then somebody might be going, ‘Man, I cannot see a forest. All I see is this one tree. It is not true that there is a forest. All I see is just the bark or the trunk of this one tree.” Now, that is losing sight of the bigger picture. So I would kind of change that phrase a little bit and say you cannot see the tree for the leaves. Now, if you are climbing up a tree and you bring your microscope up a tree and you are focusing in on just one leaf of the tree, somebody might be doing that and saying, “Well, I cannot see a tree. All I am seeing is this leaf. I think it is a lie. How dare you tell me there is a tree?” Well, no, they might be missing the bigger picture if they are just focusing in on one little aspect of the tree and missing the bigger picture.
The book that we went through with our youth group is called The Big Idea Bible Study. And the idea is that we are going to look for the tree. We are going to look for the big idea within the text and we are going to find the tree. Now, in the last lesson, I said we were focusing in on some of those little details. We were doing word studies and looking up definitions and flagging repeated words. So I am not throwing all of that out. It might seem like a contradiction to keep jumping back and forth between the two. But you have to do the in-depth Bible study in order to get accuracy in your Bible study, but do not stop there. I know some people that they only focus on the depth of Scripture and they miss how it all fits together. They miss the flow of the Scripture. They miss the Scripture in its context. They miss the bigger picture between other Scriptures as well. So what we want to start talking about is to figure out how those little pieces actually fit together with each other.
We do not want to just do word studies, but we want to piece all of these word studies together into a tree.
The Trunk: Step Four, One Word
So we will start with kind of the trunk of the tree, the foundation of the whole tree, the biggest bulk of the tree that is holding up the rest of it. And if we are looking at the main support of a tree, this trunk of the tree, and relating that to Bible study, then we are kind of asking the question, “What is this about? What is God saying in this text? What is this passage about?” And so what we have been trying to do is just read and reread and flag words, but now we want to start with almost like the gut reaction, the gut instinct of just sort of a one-word summary of what this text is about. So again, you have already read broadly. If you have done a good Bible study, then you have read within the chapters, you have checked out the context of what is going on in the passage. And then you have reread a certain passage, you have read it over and over again.
And as you have studied the passage by just rereading it, you have kind of pulled out words and looked up definitions, and you are starting to figure out how this passage works. Now, as you are doing that kind of a Bible study, then what is the one word that keeps showing up? Or what is a word that keeps repeating itself? Or if somebody asked you about your Bible reading and your Bible study in this particular passage, if they said, “Well, what is it about?” What would your gut-level reaction be? What is the one word that comes to mind? So step number four is to kind of come up with a word that sort of summarizes what your text is about. Like in our last lesson, our example was from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and we spent some time in there. And the repeating word that we kept coming back to over and over, and the summary of that whole passage was charity or love. So our reaction after saying, “What is this text about?” We would say, “Oh, that is the chapter about love. That is the passage about love.”
And so when you are doing Bible studies, then you are kind of trying to figure out, “What is God saying in this passage? Is this a passage about God?” And that is fine. I mean, you cannot go wrong by saying Jesus. The answer to most questions about the Bible is going to be Jesus. So that might be what the passage is about. It might be about God. It might be, “Well, it is about love.” Here is a chapter about love. Or after reading it, it might be grace. Or, man, this is a passage about sin. Or a passage about the tongue. And a passage about repentance. So many different topics could come up, and that could be what your passage is about. So when you are doing Bible study, it might help to just have a pad of paper out there and write down, “What is this passage about?” Well, those one-word gut-level reactions might be the place to start. This is a good Bible study topic about whatever it is. So you are writing something. Maybe it is a topic. Maybe it is a person. Maybe it is an idea.
Maybe it is something to believe, a temptation, a blessing something positive, something negative.
Working Through Psalm 117
You are just trying to read the Scripture and figure out, “What is God saying?” Now, I want to look at Psalm 117. Here is a super easy example, just because it is only two verses. Psalm 117 is only two verses. So it says, “O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.” Now, we read that. Okay, that is step number one. Read. And I am going to write the steps down here. First, we read. And then step number two, you remember it? It was reread. Okay, so let’s reread it. So we have read the passage. Here is rereading it: “O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.” Okay, well, that is step number two. So read, done. Reread, done. Flag words is the third step.
So that is step number three, flag words. This would be something like praise, and maybe nations, His merciful kindness. Okay, so we would be flagging words like mercy and kindness is great toward us. The word great maybe would be a good word to flag. And I will do these in red. Great, mercy, kindness, praise. We might look up words like truth and see what it means that the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Those phrases right there. And then flagging words. Okay, we are seeing some repeat words here. Praise is repeated over and over again. So when we are doing a simple Bible study like this, then we are looking at many different ways to flag words. So we have read, we have reread, we have flagged words throughout the text. So let’s go back to that. This is a text about what? If we were to have kind of a gut-level reaction, what is this text about? What is it saying in this text after we have done steps one through two and three? We will say that is one, two, and three. And step number four is just word.
What is the word? What word would we say this text is about? Now, you might look at some of the words that are repeated. Well, is it a text about God, the Lord? Is it a text about kindness and being kind to people? Is it a text about truth? Is it a text about singing? Is it a text about sin? And there is a lot of things that this text could be about, but I would say that the word that keeps repeating itself over and over would be that word praise, right? If we were to say, “What is this passage about?” because it starts with calling people to praise, and ends with saying, “Praise ye the Lord,” then my reaction to the question, “What is this about?” would generally be, “It is about praise.” So, let’s write that down as the word. And that is a real simple way of doing Bible study. Okay, what did you read in your Bible today? Well, I read Psalm 117. Oh, what was it about?
