Have you ever wondered why the Bible is so long? Well, that is because if it were all just a bunch of “thou shalt not” statements, it would be missing so much of its beauty, and that is what we want to talk about in today’s video. We are going to finish the steps of the BIBS process, except for one. Now, if you do not know what the Big Idea Bible Study, or BIBS, process is, then go back and watch the first 17 videos in this series. This is lesson number 18 out of 20. Hello, church, and thank you for tuning back in. I have loved hearing from the ones who have told me that you have been watching, and so now I just hope that you can study the Scriptures on your own just a little bit better. If this is your first video, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and we have been recording these videos to try to help our church grow in knowing Jesus. So stay tuned to the end of this one to see how we are trying to grow in the Lord every single week. With that, I hope you enjoy this week’s video.
From the Trunk to the Branches
Hello, and welcome back. This is class number 18. We have this lesson and the next lesson on application, and then the final lesson on a few more examples of what application looks like in Bible study, and then that is it for the series. We have covered so much in our Bible study series, and I have loved the process. I have really enjoyed going through this, and I appreciate talking with anybody about Bible study, so I hope it has been a help to you. We have covered a lot of ground, from starting at what the Scriptures are and believing the Scriptures can change our lives, to preparing ourselves for Bible study and where we fit into the big picture, and then starting real broad with observation, moving down into interpretation, finding the individual words and what each text means, and then learning to read and reread and flag words, and then trying to summarize it in a word, and then expanding it to a phrase, and maybe getting to a sentence of what a text is about. Today I want to go even a step further. We have already found the trunk of the tree. If we are looking for a big idea, if we are trying to go into Bible study and just answer the question, if somebody says, “Well, what did you learn in your Bible reading today?” then you will be able to say, “I learned about the love of God, that we should love the Lord,” if that is the general sentence of what you say. Whatever your structure is, whatever the trunk of the tree is, that is the core of it. But then we want to look at the bigger picture, at the whole tree, and that is where this next lesson comes in, where we are going to be talking about the branches of the tree. If a tree were just the trunk, that would be a pretty boring tree. Some trees are just stick straight. A pine tree is usually just a trunk with the branches coming off of that, but without those branches it would just be a telephone pole. It would just be one straight stick, like a fence post sticking out of the ground, and that would not be very beautiful. We love a tree because of all the branches and all the leaves and the beauty that is there. So when we are talking about that with Bible study, the trunk of the tree is like, what is God talking about? That is the core. But then the branches are like, what is God saying about what He is talking about? What are the things that add to what He is talking about? Without all of those details, without all those flourishes, we would have a really dry, boring book. If it were all just the straightforward points, and did not fill in with a bunch of stories, or with a bunch of poetry, or with figurative, beautiful language, without all the rich details that go into Bible study, it would be, in my opinion, just kind of a boring book. I mean, it is fine to have some straightforward details, right? The Ten Commandments are like that: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” “Thou shalt not kill.” “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Those are very straightforward. They do not leave very much room for misunderstanding. It is just right there. But man, if the whole Bible were just thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt, we would read Psalm 23 and it would be like, “Thou shalt trust in God, who cares for you.” That might be basically what the psalm is about, but we would miss all the details of the text. We would miss all the beauty of the text. Do you know Psalm 23? It is just this beautiful, poetic language, and it just flows off the tongue if you have memorized it, or if you read it. It brings so much comfort, not just because it is telling you to trust in God, but because of all the details that are there: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” Now, if we had just boiled that down to something like, “Well, the Lord will care for you,” maybe that is true. Maybe that is the idea of the text. But without all the branches that are added to that tree, without all the beautiful flourishes of what Psalm 23 is, I think we would be missing out on something. There is imagery of pastures, and lying down, and the Shepherd guiding you, and beautiful meadows, and maybe some storms, but protection in those storms, and feasts, and rest, and all of these things are packed into just those few verses. That is a beautiful thing, and I love that. So basically every text in the Scripture is going to have a core idea. It is going to have a root thought to it, and then that thought is going to have a lot of supporting ideas as well, and we are trying to figure out how to fit all those supporting ideas together. The trunk is the general idea; the branches are the specific ideas. What is this text talking about? Well, that is the core idea. And what is it saying about what it is talking about? What are the details that support that? Well, those are the branches. So in order to find those branches, in order to keep it as a cohesive unit, as one big tree, one of the processes I have found helpful is to turn that sentence you made in previous steps into a question, and then answer the question, and we will talk about that throughout the rest of this lesson.
