Examining Scripture
Topical: Learning To Breathe • Examining Scripture • 7.16.08 • Wednesday Night Service
Intro.
- We have been talking about disciplines that are integral to the Christian life. We have been discussing them, using the acronym “Breathe”*
- The first two letters in the acronym “Breathe” have been unveiled. Being alone with God is the first. Being quiet, being still is necessary, vital to our Christianity, if we are to be disciples.
- The second letter in the acronym refers to “Retaining Scripture.” Putting God’s Word into our souls, letting it become life to us, cannot be understated in terms of it’s importance.
- Tonight I have been charged to continue with our next letter, which represents the concept of “Examining scripture.”
- Immediately, the word “Examine” enters into the fray of ideas and a whole host of responses floods to forefront. “That’s your job to tell me what scripture says! After all you are a Pastor.”
- I can understand your feelings. God has faithfully preserved a record of His communication for every believer.
- The Word of God, the Bible is that record, and because it deals with the subject matter that it does, it is of ultimate importance that we seek to understand it’s meaning in a personal way.
- I consider often the difference between a group of people who have been saturated with teaching and those who have been without. There is a stark difference.
- Consider the story of King Josiah, forced to assume the throne at age 8 when his father was assassinated. His first act was to require that the Temple, which had lay in neglect, be restored.
- During the clean up phase, a priest came back and reported that a copy of the law had been found. Josiah ordered it to be read.
- Keep in mind that the law had been neglected for some time and had not been read, much less, kept. When Josiah heard the word of God read, he responded immediately.
• II Kings 22:11-13 : “Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Achbor the son of Michaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the king, saying, ‘Go, inquire of the Lord for me, for the people and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.’”
- Josiah was instant in his reaction: What do we have to do!? The problem in our society is that we are saturated with Bible teaching.
- We have brilliant teachers, teaching weekly within miles of each other! If you can’t make it to church, you can stream the sermon online or grab the CD.
- If that doesn’t work, you can listen on the radio during your 1 hour commute from El Toro to Bake. If you don’t have a radio, you can listen to a sermon podcast.
- The Christian book industry is out of control. There are 2 books for every spiritual malady!
- If you have the gift of a great arm chair, there are about 5 different television stations that pipe in their brand of “biblical instruction.”
- This leads to a very casual approach to scripture, leading to a low view of the Bible, relegating the Holy Word to a place where it rivals any other book in your collection.
- Little should be expected when we come and simply allow ourselves the time for a cursory glance at the Bible.
- Instead, our hearts should be hearts of investigation, wanting to mine the beautiful truths of God’s Word. Tonight, I hope to give you tools that will help you to foster a desire to examine scripture.
- I am going to do this by demonstrating a very easy method that I use for every single message that I deliver. It is called the “Inductive Bible Study” method and it centers around 3 words.
- These words form the outline for this teaching tonight. We will look at the heart of
Text
• Psalm 1:1,2 : “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.”
- Observation is to pay close attention to the details that are present. To carefully, attentively inspect what is presented to us.
- To do this, let me present a few things that have to happen when you are making observations about biblical texts.
- The first thing to do is to define terms. You will note several words here that are not commonly employed in our language today.
- “Blessed,” “sinners” and “scornful” are pretty rare. To understand the word “blessed” especially is pivotal to comprehending this passage.
- “Blessed” might be simply translated “O how happy.” It speaks to much more than happiness. It refers to satisfaction and contentedness. Happy, content, satisfied is the man.
- The second thing that we want to do in observation is to determine trends. Notice immediately with me: “blessed is the man who walks NOT.”
- It’s interesting to me that the author, King David, did not make a statement that was more affirmative. “Blessed is the man who does this.” Rather, he takes a negative approach.
- He walks not. Then notice the the trend, highlighted by three “nors.” He does not do this, nor does he do this. What we have then is three negative exhortations. Don’t do these things.
- Highlight a second trend. Blessed is the man who walks not, nor stands, nor sits. Walking, standing and sitting point to a person who is going from movement to settlement.
- The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. Let’s unpack this. What is counsel? It’s advice. It’s being open to influence.
- David continues by saying, “nor stands in the path of sinners.” Sinners refer to those who are outside of a covenant relationship with God through Christ.
- Now notice the final part of that segment: Nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
- The emphasis is a bit different now isn’t it. In the first two instances, there is a different level of involvement. You are walking through, then you are standing with them.
- Now, you are not just receiving input. You are actively passing out scornful comments.
- The word “scorn” means to treat with contempt or derision.
- Now David turns the tables and inserts a counter to his previous statement.
- Blessed is the man that does not do this or this, but his delight. What he enjoys, loves, is passionate about is this. This leads us to our third aspect of observation.
- Notice what the author does not say. Notice that David does not say that the blessed man’s delight is in fellowship or in church activities.
