Better Bible Study: What, Why, and How

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome into Think deeper podcast, presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilke here with Joe Wilke and Will Harab here to talk about studying the Bible. We don't really have anything to promote up front. All the big announcements were last week. Check those out focuspress.org dot. But let's get, go ahead and get right into what we want to discuss. I think there's a variance of Bible study between if you grew up in the church, what kind of church you grew up in. Some churches were heavy on Bible study and really taught good tools. Some didn't. And so every Christian comes at it from a little bit different place. I think there's a lot of exciting tools kind of coming to the forefront today of things that weren't even available 510 years ago. And so we've got a lot of things, some things, hopefully, that might be new for most of the listeners here. I want to talk about upfront a little bit more kind of on the theory of Bible study and why we don't study the Bible or why a lot of christians maybe don't get into it deeply, don't understand it deeply. Why do you guys think that is? What are some reasons why a lot of people don't get into it very deeply on their own? [00:01:15] Speaker B: Well, you've got three kind of good reasons on here that we'll go over in a second. I think the first thing I would say ties into the first one, I suppose, but they don't really know where to start would be kind of the answer that I would give. I think a lot of people know how to read the Bible and they have the Bible reading plans. They get through Genesis, they get through maybe exodus, they hit Leviticus and it just starts to go by the wayside. And so they read it. But as far as studying it, I do think a lot of people are just like, man, I don't really know where to start. I don't really know what to do. Do I just pick a random book? Do I do a topical study? I'm really looking forward to this episode because we're going to discuss all of these things. We're going to discuss the pros and cons kind of each different level of study. But to answer your question, Jack, that's the first thing I would say. And I would say, I've been there, maybe when I was younger. It's just like, man, I read my Bible, I sit and listen to sermons. Back when I was in school, I was doing Bible for school. But when it came to personal Bible study, I was always like, where do I start and what do I do? And so that would be the. I mean, so that would tie into the first thing you've got on here, which is that it's just intimidating for people. I think it's a huge book. So many different. Different books you could look at, so many different things you could study, so many different resources you could use. And it's one of those, like, when you have that many options at your disposal, it just overwhelms you to the point where it's like, well, I just won't choose any of them just because there's so many options at your disposal. So that'd be my answer. Joe, what thoughts do you have on. On why we don't study the Bible? [00:02:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I think when you treat it like a reference book, like a lot of people do, or like a book of rules to keep, you miss out on a lot of stuff because you're just looking at the application. Application. Application. What can I pull out of it? How can I be a better person? Be a better person that you lose the love of the word of God when every single time you're running to it, it's either to reference something or to figure out how you can be a better person? Look, when we're studying scripture, we will be better people because we will be, you know, picking up on these things, and I think it'll be spirit led and things like that. So no doubt we'll be better people. But I think when we treat it like a set of rules or treat it even like a reference book, where we just flip open to this one and then take it out of context and go, well, Bible says this and kind of slap it on there. It's cheap Bible study, but it's all. I don't even know that I call that Bible study. It misuses, in my opinion, the word of God, and it causes us to kind of not have this deep love for God's word. So I think a lot of people look at it and they go, okay, I know what I need to know type of thing, and I don't really, because we don't know how to approach it because it is slightly intimidating. We just stick to what we do know, which is very much application based things. And so you're not getting into books like Song of Solomon. You're not going to get into books like Leviticus. You're not going to get into books like numbers that we've been studying because it's a lot more difficult to take out Bible lessons or just to use that as a reference point for other things. So we stick very gospel heavy or Paul letter heavy, which is great. Those are fantastic. I love studying those, but it doesn't allow us to open up the rest of the word of God. We miss out on a lot. [00:04:08] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say real fast, Jack, and I'll hand it back to you. It's almost like there's different levels of kind of comfort and satisfaction with people when it comes to Bible study. You've got, you know, those who, as long as they know the plan of salvation, as long as they kind of know loosely where to turn to in the New Testament to get to the, you know, five or six verses. And as long as they know a lot of the major Old Testament stories, they, they're kind of good to go. Like, you know, they'll go back to those kind of over and over again. And then you do have kind of the next level, which to me is kind of what Joe just talked about, which is, okay, you're beyond that, but you still really only hit the, I mean, you are studying the gospels a ton. You are studying Paul's letters a ton. You are studying the book of acts a ton. And I think that this is where I was a few years ago. And a lot of the Old Testament, a lot of the, if we can call it this, less, less fun books, you might say, the books that are maybe just harder to study. I mean, the major prophets are a lot harder to study than one Timothy is. Those kind of get thrown by the wayside. And so those are, again, kind of the different levels that I would. For the, for the, I always hate using the phrase the average Christian for the, for the non minister, the person who's not paid to study the Bible. It is, you know, pretty overwhelming once you get out of the gospels, once you get out of the, the Pauline letters. And so that, that would be a big thing, I think, for people as well. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Sure. I think. And what I hope we do with this episode is help people appreciate how multi layered the Bible is. It is so deep, so much deeper than what we're going to be able to convey, even in this, and not in a way that should intimidate you, but in a way that should excite you to explore. And I think some of these resources we'll talk about towards the end have done a good job recently in helping people recenter, especially people in the churches of Christ, because sometimes a lot of people only grew up with topical preaching, like Joe said, reference book preaching, like, all right, what does the Bible say about x, y or z topic? And here's the verses in deuteronomy and in ephesians and, you know, like jumping all over the Bible to get to all of them. But what these resources are helping people see is that the Bible is this united story from Genesis to revelation. It's all one continuing thing. And it's not, you're not just picking things here, there in the other, you read through it, you get consistently where it's going. You get how this fits with that. And the further you go, the more you get context within the books, the more you get the layers. The Bible, I mean, just, it has so many insider references that the more Bible you understand, the more you can get. And when you just kind of fly over the surface and pick that stuff up, that's one of the other things I think that makes it intimidating, is when you hear a sermon with 75 scriptures in it, you go, I'm never going to know the Bible that well. I'm never going to be able to do that. But if you can see the consistent story, if you can see how the book of Daniel fits in the Bible's timeline, how it fits with what came before and what comes after, how referenced it is in the New Testament and how it's pulling on in both