Step Seven: Rephrase It into a Question
So we have looked at steps one through six: read, reread, flag words, and then, with your trunk starting to take shape in your text, boil it down to a word, expand it to a phrase, and then summarize it in a sentence. That is steps one through six. Now we are going to look at step number seven, which is to rephrase it into a question. To know what question to rephrase your sentence into, the sentence you found in step number six, well, first of all you have to figure out the question word. As you read the text and reread the text and figure things out about it, is this a who text, right? In our example of Psalm 117, is it, who should praise the Lord? If we were talking about praising the Lord, is it a text talking about the different people who should praise the Lord? So you look at the Scriptures and say, is this a who? Is this about Christians? Is this about non-Christians? Is this about Old Testament believers? Is this about pastors? Is this about demons? Who is this text talking about? If the text is a who text, then you use the word who to turn your sentence into a question. If it is a what text, maybe it is a text that is giving you a whole lot of details: what does praising look like? What does a praising person do? If it is a what text, there will be a lot of answers to the what question in there. Maybe the text you are reading is a when: when does a person praise the Lord? When should we praise the Lord? Or it might be a text about particular timing: when will the Second Coming happen? When did God tell Noah would be the end of the flood? When did Abraham receive the promise? When did he expect it? There could be when questions within the text, and so the text you are reading might be a when, if it is talking about times and instances there, a time-sensitive type of thing, or history: when did God say this to them previously? It might be calling them to remember their history. So it might be a when text, related to our time span, our time frame. So do not just jump to a who or a what, but maybe it is a when text. It could also be a where: where is this true? Where does a person praise the Lord? Where should we go? There might be a where if it is tied to a location and not necessarily a time. So is the text you are reading a where, a location question? Another question word would be why. The text you are reading might bring up the question why and then fulfill the why with some answers. So your text might be, why should we praise the Lord? Why should we endure suffering? And it might tell you the reasons for those things. It could be a number of those types of questions, and different kinds of answers might come from that, but primarily, what is this text asking? What question word is it using? And then, is it a how text? Is it teaching you how to do something, or how often you should do something, or how to praise the Lord, if we keep going back to the praising example? Maybe it is a how text, and you are going to figure out how to do these things, whatever that thing might be. So if you figure out what question word to use, then, going back to step number six, where we summarized it in a sentence, step number seven is rephrase it into a question. We first pick: is it a who, what, when, where, why, how, how often question word? And we just turn that sentence from step number six into a question. So if step six was something like, “Well, we should praise the Lord,” and we worked through that a little bit in Psalm 117, then in step number seven, if we turn it into a question, maybe it is, why should we praise the Lord? I would say from Psalm 117, which we studied earlier, that it would be a why text: why should we praise the Lord? And then, if you are asking that question, you go, well, why should we praise the Lord? You are not coming up with the answers from your own imagination. You go to the text again. You go to the Scriptures and say, okay, what does this text say? If it is Psalm 117, and the trunk of the message was we should praise the Lord, and we are saying, well, why should we praise the Lord, then the branches start to make sense. They start to add to the tree. They start to give you the fuller picture.
Step Eight: Answer the Question
That leads us automatically to step number eight. If you rephrase it into a question in step seven, then step number eight is pretty simple: just answer the question, or some of the questions raised from that. The answers to the question then become the branches. So you go to the text, you find the answers to your questions, and that is the big idea starting to formulate. Now, you are not going to be able to fit every single little detail into this thing, so again, you do not want to get lost in details, in just the emphasis of one word here or there. We still want to see the big picture. What is God trying to tell us in this text? He might be trying to tell you something through the definition of one word, but do not let that definition sidetrack you from the main emphasis God is trying to bring in this whole text. Again, we want to keep things in their context. We want to make sure that what we are saying about this one word is truly what God is trying to say within this whole text. And the way you word step number eight, the answers to those questions, the way you combine them, you might word it differently from me. It is not like we are changing the truth of the text, but we will change the way we word it. We are not all going to word the thing the same, so it is going to be different for each of us. Let’s go back to this text, 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.” Now, there are going to be several different ways you can word this. You might phrase it exactly with the words of the Scriptures, or you might put it into your own words. Basically, you are trying to find the branches of the tree. If we said, okay, why should we praise the Lord, in step number seven, rephrasing it into a question, then step number eight, answering the question, is as simple as saying, okay, what is the text saying? We should praise the Lord. Why? Verse 2: “For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever.” So it seems like there are two pretty simple answers to that question. Why should we praise the Lord? Because His merciful kindness is great toward us. God’s mercy, and not just mercy but kindness, boy, it is great. It is abundant toward us. And if we are flagging those words again, we are looking at definitions there and seeing how rich this text is. All the details of the text are flowing into the answers to this question that we are finding. So we are talking about God’s mercy, God’s kindness, the abundant, overflowing nature of God showing this mercy and kindness to us. And then the second answer to the question: “the truth of the LORD endureth for ever.” What a great truth that is, that we are still recipients of God’s truth, and that God wants us to know truth, and that it endureth for ever, and He is an eternal God. There is so much in there, in just those two verses, in just those two answers to that question. We are still looking pretty basically. We are not even jumping to the application side of things yet. But we are looking pretty basically at this why. Why should we praise the Lord? Well, simply put, because His merciful kindness is great toward us, and His truth endures to all generations. That is wonderful.