- The blessed man finds his joy, his passion in the law of the Lord.
- Again, notice that he does not say, “laws.” Nor does he separate the Bible some other way.
- The whole thing is God’s unified, law. How does this man approach God’s law, His Word?
- David does not use the word “read.” He does not employ the word “peruse.” He chooses carefully the word “meditates.” He chews on God’s word. He thinks about it. He keeps it in the forefront of his mind.
- When does he meditate? Oh, it’s enough if it’s a few minutes in the morning! No, David says “day and night!” All the time.
- Now, we come to the part that is the most maligned in the inductive Bible study system. It’s the interpretation.
- Interpretation is simply to discover what this passage means. Admittedly, this is probably an easier passage than others when it comes to interpreting, as the text speaks for itself very clearly.
- But where we meet problems is when we skip ahead and ascertain what this passage means to us. That is application and we don’t want to go there.
- To determine what a passage means, how it is to be interpreted, you and I need to understand a few things.
- First, and this is the golden word in hermaneutics, I need to establish the context.
- In doing this, I need to first figure out who wrote this, which was David. To whom was this written? Many books tell you immediately by the title. Romans to Romans, Ephesians to Ephesians.
- Psalms is a little different. It’s a collection of songs, written for a specific people, specifically God’s people that David was King over.
- Usually when trying to establish the context of any given passage, you will want to read the chapter immediately before and immediately after.
- Again, Psalms is a little unique that way. The book is not unified by content or flow of thought. It’s poetic expression from the beginning to the end about life lived out before the Lord.
- With what we have right now, we understand that this is written by a King to the people of God, all of whom are covered under the same covenant to walk in the ways of the Lord.
- Why is this important? If you read this and figure that this is a recipe for a blessed life for just anyone, then you have missed the context and are wrongly interpreting this portion of scripture.
- To tell a person who does not believe in Jesus and is not living under a covenant relationship with him, that he needs to change his company and read a Bible and he’ll be blessed, is to undermine the essence of Christianity.
- The next thing to do in trying to figure out an interpretation is to examine other scriptures. If I interpret something that another part of scripture refutes, then I am the one that is wrong.
- For example, if I went with the interpretation that said that this passage was a recipe for a blessed life for anyone on Earth, I will run into an immediate problem.
• I Corinthians 2:14-16 : “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
- A non-believer cannot discern or understand the Bible. It’s impossible apart from the Spirit’s involvement. My interpretation must not disagree with anything from the Word.
- Now, what have we come to? These first two verses, we can say interpretively, mean that there is a definite life that leads to satisfaction and contentedness that can be experienced by the people of God.
- Ah, now onto our favorite part: What does it mean to me!? The application of truth is the goal of God’s Word. God’s Word is given for this exact reason.
• II Timothy 3:14-17 : “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
- Scripture demands a response. Application begins with that question: What does this mean to me? Now, here is where things get fun.
- The rule is there is only 1 interpretation of any passage. Every passage means what it means. I cannot make it mean something other than what it means.
- While this is true, there are many possible applications. Let me explain how this is possible.
- Let’s say that you are currently doing really good with the Lord. This is a description of your life. You are blessed. You are aware of your company, and most of that company is lifting you up and pushing you toward God’s best for your life.
- The application for you is to be warned and wary of never leaving the road that you are on.
- You are to read this and be encouraged to continue in the face of possible discouragement.
- On the other hand, as a Christian, you might be wandering. You might be the one who started down a road, open to the advice and counsel of the world.
- Your company is almost exclusively with sinners. Perhaps you have even began to treat all things associated with God with contempt.
- Your application is going to be entirely different. You are going to look at your life, and see, if you look honestly, how far you are from having a satisfied, contented life.
- In this case, God calls you to return to Him and experience what He wants to bless you with.
- A little deeper and you can begin to see some application concepts that are derived from each section of these two verses.
- Verse 1a. The word “blessed” provokes an immediate response. Am I blessed or am I dissatisfied, confused or bitter?
- Still in verse 1. Walking, standing, sitting among sinful, scornful company. Are my associates leading me to Christ, or away from Him?
- Finally, in verse 2. God’s Word. Am I delighting in God’s Word or am I disinterested?
- Before you know it, you have a message that you have received and should probably share!
Conclusion
- I can’t say how great this book is. With dedication and practice, I truly believe, that if followed, these principles will dramatically increase your passion for God’s Word.
- Tonight though, if we leave it on the purely instructional level, then we will miss the point. Are you living a blessed life? Are you satisfied, content with your life? God wants that for you and you see here what He calls you to in order to rectify that situation.
- I pray that you might respond appropriately to what God is calling you to.
Topical: Learning To Breathe • Examining Scripture • 7.16.08 • Wednesday Night Service
Intro.