directions, things like that really put it all. It makes the Bible smaller is what it does is it's not this huge, gigantic book. It's all one continuous thing that you can start to take in bite sizes rather than it's rice, you know, and there's like a billion grains that you're never going to be able to pick all the grains and count them. It's one continuous thing. [00:07:34] Speaker C: And because of that, it's really important. And the thing we want to get across the most, the Bible is not boring. It's not boring. It's not just a reference book in what that takes in order to see that it's not boring. And I want to be able to move into kind of how we start to realize, okay, the Bible's not boring. And to better our Bible study, the first thing is, as we're going through and Jack's talking about this, is this attentive reading, we don't want to skim over these things. We don't want to just bounce around from place to place. And today I'm in psalm 92, and tomorrow I'm in proverbs 21, and the next day I'm in Matthew ten. And we're kind of. Yeah, we're picking some things along. We want to stick to something, and we want to have this attentive reading, and we want to read it kind. [00:08:14] Speaker A: Of like a story. [00:08:14] Speaker C: And no, it's not fictional, so we don't want to read it as though it's fictional per se. But to get what Jack's talking about, this, this grand story of the Bible, I think when we're reading it attentively, and this speaks to me, I've read through the Bible a few times. I don't say that proudly because you guys will preach on something or I'll go to find, you know, I'll be preaching on something and I'll read through judges 16. And it's like, I've never read this in my life. I've never seen this in. Yeah, I've never read this. I've never seen this. [00:08:44] Speaker A: All your eyes have moved over it, but it just didn't register. [00:08:46] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. It didn't register. This is the point of attentive reading, and I think a lot of people can get trapped in this. Clearly, I have where I've read it through and we can pat ourselves on the back, but how attentive was I in reading and really investing in the story of what's going on there? Because that has a lot more to it. [00:09:03] Speaker B: I love that point. I love Jack that you put on here, that word attentive for attentive reading, because, I mean, I was guilty of the same thing. Joe, you really ambitiously want to read through the Bible in a year, which is, you know, not that big of a task if you just break it down by days, like three or four chapters a day. But, man, how easy was it to get to the end of the day? It's, oh, man, I gotta read my four chapters. Let me just read kind of mindlessly, you know, read my mindless four chapters, especially. Again, once you get into stuff that's a little tougher to read, the law, the major prophets, minor prophets, that kind of thing. So I think that that attentive reading is important. I was going to ask you guys recently, I've. And, well, let me make this point first, and then I'll ask you guys. I do think if you're somebody listening who maybe you have not read all the way through the Bible, maybe your Bible knowledge is, is fairly shallow. It's something that you would readily admit. I would encourage you to maybe start here. Start with attentively reading through the Bible, as opposed to, I'm going to just really break down the book of Romans here for my Bible study. I think there's obvious value to both, and especially if you're somebody who knows the Bible fairly well, I think it is probably time for you to sit down and start doing some deeper study. But if you're not, I think this attentive reading is a very good first step to go through. Read it like a story, really pay attention to what you're reading. Write down questions you have, you know, maybe underline a few things here and there, but not get any deeper than just attentively reading. I think maybe sometimes people can get so locked into, I want to study, study, study, and there is value in going through and attentively reading, especially if that's kind of something you've never done before. What I was going to ask you guys recently, I feel like my, my Bible study habits are in a pretty good place. And so I was like, I need to get back to doing just this essentially reading. Have you guys ever read through the Bible chronologically? That's kind of the reading plan that I started because I did want to do it more, you know, from the story perspective, get a better feel for, like, I know the, I know the books in order. I know how the, how the Bible is laid out. But I was like, I would like a little bit better feel for what chronologically takes place first. And so I know a lot of people have done that before. I never had. So I did start that fairly recently. But I was curious your guys's thoughts on that, if that helps with this attentive reading thing. [00:11:11] Speaker A: I haven't gone all the way through it that way, but, you know, it has. Anytime. Anytime you're sticking to a plan that does move you consecutively, keeps you in the same areas and stuff like that, and moves you forward helps. When you say chronological, I know there's those bibles where they kind of like, read some old Testament today, read some New Testament today, stuff like that. No, no. You want to. [00:11:30] Speaker B: No, no. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Like, you would. [00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, it's not like I read Genesis one through two and then Matthew one and two. [00:11:36] Speaker C: It's. [00:11:37] Speaker B: I read all of Genesis. I read all of that, like, whatever comes next chronologically in timeline of events. [00:11:42] Speaker A: Okay. Timeline, event. Yeah. So, no, I haven't. I know there's good resources for that. Reading plans and stuff like that. Yeah. And like I said, anything that kind of just keeps you moving in the same direction. Because one of the things I think is important is to, we don't read the Bible like we read any other book. And I know it's not like any other book, but so much, especially of the Old Testament, is narrative. Even up and through the gospels and all that, we don't. You wouldn't read a narrative story the way we do the Bible. Like, all right, well, I read, you know, one page today, and I'm going to come back tomorrow. Like, the chapter thing, I think, really messes us up sometimes. Like, you're in the middle of a story arc of what's going on in Jacob's life. You're in the middle of Abraham's journeys or whatever else, and. All right, well, I read one page. It's not really cutting it the same. And so continuing on. Did you have something there, will? [00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to give an example. I just pulled up my plan. So it goes through Genesis one through eleven, and then immediately you read the book of Job right after that, and then you go back to Genesis twelve, and then you're, of course, in exodus for a while, and the Pentateuch is going to be a little bit different. You're pretty well going to be reading that straight through. But to have job in there. [00:12:49] Speaker A: But then even as the Old Testament, I think that'd get really interesting with the prophets and such. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. [00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's another helpful way to approach the Bible is I don't think people realize where the minor prophets fit with the kings, with chronicles. And with those books of a lot of them, you can kind of wedge them in somewhere in there. And so that helps, too. [00:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Or that Esther is right toward the end. I mean, with artaxerxes and such, Esther is very close to Alexander the greatest people don't realize that. [00:13:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:16] Speaker C: Like, those are the interesting things as we start really getting into scripture that you start putting. And this is why we're on Wednesday nights at our church, we decided to do a history class. Some people are more into it than others, but the point is to see how these weave together. [00:13:32] Speaker B: Bible and world history class. [00:13:34] Speaker C: Correct. Bible and world history. Bible is history. But a lot of times we only get what's taking place in the fertile crescent area. Right. Like, right in there. Um, when in reality, I mean, you're putting this together and realizing, man, Esther's really close to this or that, that Moses is really close to king Tut, and, like, it helps it come alive. But this is what we're getting at with our Bible study, is we want it to come alive. Sometimes that chapter by chapter isn't enough, Jack. I like that. And then you see that with things like, what is it called? Like, bibliotheca or whatever, where they do. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got those on the shelf over there. Really? [00:14:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And they're really well written or well laid out, rather, where I think they take out chapter and verse and they just read it as a story and it becomes something a lot easier for people to get into and just to enjoy scripture. And so we do have the attentive reading, as you said, will, that's a great place to start. If you're not really doing much, then we get an inductive study. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Evan, on reading, though, I just want to say, a lot of times when you talk Bible study, reading kind of gets thrown under the bus. No, read, you know, studying, not reading. Yes, we do need to move to the higher end stuff, I think a lot like heavy, consecutive reading. There's almost no replacement for it. And I think that because of the deeper stuff we're going to get to in a minute, the more familiar you are. And I'm really, I wish there were a way to calculate, and I know there's things that kind of estimate this. How many words a day you read, scrolling, Facebook, scrolling, x Twitter, scrolling, whatever, you know, sites that you like to frequent. And you get to the end of the day like, well, I got time for a chapter of the Bible. I know I have more time than that. I know if you compared reading one tweet that's, you know, two sentences long, feels like I didn't read that much. If you scroll that, you know, for, it's 20 minutes of reading. 20 minutes of reading there, 20 minutes of reading in the Bible, you can be three, four chapters in. And so the more time you can put into getting multiple chapters in a day and getting through more Bible. So over the course of years, you've been through the Bible five, six times. The deeper stuff we're going to get to in a bit gets a lot easier when you know the material. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Well, just to add to your point, Jack, I would, I would highly recommend, no matter what level of Bible study, Bible knowledge you're at a. I don't think you ever reach a point where you graduate from. I don't. Well, I don't really read necessarily just read through it anymore like that. There's always value in that. To your point, no matter if you're the, you know, bottom of the barrel when it comes to Bible knowledge or if you're the most well read Bible person there is, you never get to a point where you're just like, okay, reading doesn't do it for me anymore. So yeah, I agree with that. [00:15:57] Speaker A: Hey, guys, I want to tell you about think deeper live, our first ever in person event. It's scheduled for Saturday, November 16. Starting at 09:00 a.m. we're going to be talking about God's design for gender roles. It's tentatively scheduled to be in Burns, Tennessee. We want to get a headcount first so we don't outgrow the venue we have it planned for. So it would help us out a lot if you'd go to thinkdeeperlive.com and RSvP, let us know how many people are coming and then give us an email address so we can zero in the exact location where it's going to be and let you know a couple of weeks ahead of time. So check that out. Thinkdeeperlive.com dot. [00:16:31] Speaker C: So, Jack, I want you to get us into inductive because as we move or we're making our way through Bible study, it starts with this attentive reading. And like you said, we can do this all the way throughout. Then we come to inductive study, which really, to me just seems, and you have it on here, just asking questions of the text. You know, what, what is he trying to say here? What is this author trying to say to this particular person or this particular audience at the time? Um, but just asking questions of the text. Oh, I've seen this one before, things like that. So. But can you go a little deeper on, briefly, I suppose, as we move our way through the outline on inductive study and what you mean by that? Yeah, as that's a word that's thrown around that people will hear, but I don't know that they fully know what that is. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Right. So you just, like you said, start asking questions. It's kind of if you've been on the same drive over and over and over, but there might be something if you slowed down a little bit and looked around or places where I've driven a bunch, but then times where my wife is driving and I'm like, I've never seen that house there. Like, because I'm not driving, I can look around a little more. Same thing with your Bible study. [00:17:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:29] Speaker A: You read the chapter? That's great. Don't close the Bible. Ask. All right, what did I just read? Who are these people? What's kind of the, what's going on here? One of my preaching school instructors would ask, what does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply? Those are good questions to ask. Of kind of. Okay, you can paraphrase it, maybe put it in your own words. What does it mean? And one of the reasons for this is it gets you out of, well, Philippians 413, just so many people that have, like, the Instagram, you know, Bible verse in their bio kind of thing. Like, did you ask, what does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply? Probably not. And, you know, I never want to, like, look down on people trying to use Bible verses. On the other hand, you got to use them right or you're going to end up with some really, really bad ideas. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Jeremiah 20, 911. [00:18:12] Speaker A: That's my bio. That's right. And I mean, there's just. Or we had an episode on the five most misused Bible verses. And you see these things. In fact, I just wrote that book on christians and politics. How many of them just, well, there's this verse. Like, that doesn't mean what you think it is. Well, war is not against flesh and blood. Like, yeah, but we're still humans. Like, we're here on earth with people, other people, stuff like that. And so you really got just when you're reading through and you see a verse like that, say, what does that mean? How does it fit? And this kind of gets. Starts. You start getting into exegesis where you're looking at context, but, you know, not just taking verses on face value, because you can. There's that old preacher story about a guy like, going, well, I'm gonna just let God guide my life. Flip the page over. What should I do? Well, and Judas went and hung himself, you know, well, that's not. It flips another page, what he did, you know, go and do likewise or something like that. And, you know, it just, that's not how Bible study works. But a lot of times when you don't ask those questions, you make those mistakes. [00:19:18] Speaker C: All right, let's get us into. That's a great, great breakdown. Let's get us into topical study as we're working our way through. It's important to start with good, attentive Bible. Bible reading. If you're just skimming, hey, work on being attentive as you're reading through. Getting the full picture, the full story, maybe not just starting at a verse or a chapter here, here, there. But really getting the full story. Move into inductive. What's it say? What's it mean? How does it apply? Ask some questions of the text. We get into topical. I'm going to be straight up honest with you. A topical is not my favorite way to study. I think it can be a very dangerous way to study, in my opinion. But there is uses, appropriate uses for it. So in topical study, a lot of times you're going to pull out the strongest concordance. What does the Bible have to say about love? What's the Bible have to say about joy? What's it have to say about faith, whatever it may be? And so you can go to a concordance, get all the verses on faith, all the verses on joyous, and really build sermons that way. You have to see a lot of preachers that build sermons. Okay, well, it just says this and has Joy here and Joy here and Joy here, and we're going to move through. It misses context. It misses what the, you know, what the writer's trying to say with each of those things. So I think there are some issues with it. At the same time, there is a place for topical study because, look, we're not always necessarily going to be in the exegesis, kind of the studying through a text type of thing. Sometimes we need to know what does the Bible have to say about joyous? And I think there are different ways we can go about topical study. But, fellas, what are your thoughts on topical study and maybe some tips on how we can make it better than just picking things out of context? [00:20:47] Speaker B: I think you described it well, as far as what it is, I think it's less useful for those really broad topics or concepts like love or joy or peace or hope. Like all those things is kind of where our mind usually goes when it comes to. I don't think they're very useful for those things specifically for the exact example or the exact thing that you said, Joe, of, you know, you could be using those words in very different ways, very different contexts, and they could almost mean something very different. Oftentimes it's different greek words, whatever it is. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Well, we talked about works last week, to your point. Exactly. Like you can't, it's very hard to topically study that because you've got to get into James, you got to get into Paul. [00:21:27] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah, exactly. So to me, the best use for topical is for a lot more narrow, narrowed down, narrowed in specific things. To give an example, I just taught a class on debt at our congregation and our home congregation, Sunday morning class. To me, that's a perfect word or perfect concept to study topically because it's like, okay, how are you going to take one text and exegetically break down debt? Probably not going to be able to do that. And so it's more of a, okay, I am going to kind of look through my Bible software and see, okay, where all the verses that mention debt or mention borrowing and stuff like that. And because it's so specific, because it's so narrowed down, I think it's a lot easier to not necessarily pull things out of context. I'm trying to think of another example that's just the freshest one off the top of my head where it's like, okay, I'm probably not going to be pulling stuff out of context. It is important to provide the context, but because it's so much more specific, that to me is the use of topical studies. Okay, in the, in the book of Exodus and Leviticus, there's, here's what the law had to say about debt. Here's what Jesus has to say about debt. Here's what the proverbs have to say about debt. That's a much better use for it, in my opinion. Then again, well, let me look at what, you know, let me, let me search hope into my Bible software or into Bible gateway or concordance or whatever, because it can be used so many different ways. But when it's more specific, again, like debt, if you guys have another example, that probably be helpful because I just can't think of one off top of my head. Maybe things like angels and demons, demonology, setting things that are a whole lot more specific than nephilim and stuff. But that would be kind of my, my answer to this topical study question is I don't think it's very useful for the big overarching concepts, but for the more specific ones, I think it can be useful. [00:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a good point. Something like children, you know, raising children, the idea of the role of children and having children and how to raise them, parenting, things like that are the kind of thing that bounces around in the Bible. You know, Paul touches on it briefly in Ephesians six. He touches on it in Colossians. And so if you're just studying through those, yeah, it fits well within Ephesians and Colossians. And so you can get it there. [00:23:28] Speaker B: But like marriage. [00:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah, things like that. Yeah. And so you're going to, but the important thing is we're going to get to exegesis in a minute. You have to do good exegesis to do good topical study. You have to go, if you're going to go to verses all over the Bible in each of those, you need to go and figure out what does this mean in context, because if you don't, and that's where it gets very easy to grab a verse, plug it into the idea you brought to the text rather than getting your idea from the text. And I think the more progressive people have an error that they make when they kind of do the story of the Bible thing. And so they go off of feel rather than sometimes what it says. I think sometimes the, the more what the opposite of progressive, whatever you want to call legalistic phariseeical. Like this is where these guys can really, I don't want to say they're doing it intentionally, like misleading people intentionally, but it ends up in the same place of I'm going to grab Bible verses and make my case for what I'm going to say. And as I mentioned earlier, those sermons where there's 75 scriptures in them, it's very hard to look at all of those. And you can look at the list of scriptures and be like, wow, the Bible does say that. [00:24:41] Speaker B: You can just kind of bury your audience in scripture. [00:24:43] Speaker A: You can. And well, this verse says this. So obviously that means that. And there's a sleight of hand to it where it's like, well, hang on a second. Are we sure it means that? Why? Why do we think it means that? Because you said it means that. Like let's go look at it in context. And I have seen some verses used to prove just unbelievable points, ripping one thing out of deuteronomy, like this obscure verse out of context. And well, see, obviously this makes my point like, no, it doesn't. But it can look like they've got scripture on their side if you don't do the proper exegesis of topical study and take people through and as what will did with the debt class, let's go to proverbs where it says this about debt. Well, what does that mean? What does it not mean? How does this fit with this other verse over here? And like you've got to spend the time on it rather than just flying by and, well, Philippians two seven and you know, Leviticus 1713. And I mean, like you can just throw those out, but what do they actually say? So that's what I was very dangerous. [00:25:38] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. Just quickly, Joe, then it's all you in that level of that, that style, I guess, of preaching that we've talked about before. Typically also, it's not just the amount of scripture, but because you're moving through it so fast, it doesn't give people the time to sit down and look at the context. And, you know, you don't explore the context and so you just, it leaves your audience kind of having to take the preacher at their word, that that's what it means. Whereas what I much prefer or any level of Bible study is like, let's look at the text, let's go over the text, and essentially, specifically in a class format or whatever, you tell me what it means, open your Bible for yourself, look at it, and tell me what you think it means. Versus let me give you 440 scriptures. And this is obviously what it means. And then let's move on to the next one. This is obviously what it means. I think that as we've talked about before, has inhibited people's Bible study as well. But Joe, did you have a thought? [00:26:24] Speaker A: Well, to give a brief example before Joe jumps in, just one example on it, Satan did this. Well, hey, he said, if you throw yourself down, he said, and Jesus didn't say, well, that verse is wrong. He didn't say, well, I'm going to contradict you. He said, that's not what that means because that's my interpretation of what he's saying is that verse doesn't mean what you think it means. You're taking that out of context, essentially, is how Jesus fights back against that. [00:26:50] Speaker C: The only point I was going to make is it goes back to what you said earlier, Jack. It's very intimidating. Topical can be very intimidating to people. I don't know my Bible that well. And then we get gifted at our graduation, a strong concordance. It's like, okay, here's Bible study. And people never really grow out of the strong concordance vines. Bible study. There is a time and place to use that. Sure. That can help. Just be very careful. And this moves us into the exegesis