Well, it was about praise. Now, that is a one-word summary of what you read. But it is almost like, well, if somebody started prying for answers, well, what about praise? Did it say everything about praise? Well, no. Was it about praising Satan? No, obviously not that. What about praise? Who are we supposed to praise? What is it saying about praise?
Step Five: Expand It to a Phrase
Well, that is when we are starting to expand it a little bit. So step number five here, I am going to write step number five. Step five would be to expand that to a phrase. So, instead of just a one-word reaction, what is the phrase if you expand that a little bit? What is it saying about praise? What kind of praise? Where do we praise? Is this a text that is talking about praising the Lord in church or in the temple? Is it a text that is talking about praising the Lord as opposed to praising man? Is it a who-should-we-praise text, or is it a text describing who is praising? Is it a why-should-we-praise text? Is it saying that praise is good or bad?
So there is a lot of different ways you could ask questions of this text and say, “Okay, this is saying a lot of things and it is talking about praise, but what about praise?” So, if we are expanding it to a phrase here, then I want to praise what? I would just generally say our phrase here would be praise the Lord. Is not that what you would say? It sounds like a pretty accurate summary of what this text is talking about. Praise the Lord. So this is a text about praising the Lord. It is a call to praise the Lord. Now, we do not have a full thought here yet. This is just a phrase. This is just saying something about praising the Lord. So this is real, real general still, but at least we are narrowing it down a little bit. So this process just kind of helps you say, “What is this text about?” Well, it is about praise. Praise, what about praise? Well, it is a text about praising the Lord. It sounds pretty simple but you do that with any text that you are doing Bible study in and it could be something really really similar.
What did you read in your Bible today? Well, I read about sin. Oh, really? Okay, what about sin? Well, it is the sin of your tongue. So that means you are starting with the word and you are getting a little bit more a little bit more specific. So the sin of the tongue. It could be about love. Well, what about love? The love of God or the love we should show to God or the love that we have for our brothers or is it the love we show toward our enemies or loving God with all your mind or loving God with all your heart? What about love? So your word might be love. More specifically, it might be the love of God. And that might be an example. the text might be about sin and the phrase might be judgment of sin or the results of sin. So you are studying the Scriptures to figure out what it is saying. And generally, it might be a word. A little more specifically, it might be a phrase. But, if you took that a step further, then I would say step number six would be a sentence.
Step Six: Expand It to a Sentence
So, expand your phrase into a sentence. Now, a sentence has a complete thought. It is a subject and a verb. It has a whole idea to it. So if you took your phrase and added words to it from the scriptural text, then you are getting somewhere with it. So, in Psalm 117: “O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.” So, it starts with a call to praise, all ye nations, all ye people. And it ends with a call to praise. We have been saying this is a text about praising the Lord. So if we made that some kind of a command or a statement or a sentence that is a standalone thought, then I would say that this passage, if we just expanded it to a sentence, is something like this. Who should praise the Lord? Why should we praise the Lord? When should we praise the Lord? I would just say the sentence would be, well, and I am being real general here: All ye nations, all ye people, that would include us.
To make this a statement that is actually helpful to us, I would say, “We should praise the Lord.” So, if I am writing that out, we should praise the Lord. That is what this text is generally about. If someone asked you, “What did you read in your Bible reading?” Well, I read that we should praise the Lord. It was just a really good reminder to me from Psalm 117 that we should praise the Lord. And that is a real simple, concrete idea there. Remember a couple of lessons ago when we asked the question, “Is it easier to catch a rock or a handful of sand?” Well, it is easier to catch a rock. So there is a lot of ideas going on there in Psalm 117. But, if we are speaking generally, or we are summarizing it into a rock, into a statement, then we would say, “Well, what did I study in my Bible?” I studied, and it was pretty simple: we should praise the Lord. So Bible study the way that we are talking about like this is actually pretty simple. It starts by reading, and then we go back and we reread those texts, and then we flag certain words, and we would look those up, and we spend a lesson or two on that.
But then, if we expand it to a word and get a little more specific with a phrase, and then boil it down to a sentence, then we are asking the question, “What did you study in the Scriptures today?” Well, I learned that we should praise the Lord. And that is a statement. That is something good that we can take from it. And that is something that is really getting more into the depth of Bible study. And really, it was not a hard process. It is not too hard of a process to actually stop and think about a text and say, “I learned about praising the Lord today.” So, that is an idea. That is an example of going a little more deep in the Scripture. And all we did today was focus on the trunk, on the simplest part of the tree. And we already saw from the verses we were reading in Psalm 117, that there is a whole lot more in there about praising the Lord. I mean, there is this merciful kindness, and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.
Well, that is all the branches. So next time we will talk about adding the flowery parts to your Bible study. But, we want to start with the foundation of it all. What is God saying? And when we do Bible study like that, we figure out what God is saying, and then we personalize it. Well, what is God saying to us? Well, we have got to start at this root, at this core, at this foundation of what we are getting at. So the next time we will expand on that a little bit more. God bless you in your Bible study, and we will see you next time. 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.