- We have been talking about disciplines that are integral to the Christian life. We have been discussing them, using the acronym “Breathe”*
- The first two letters in the acronym “Breathe” have been unveiled. Being alone with God is the first. Being quiet, being still is necessary, vital to our Christianity, if we are to be disciples.
- The second letter in the acronym refers to “Retaining Scripture.” Putting God’s Word into our souls, letting it become life to us, cannot be understated in terms of it’s importance.
- Tonight I have been charged to continue with our next letter, which represents the concept of “Examining scripture.”
- Immediately, the word “Examine” enters into the fray of ideas and a whole host of responses floods to forefront. “That’s your job to tell me what scripture says! After all you are a Pastor.”
- I can understand your feelings. God has faithfully preserved a record of His communication for every believer.
- The Word of God, the Bible is that record, and because it deals with the subject matter that it does, it is of ultimate importance that we seek to understand it’s meaning in a personal way.
- I consider often the difference between a group of people who have been saturated with teaching and those who have been without. There is a stark difference.
- Consider the story of King Josiah, forced to assume the throne at age 8 when his father was assassinated. His first act was to require that the Temple, which had lay in neglect, be restored.
- During the clean up phase, a priest came back and reported that a copy of the law had been found. Josiah ordered it to be read.
- Keep in mind that the law had been neglected for some time and had not been read, much less, kept. When Josiah heard the word of God read, he responded immediately.
• II Kings 22:11-13 : “Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Achbor the son of Michaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the king, saying, ‘Go, inquire of the Lord for me, for the people and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.’”
- Josiah was instant in his reaction: What do we have to do!? The problem in our society is that we are saturated with Bible teaching.
- We have brilliant teachers, teaching weekly within miles of each other! If you can’t make it to church, you can stream the sermon online or grab the CD.
- If that doesn’t work, you can listen on the radio during your 1 hour commute from El Toro to Bake. If you don’t have a radio, you can listen to a sermon podcast.
- The Christian book industry is out of control. There are 2 books for every spiritual malady!
- If you have the gift of a great arm chair, there are about 5 different television stations that pipe in their brand of “biblical instruction.”
- This leads to a very casual approach to scripture, leading to a low view of the Bible, relegating the Holy Word to a place where it rivals any other book in your collection.
- Little should be expected when we come and simply allow ourselves the time for a cursory glance at the Bible.
- Instead, our hearts should be hearts of investigation, wanting to mine the beautiful truths of God’s Word. Tonight, I hope to give you tools that will help you to foster a desire to examine scripture.
- I am going to do this by demonstrating a very easy method that I use for every single message that I deliver. It is called the “Inductive Bible Study” method and it centers around 3 words.
- These words form the outline for this teaching tonight. We will look at the heart of
I. Observation
II. Interpretation
III. Application
II. Interpretation
III. Application
Text
I. Observation
- As our test passage, we will get the ball rolling on Psalm 1. I’ll do the first two verses with you, and then you will be responsible for the rest.• Psalm 1:1,2 : “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.”
- Observation is to pay close attention to the details that are present. To carefully, attentively inspect what is presented to us.
- To do this, let me present a few things that have to happen when you are making observations about biblical texts.
- The first thing to do is to define terms. You will note several words here that are not commonly employed in our language today.
- “Blessed,” “sinners” and “scornful” are pretty rare. To understand the word “blessed” especially is pivotal to comprehending this passage.
- “Blessed” might be simply translated “O how happy.” It speaks to much more than happiness. It refers to satisfaction and contentedness. Happy, content, satisfied is the man.
- The second thing that we want to do in observation is to determine trends. Notice immediately with me: “blessed is the man who walks NOT.”
- It’s interesting to me that the author, King David, did not make a statement that was more affirmative. “Blessed is the man who does this.” Rather, he takes a negative approach.
- He walks not. Then notice the the trend, highlighted by three “nors.” He does not do this, nor does he do this. What we have then is three negative exhortations. Don’t do these things.
- Highlight a second trend. Blessed is the man who walks not, nor stands, nor sits. Walking, standing and sitting point to a person who is going from movement to settlement.
- The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. Let’s unpack this. What is counsel? It’s advice. It’s being open to influence.
- David continues by saying, “nor stands in the path of sinners.” Sinners refer to those who are outside of a covenant relationship with God through Christ.
- Now notice the final part of that segment: Nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
- The emphasis is a bit different now isn’t it. In the first two instances, there is a different level of involvement. You are walking through, then you are standing with them.
- Now, you are not just receiving input. You are actively passing out scornful comments.
- The word “scorn” means to treat with contempt or derision.
- Now David turns the tables and inserts a counter to his previous statement.
- Blessed is the man that does not do this or this, but his delight. What he enjoys, loves, is passionate about is this. This leads us to our third aspect of observation.