discussion, actually, because exegesis really is all about context. So it's almost opposite ends. Like, yes, topical can be a positive thing, but exegesis is what you're taking out, right. X out of the text. [00:27:26] Speaker B: And so isogesis, if you want to just. [00:27:29] Speaker C: Which is into the text, correct? [00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:31] Speaker C: If you ever heard Eisegesis, ice being into in the greek and Ek or X, not that I'm a greek scholar in the least, but just how it works, right? [00:27:38] Speaker A: That's where you come into going, well, I know the Bible says this, so let me find it in there, correct? [00:27:42] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And you're trying to put into it your own preconceived ideas and thoughts. But this is the danger with topicals. We keep going back to context. Context, context, right. What does he say in proverbs that matters or proverbs may be a bad example because context is a little bit difficult there. But if you're taking out of Romans or James, context tells you everything in topical. You're going to get really confused if you don't get into the exegetical study of those books, as you're kind of going through them. And there are a few rules to exegesis. The first one is going to be context, kind of the, you know, you have in the real estate world, location, location, location, context, context, context. This is what matters the most when you're reading through a book. Let's say you're studying Ephesians, one of the keys to. And we had an episode of Doctor Petrillo, dedicated Petrillo two years ago. [00:28:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been two years. It was in our first year. [00:28:33] Speaker C: Time flies. Time flies. He went a little more in depth on this, was this part as well. So go back and check that out if you're interested. But, yeah, context very much matters. You want to read through the entirety of the book. If you're studying Ephesians, read all six chapters. What is he saying? In the context? So you can read. And that's what people do, is they'll read Ephesians two, eight, nine. We've been saved by grace alone. Right? And it's not works that save us. And the Baptists take that. They rip it out of context. You go, see, this means you just say by grace, the calvinist type of thing. No works. Baptisms will work and they take it their way. We avoid it because we don't know, like, well, how do I combat that? That seems to say it. So we're just not going to talk about it at all. Context solves that issue. If you're reading through the book of Ephesians, you see exactly how he's laying out this case of not just, you know, not the works, but the. But the faith is what's going to save us. But he's created us for good works in Ephesians 210, and then he goes off into what that looks like, especially chapter four through six. So it makes a lot more sense when you're contextually understanding the Book of Ephesians or whatever else. This does get tricky when you're reading 66 chapters of Isaiah, but you should read the entirety of the book at once. You man, I don't have time for that. If you really want to understand what the book is saying, you need to take it as a book, because if you think about the scrolls as they were written back then, I don't think they're going to read a chapter, quote unquote, which obviously didn't exist, but read a part of Paul's letter, you know, the Romans, and they go, okay, well, that's it for today. Thanks, guys. We got through, you know, we got to the first couple chapters tomorrow to. [00:30:00] Speaker B: See what Paul says about. [00:30:01] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly it. Like, they would have read it in its entirety. They would have understood it as it was supposed to be. And same thing with Old Testament. You want to read it all the way through. So context is the first thing. The other thing that I would add and let you guys get into it. You want to know what type of literature you're reading from. And the only reason this really matters is, look, there are parts of Daniel, the last half of Daniel, revelation. They're apocalyptic literature. People can read that very literally, and that really does not go well. And you see this with Zionists and you see this with those that think that there's going to be a thousand year reign and things like that. The premillennialists, they read a lot of things very, very literally that I think you can read either historically or apocalyptically. And so it's important to understand what you're reading. Acts is a historical book. Obviously, you have the gospels, which are going to be kind of more on the history and of how things happen. You're going to get in the letters, and you have the law, you have the prophets. You have those that like, you want to know what genre you're reading, because that's going to help determine some of the other things. You can't read the prophets as you're reading the law or as you're reading the gospels or whatever else, you want to know that. So that's kind of a basic part of exegesis that I figured I'd throw in there. But, fellas, what other thoughts do you have on exegesis as a Bible study? Where once again, for those listening, attentive reading, inductive study, topical study, we're down now to exegesis. [00:31:23] Speaker A: If you enjoyed, think deeper. Be sure to check out the other podcasts on the Focus Press podcast network. Every Tuesday, Joe and will share godly young men, a podcast aimed for guys ages 15 to 25, helping them navigate the challenges of life. You can also subscribe to the Church Reset podcast feed, where I share audio from all of my articles and videos done on the YouTube channel. And of course, we have archived shows get out of porn done by Joe, 52 lessons on how to overcome a pornography addiction and who let the dogma out? A show I did with some friends on theological deep dives and answering some of the tough questions in the Bible as they apply to culture today. Check those out on the Focus Press podcast feed. You can see all of them at our website, focuspress.org podcasts. [00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll go first and then Jack, go for it. The only thing I would add, Joe obviously hit the most important stuff. They're talking about context. But with exegetical study, at least from my perspective, and what I've, my experience with it, I guess I should say, is you. It's a much more zoomed in approach as opposed to a zoomed out approach. As far as a specific. You're walking through the text, you are really kind of deciphering and then going through every single word. Like every word is important. Specifically when you're reading the Pauline letters and things like that. Why did Paul use that specific word? Or James or whatever? Like, why did he transition from this idea to that idea? So in some ways it's very zoomed in, but in some ways it's also zoomed out to go to what Joe's talking about of like, okay, what he's saying here in chapter three is calling back to what he said there at the end of chapter one. He uses the same word. And so exegetical study for me, and I think later on we're kind of going to talk about how each of us does personal study, just as a personal antidote here, but exegetical study, you are marking up your Bible a good bit. You are highlighting or underlining. Okay, he uses this word here, this word here, and he's communicating the same thing. Or this calls back to this. This is a continuing thought, specifically, again, just to keep using him as an example with Paul, when he has a lot of, in our language, run on sentences where it's like, man, what is he trying to say here? Exegetical study, you are biting off a whole lot more, trying to figure out what specifically is being said. What is the message he's trying to communicate. Again, why does he go from this to that? And so for me, it's more zoomed in, where you're having to kind of sit and think a little bit more about the words used, about the ideas, about the concepts, as opposed to a, just reading through it, or b, you know, what does the word love mean? Like, there's a lot to it that takes, at least it takes me a good amount of time to work through various sections of the New Testament. I've never personally done it for the Old Testament. So that there's an area of growth for me. That's where I'm sure it gets a lot tougher, as you mentioned, Joe. But Jack, what thoughts do you have on