Step Nine: Combine It into One Big Idea
So now we are looking at step number nine, if we are just going step by step here. We have rephrased it into a question, we have answered the question, and now, to stick with the concept of trying to come up with a big idea, we are combining these thoughts, trying to get it into one sentence again. I am framing it from the question, if somebody asks you, “What did you learn in your Bible reading today?” Then you can say, “Man, I was reading something, and I was just challenged to praise the Lord, because I was thinking about God’s merciful kindness toward me, and God’s truth, and that just made me want to praise the Lord more. He is just so merciful and kind, and He has given us His truth, and I just love God. I could not help but praise Him today.” In some ways it is a simplified version of the text that you read, but it is a way to boil the text down to a big idea when you combine the thoughts into more of a take-home truth, more of a rock that gets thrown to you. It is easier to catch a rock than a handful of sand. So that concept you take with you throughout the day: you are thinking about just a few simple thoughts rather than everything you read. You go back and study so that you are taking along with you something to meditate on, something you can remember, something you can carry with you: “Oh God, You are so kind to me. You have been so merciful to me. You showed me such kindness when I did not deserve it, and boy, You have just blessed me with so much. Thank You for not giving me what I deserve, and for giving me what I do not deserve. And boy, we get to have Your truth, and we can know Your truth. This is wonderful, God. I praise You today.” And you go through your day praising the Lord because of His merciful kindness and His truth. It is a simple concept, but I think it really helps with Bible study when you can boil these things down, so that you can take them with you, and they can stick in your mind, and they can get into your soul, and they can be something that carries you through the day. You might not have Psalm 23 memorized, for example. You noticed that I had to reference it. I do not have it down perfectly. I have quoted it in the past, but I have to keep remembering things. But the more you boil it down to simpler wording, the easier it is to carry with you. It is a little bit more compressed, a little bit more condensed. So if you want to change the wording, or condense the wording a little bit, Psalm 23 might have had something in there about, well, God feeds me, and God clothes me, and God protects me, all of these different ideas from Psalm 23, and maybe you want to simplify those down a little bit. When you are talking about a big idea, maybe you look at that and say, well, instead of feeds and protects and clothes me and all of that, He cares for me. Maybe that can be the simplified version. I am just using that as an example of taking all of these ideas and trying to simplify them down to a thought you can carry with you throughout the day. So that is what we have been calling our BIBS process, the Big Idea Bible Study process. You read, you reread, you flag the words and look up definitions, and then you start with a general word, you get more specific with a phrase, and you get the trunk of the tree in a sentence. What is this text about? And you can state it basically in a sentence, a subject and a verb. Then you are adding to this sentence by asking questions of the text: what is this saying about what it is talking about? What is going on in this text? What are the details of this text? So you rephrase it into a question, and then you answer the question, and you combine all of that as much as you can into one big sentence. And that is basically it as far as the process.
Drawing Nigh to God
I mean, this is the way I go through my own Bible study, my own preparation for preaching, my own personal devotions. I am dwelling on things throughout the day. Just this morning I read a couple of chapters from Lamentations, and man, it is a lament. It is something that puts into words those times when we almost feel like crying or being sad, and yet it comes down to Lamentations chapter 3: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” We sing this beautiful hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” based on that text, and His mercies are new every morning. So that is what has been dwelling on my mind today. I do not remember everything from my Bible reading this morning, but I do remember the faithfulness of God, and that is what I am trying to meditate on and remember: great is thy faithfulness. We have plenty of things in this life that would drag us down, but God is faithful. So that is a simple way of just taking a truth with you throughout your day, and as you lean into Bible study like that, we are fulfilling James chapter 4: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.” The way we are drawing nigh to God, yes, is through prayer, but I believe it is also through Bible study, when we are hearing God’s voice, when we are actually reading the words of God and trying to take those with us and meditate on them. You know what? That is drawing nigh to God. That is getting close to God. And when we do that, when we lean into what we are trying to hear from God and hear His voice, the Bible teaches us that He will draw nigh to you. Take a step toward Him; He will take a step toward you. Bible study is not just an academic exercise. It is not just following a system. It is not just following steps one through nine. We are truly trying to know God through His Word, and what a huge opportunity, what an overwhelming blessing from God, that He actually wants to spend time with us and wants us to know Him. So I am so thankful to be able to do that. I am so thankful to have the Scriptures, and to be able to open up the Scriptures and hear from God. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. I have just found that a simplified process helps with that. It does not replace that, but it really helps me to draw nigh to God. In the next lesson we are going to talk the entire lesson about this: we have already learned what God said in His Word; how do I take that and apply it to my own life, and learn how to bridge the world of the ancient Bible text to my actual life? We have seen what God is saying in the Scriptures; next we will learn what God is saying to me. So I am 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.