- Notice what the author does not say. Notice that David does not say that the blessed man’s delight is in fellowship or in church activities.
- The blessed man finds his joy, his passion in the law of the Lord.
- Again, notice that he does not say, “laws.” Nor does he separate the Bible some other way.
- The whole thing is God’s unified, law. How does this man approach God’s law, His Word?
- David does not use the word “read.” He does not employ the word “peruse.” He chooses carefully the word “meditates.” He chews on God’s word. He thinks about it. He keeps it in the forefront of his mind.
- When does he meditate? Oh, it’s enough if it’s a few minutes in the morning! No, David says “day and night!” All the time.
II. Interpretation
- Now, we come to the part that is the most maligned in the inductive Bible study system. It’s the interpretation.
- Interpretation is simply to discover what this passage means. Admittedly, this is probably an easier passage than others when it comes to interpreting, as the text speaks for itself very clearly.
- But where we meet problems is when we skip ahead and ascertain what this passage means to us. That is application and we don’t want to go there.
- To determine what a passage means, how it is to be interpreted, you and I need to understand a few things.
- First, and this is the golden word in hermaneutics, I need to establish the context.
- In doing this, I need to first figure out who wrote this, which was David. To whom was this written? Many books tell you immediately by the title. Romans to Romans, Ephesians to Ephesians.
- Psalms is a little different. It’s a collection of songs, written for a specific people, specifically God’s people that David was King over.
- Usually when trying to establish the context of any given passage, you will want to read the chapter immediately before and immediately after.
- Again, Psalms is a little unique that way. The book is not unified by content or flow of thought. It’s poetic expression from the beginning to the end about life lived out before the Lord.
- With what we have right now, we understand that this is written by a King to the people of God, all of whom are covered under the same covenant to walk in the ways of the Lord.
- Why is this important? If you read this and figure that this is a recipe for a blessed life for just anyone, then you have missed the context and are wrongly interpreting this portion of scripture.
- To tell a person who does not believe in Jesus and is not living under a covenant relationship with him, that he needs to change his company and read a Bible and he’ll be blessed, is to undermine the essence of Christianity.
- The next thing to do in trying to figure out an interpretation is to examine other scriptures. If I interpret something that another part of scripture refutes, then I am the one that is wrong.
- For example, if I went with the interpretation that said that this passage was a recipe for a blessed life for anyone on Earth, I will run into an immediate problem.
• I Corinthians 2:14-16 : “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
- A non-believer cannot discern or understand the Bible. It’s impossible apart from the Spirit’s involvement. My interpretation must not disagree with anything from the Word.
- Now, what have we come to? These first two verses, we can say interpretively, mean that there is a definite life that leads to satisfaction and contentedness that can be experienced by the people of God.
III. Application
- Ah, now onto our favorite part: What does it mean to me!? The application of truth is the goal of God’s Word. God’s Word is given for this exact reason.
• II Timothy 3:14-17 : “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
- Scripture demands a response. Application begins with that question: What does this mean to me? Now, here is where things get fun.
- The rule is there is only 1 interpretation of any passage. Every passage means what it means. I cannot make it mean something other than what it means.
- While this is true, there are many possible applications. Let me explain how this is possible.
- Let’s say that you are currently doing really good with the Lord. This is a description of your life. You are blessed. You are aware of your company, and most of that company is lifting you up and pushing you toward God’s best for your life.
- The application for you is to be warned and wary of never leaving the road that you are on.
- You are to read this and be encouraged to continue in the face of possible discouragement.
- On the other hand, as a Christian, you might be wandering. You might be the one who started down a road, open to the advice and counsel of the world.
- Your company is almost exclusively with sinners. Perhaps you have even began to treat all things associated with God with contempt.
- Your application is going to be entirely different. You are going to look at your life, and see, if you look honestly, how far you are from having a satisfied, contented life.
- In this case, God calls you to return to Him and experience what He wants to bless you with.
- A little deeper and you can begin to see some application concepts that are derived from each section of these two verses.
- Verse 1a. The word “blessed” provokes an immediate response. Am I blessed or am I dissatisfied, confused or bitter?
- Still in verse 1. Walking, standing, sitting among sinful, scornful company. Are my associates leading me to Christ, or away from Him?
- Finally, in verse 2. God’s Word. Am I delighting in God’s Word or am I disinterested?
- Before you know it, you have a message that you have received and should probably share!
Conclusion
- I can’t say how great this book is. With dedication and practice, I truly believe, that if followed, these principles will dramatically increase your passion for God’s Word.
- Tonight though, if we leave it on the purely instructional level, then we will miss the point. Are you living a blessed life? Are you satisfied, content with your life? God wants that for you and you see here what He calls you to in order to rectify that situation.
- I pray that you might respond appropriately to what God is calling you to.
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