that? [00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah, Paul is a real gift for, like for the student when you're trying to get into this stuff because he is so outline based, so logical progression. Boom, boom, boom. ABC equals this, that and the other thing because, you know, like you go to first John, that's a lot harder to just kind of get through in that way. The, the words kind of circularly come back around in the arguments. And James is one that a lot of people like to start with their study in James. And it's a great book of the Bible. There's a reason people call it the proverbs of the New Testament. And there's, I think, a little more structure than proverbs, but it's. And not that proverbs doesn't have any structure either. But it's, Paul is an easy one. But then, like the gospels, big books like that can be kind of hard. And I think one of the other things that you need to do is within a book, figure out the movement of the book and the progression of it. And, you know, I wrote the study guide that we sell on mark after preaching through it. And it's really cool that mark. There's a lot of ways to break these books down and do your own outline of them. But like, you start to see the first seven plus chapters of the book are kind of Galilee, his hometown, miracles, demons, teachings, challenges of his authority and all that. And then eight, nine and ten, it's kind of really establishing, you've got the transfiguration. You've got, hey, this really is the son of God. And Jesus starts to say, I'm here to go die on the cross in Jerusalem. And this is going to happen. He says it three times, eight, nine and ten, and then eleven on is when he goes to Jerusalem and the setting there. And so if you just pay attention to the setting, where is he right now? John does the same thing where he kind of retreats and then he goes into Jerusalem. He comes for the Passover of the Jews, it says. And so you start paying attention to the locations and stuff like that and the details that it's giving you. It's so easy to skim past those details. City names, stuff like that, that names of people that if you really pay attention, who's who, what's going on in this story. And this goes back to what I was saying about, like, paying attention with your reading. If you're reading, I like Dostoevsky, you know, I've talked about before, and those russian ones, really long books with, like, 80 characters. And you're like, well, who on earth is this person? And it's helpful. A lot of the versions of them will put a page in the front of the book, like, to remind you, so you can flip and be like, yeah, you haven't heard about this person in 350 pages. Here's who they are kind of thing. You have that in the Bible where if you're paying attention. So to give one example, in the David and Bathsheba story, it mentions Bathsheba. I think she's the granddaughter of Ahithophel. When he asks, who is that woman? Well, it's so and so, okay, you move on. Don't think about it that much. You go on. When Absalom revolts against David, Ahithophel was his wisest counselor who joined Absalom. Well, why is he joining Absalom? Well, you can't say for sure, but, hey, David just killed his grandson in law and took, you know, like, all of a sudden he's leading a revolt against David or advising a revolt against David. You get those little details that if you kind of breeze past the little stuff in there, it just adds so much color to the story. So pay attention on the lower level. And when you do, then you can zoom out a bit and start seeing those structures of over multiple chapters, how this is developing and stuff. [00:37:23] Speaker C: You also see this, another one of the favorites I think we've talked about. We may have talked about this before, but Joppa. Right. You see Joppa two separate times in the Bible. You see it in Jonah. You also see it Peter in acts ten. And I don't think it's any coincidence that in both situations, you have preaching to the Gentiles. Peter runs toward them and Jonah is running away from them. And I think you can see, you can make parallels between Jonah and Peter and how they respond to the call of God, where Peter's getting the vision, and you see Jonah feels called by God, and then he runs away from it, and Peter runs toward it. But the salvation of the Gentiles kind of is on the line for both with Nineveh and with. With Cornelius. There's some really cool things that every single word will. You said that, like, every word matters. And so when you think about it, exegesis really is going to start with, what is the book saying? What's the, what is the. Maybe the chapter saying? What is this pericope? You may hear the term pericope, or this passage saying this, you know, five verse little pericope here. What is that saying? What is the verse saying? And then what is this phrase and what is this word? You can really break it all the way down to try to understand what does every single word mean in context. You could take righteousness in, you know, in the book of Romans, or you can take sin in another book, or you can take. We go to Romans because it's just the masterclass. Right. But I mean, there's so many things. Old Testament does get a little trickier. You're going to want to have historical stuff. This is where, when you're studying Old Testament, having Google open with some historical context at the time, you're going to read through Nahum and go, what is that about? You know, what? What is he talking about? Well, if you know that Nahum is written after Jonah and Nahum is the destruction of Nineveh after Jonah tries to save them, they have this momentary repentance in Jonah, but then a couple generations later, they're back to the way they were. And Nahum is about that. You wouldn't know that, though, without having some open commentaries, without having some things that are going to help you understand historical context of the prophets, things like that. So as you're looking at the Old Testament, that can be a little trickier on exegesis. But there are some things absolutely that can help, such as commentary. So, fellas, I want to use this to get into. I know I'm moving us on in the outline, but we got some other really good stuff to get to, and that is when we get into deep exegesis. Jack, you have on here theopolitan, which I don't even know that I'm fully aware of. The Apollo. [00:39:36] Speaker A: Well, it's just different resources, different. [00:39:38] Speaker C: Theopolis through new eyes is a great one. Theopolis Institute, if that's what that is. Yeah, that's a. You know, there's some. Some really interesting and good stuff. We don't take every one of them through new eyes. It's a fantastic book. We don't take everything that Theopolis has ever put out as gospel because I think they're Lutheran Presbyterian, but at the same time, they think about scripture in a way that we do not. And it does help. They are taking a much broader picture from seeing the ways that the typology and things like that. We don't often get into that, and that's where I've been fascinated in personal study, is really noticing the typology. And Jack and I have been doing the 365 shout out to focus plus make sure to get it. If you are not members of focus plus, we do it daily. [00:40:21] Speaker B: Devotional content. You can't beat it. [00:40:23] Speaker C: Correct. We try to. At least we've missed a few days in there. But 365 days is a lot to get through. But we are doing a daily and we'll catch up. [00:40:31] Speaker B: Y'all gotta change like 360 or something instead of 300. [00:40:34] Speaker C: 6345. No. [00:40:36] Speaker B: Huh? [00:40:36] Speaker C: I know. I was thinking. I was thinking about that yesterday, and I'm like, we have to hit 365. So whatever I have missed, I will absolutely make up at the end of it. So on, like, December 31, you're gonna get like 30 of them or something. But no, but that's really giving me an appreciation. As we've gone through the Old Testament, we've been working through Genesis. We're up now into middle of Joshua, and you start noticing certain patterns. Right? This is what you're looking for in typology. You're looking for patterns. You're looking for structural patterns. Where you go, oh, that's very, very interesting. Hebron is a good one. So Caleb gets Hebron, which I think is very interesting that you have giants there. And you can start seeing the comparisons. I just covered this one. You can see the comparisons between David and Caleb. He's from the tribe of Judah. He gets Hebron. David lives in Hebron for seven years. He's slaying giants. He goes in and Anakin are in the land, and he takes care of three of them. It talks about. So he slayed giants. There are certain elements that Caleb and David align, actually quite clearly along the way. I think that's fascinating. But you start noticing these patterns and go, why Hebron? Why is that such a big deal? And then you start seeing, okay, it's south of Jerusalem and you get into it. That's a little bit more. The deeper study that as you're going through picking up on these structural patterns, we look at chiasms. Chiasms. Sorry, guys, I don't want to take all of them. Well, I'll let somebody else who wants to discuss chiasms, I get excited about this stuff. [00:41:59] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I'll go and Jack, you can take the rest of it. So, yeah, chiasms are. The first time I was exposed to a chiasm was in personal study in Romans, and that was a much more textual thing. There's like six verses wherever essentially, they're mirror images of each other in the text, if that makes sense, where Paul kind of builds to a central point, specifically here in Romans, and then he repeats the central point, and then he builds back out, repeating the same things he said as he was building in. But that's a textual one. I think what Joe's talking about more so is what you can see in books themselves. So I'll let Jack go into it just a second, because they're the ones that have done an excellent job with this class. But, like, there's a chiastic structure, first of all, within. Seemingly within the Pentateuch, within the book of numbers. I don't remember if there's one in Leviticus, but I know you guys have talked about the one in the book of numbers, where it is a zoomed out approach to see, like, okay, they're building to certain things they're repeating, and then there's a central point where it's emphasized and it's repeated twice, and it builds back out. And once it. Man, if you can see it laid out on a whiteboard, for instance, or you lay it out in your own personal notes or whatever. So it's the coolest thing. And you see it throughout scripture. There's multiple places. So, Jack, I'll let you take over here. But chiasms as far as structural patterns for this. This type of study are fascinating. I know when you guys first revealed the. And I know y'all aren't the ones that originated it, but, you know, through your study, you found it. But the one in the pentateuch and then the one specifically in numbers was fascinating. So go ahead and get into that, Jack, and then you can take us the rest of the way through this typological discussion. [00:43:30] Speaker A: Yeah. With. Well. And Leviticus. Yeah, I mean, there's just. I think the. The more you start looking for these, the more you see, especially the Old Testament is just packed with them. I mean, just over and over and over. It uses this device as a teaching device underneath the text. Like, when you start to pay attention, it's not just the text itself, but this is there to teach you even more. And so, like, with the Pentateuch, you can break it down as from, like, creation all the way to getting into the promised land at the end, deuteronomy, going into Joshua, where they're right on the banks of the Jordan, and then they go in that it kind of builds up as a parallel. And you can compare and contrast the garden of Eden with the promised land. You've got the day of atonement, right at the center of kind of everything that Israel has done, that they went into slavery, they came out of slavery, they went to the mountain of God, they went up on the mountain of God, they got the law of God, then he gives them the day of atonement while they're there at Sinai. Then they kind of come away from the mountain. And so you're kind of on the descent of this story arc. And on the other side of where slavery was, on the one side of the mountain, on this side is 40 years of wilderness wandering and rebellion, and there's plagues, and there's parallels between what they put Egypt through in the book of Exodus is what Israel has to go through in the book of numbers of death and plagues and God's power and stuff like that. And, yeah, I mean, there's just all these comparisons across broad swaths of texts that are really cool to see. But again, that structural stuff isn't just in the Old Testament, it's just with narrative. It's a little easier to point out or to see it comes into the New Testament. One of my favorites is at the start of Matthew, closely parallels the exodus story of you've got this baby born, the ruler is trying to kill all the babies. This one baby is delivered, not the angelic vision, but Jesus and his family go down to Egypt and Moses is saved in the basket. He comes back, he is there to save his people. The sermon on the mount versus Moses and giving the law on the mountain, and you just got lots of parallels. Jesus baptism versus Moses, taking them through the Red Sea on the way to the mountain and things like that. That was a real brief overview. There's like 15 points of parallelism that. [00:45:47] Speaker C: The Bible is pointing back 40 days in the wilderness. [00:45:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, things like that. The temptation in the wilderness, things like that. There's a really useful book called Echoes of Exodus I read a couple of years ago where they talk about how the Exodus basic plot outline of Exodus is repeated like 15 times in the Bible and the story of Ruth and the story of David and the story of all kinds of things that it's supposed to remind you. And so when we talked about earlier, like, deeply reading of the Bible, that's the best way to do this deeper level of exegesis is you just know this stuff. I mean, like with family members, with close friends, you've got inside jokes that other people don't know. And it's just familiarity. It's just time together. It's things like that. That you can't replace. You can't get there another way. And so really familiarizing yourself with the text where you can start to pick up on these things and realize, hey, that sounds a lot like this other thing. Or this story is unfolding as Noah with Sodom and Gomorrah, the last righteous man and his family and getting out and being saved, but also violated by a family member. I mean, like, gets drunk, and you just start to see these repeated stories pointing back and forth to each other, and it helps you stack your knowledge on top of each other. Like I said earlier, the Bible gets smaller that way. [00:47:05] Speaker B: It's just connections that once they're made for you, it's like your mind is blown. Like, oh, my goodness. I remember the first time. I'll give Joe credit. I know you and Jack share notes. I don't know whose original sermon this was, but the sermon about Jesus as the tabernacle, as you kind of walk. [00:47:20] Speaker C: The opposite of John. [00:47:22] Speaker B: Goodness gracious. That was the most mind blowing sermon I've ever listened to. Like, whoa, it's just the coolest thing. And it does add another layer to your Bible study, and you know it. I hate to say it like this, but it almost causes you to look at the 70 verses reference style study as, like, kind of the little leagues, if that makes sense. Whereas this type of connect, again, not to be denigrating to people, but, like, where this type of study typology walking through, like, John is literally laying Jesus out, describing who he is as the tabernacle in the book of John is the big league. He's like, wow, that is just the coolest thing ever. And there's so much to it. Stuff that, you know, I'm very much looking forward to getting into more as I grow in my Bible study and grow in my faith. But, um, guys, we do have a few more things to get to. Joe, I'm sure you have a thought that you want to give. Before we get to kind of the. [00:48:11] Speaker C: Last two sections, I want to ask a question. How do we get people maybe listen to this going, okay, that's really, really cool. I'll never see that. Jack, you already talked about maybe the first step is read a lot. You have to know what's going on. How do we get to seeing these things? Because, I mean, through new eyes is a great book. I think that's James B. Jordan, right? Um, it may help you see how. [00:48:35] Speaker A: Is a PDF online, actually? [00:48:37] Speaker C: Oh, that's right. That's right. Uh, so, yeah, check out three new eyes if you're interested in these type of things, there's like, some of his. [00:48:43] Speaker A: Connections are like, wow, that's uh, that's a bit of a stretch. I mean, there's some of it, you're like that. I don't think it's saying that all. [00:48:49] Speaker C: That, but we walked through the revelation stuff and it was like, I don't know about, uh, he goes into musical notations, he goes in a lot of different stuff. It's like, man, I, this is beyond. Either beyond me and I don't understand it or this guy's absolutely nuts. But no, he's got a lot of really good stuff. One of the things I was going to say is this is where the inductive asking questions of the text really comes in. You have to know the text, you have to know these things. The second thing is be looking for like, man, where have I seen this before? So you read through Noah and the flood, like, well, that's interesting. So there is a creation and a fall, there's a cleansing and a fall, there's a cleansing and all you see that repeated over and over throughout the Old Testament until it hits to Jesus where there is a new creation and there's not a fall. Jesus is what changes everything on its head, the entire Old Testament. So you're reading through Noah and you go, man, it seems like I've read this before. You're reading through one of the kings and the land is cleansed and everything. And then there's a fall right after. There's almost always, you look through the golden calf, right? You receive the law and this is good, and God's coming down, he's dwelling among his people, and then there's a fall. This happens over and over and over again throughout the Old Testament. So one of the best things you can do is when you read through something. Have I seen this before? Is this pattern somewhere else? Google is a very good resource and that kind of gets us into the different, different types of resources, the recommended tools. But before we get to the recommended tools, because I do think you can get into Bible Gateway, blue letter bible logos, things like that. Fellas, anything else you want to cover on the deeper exegesis side? Okay, actually, one thing that I will say, jack, you have on here, and I think it is important, does the Bible have to specifically acknowledge a type for it to count? This is where you get into James B. Jordan, where he's making connections. This is going to be on the deeper end of things, where people go. I think I got a connection here. How do we know whether we're stretching it too far? Some people may look at this and go, that's an absolute stretch. I don't know how you get that out of the text. And to be fair, there are times where you may be stretching it a tad bit more than maybe is present in a text. How do you handle that, Jack, within your own personal Bible study, there's things. [00:50:48] Speaker A: That you just have to say, yeah, I think it's making this connection, but I'm not going to push that. I'm not going to make much out of it. Like, there are people that think if the Bible gives a type and an antitype like Jesus and Adam, Jesus and Moses are compared and contrasted, that that's the only time we're allowed to do it. No, there's just so many of them in there that I think it's okay to make more of them, to realize that that's just the way, you know, the Hebrew Bible was written and how God inspired that and how these writers worked. But again, it's when you start trying to build like doctrines off of very thin connections, you got to be very careful with that stuff. So it's a lot of fun and it's, it's something that makes the Bible really come alive more. But on the other hand, you can get a little bit, you go a little too far with it and make like everything. You never come to the Bible looking for like the point and the application. You're looking for some secret, you know, thing in there. Like we'll be a little careful with that. [00:51:44] Speaker C: Okay, good stuff. Good stuff. So when we get into the recommended tools, as we're talking about exegesis, we're talking about typology, we're talking about inductive study. All of these things we've already thrown out strongs, binds, those type of things can be helpful for the very basic study, for the topical study, things like that. What is your guys's go to resources for deeper study, especially on the exegesis side of things. [00:52:09] Speaker B: So I use, and then this is a kind of the big time Bible software that is not cheap. I mean it's, it's expensive, but I've, I've found it to be the most helpful. And that is, is it logos or logos? Logos. I think I've heard people pronounce it both ways. Logos sounds a whole lot better than logos does, but logos is probably correct anyway. Just all kind of stuff on there. It's got the, you know, you can break down the, you can break down the text based on what greek word are they using? You can. The search function is incredible. Be able to search through different things. It's got all kind of commentaries on there. It's got the ability to highlight and go back and forth. Just, you know, I could describe it for the next ten minutes on the amount of things it does, but I found that the most helpful. If you're not wanting to spend the money on that, there are things. Blue letter Bible, I think, is a good one. I don't use that one as much, but I think that one is good. You can look at what the word is in Greek. You can look at what it's supposed to mean, that kind of thing. One of the ones that I use just to. If I'm looking for a different way to sum up a text or if I just have a question, like, I wonder what this. What this commentary or what this individual has to say about it. The enduring word commentary is, is one that I just look through a lot. Uh, it's. It's one of those. If you just start, like, if you're in, uh, I don't know, first Timothy two, and you just google one Timothy two commentary, it's one of the first ones that'll pop up. And I found a lot of the stuff on there to be helpful. They pull from different. Different quotes, different things. Like, it seems like it's. It's kind of a big pool where they just gather a lot of it, but it breaks. It breaks it down pretty well, phrase by phrase, which is the way that I like to do the study. Um, you know, what does this phrase mean? What does this word mean? So those would be the two that I would recommend to blue letter Bible, again, is a good one, but enduring word. And then logos, or logos, if you're willing to spend the money, has got. It's got sermon builders. It's got a tool called the psalms Explorer, where it goes through and breaks the psalms down into different categories. And you can look at it throughout or through those lenses. And so, yeah, that would be my answer. Jack, what thoughts would you have on that? [00:54:00] Speaker A: I know a lot of people like olive tree. I haven't used it, but I know it's similar blue. I mean, people are going to go, oh, okay, this logos thing looks pretty cool, and you're going to look it up. And the sticker price gonna drive most away. I mean, it's. It's pretty ridiculous. So blue letter Bible can give you a lot of the greek and Hebrew word study tools for free. And so something like that is really handy. Yeah, I mean, just click around for resources. Good study Bibles are good to have, but you got to be really careful with the notes. I think is the Schofield study Bible was, like, the first and the first really popular one. And that's why most evangelicals are premillennial, like, thousand year reign and revelation, rebuild the temple. And all that stuff is because of the commentary notes in that study Bible. And so, like, it can really lead you astray. ESV, study Bible is not bad. Just be careful with. With what you're looking at there. Do not just because it's in your Bible. Sometimes it can be easy to take it as gospel, and it's not necessarily inspired or not inspired at all, actually. [00:54:59] Speaker C: Be careful in chain references as well. You know, just this is caution. Be careful. Like, oh, this connects. Not necessarily. A lot of times those are out of context. The only other thing I'd say is, if you have a trusted member at your church that knows you, they've studied their Bible quite a bit, and you may not have this, but if you do, take your commentaries, read those. That's fantastic. Make sure you're also talking to people. Use this as an opportunity to open up better conversations, things like that, because you can read John MacArthur's notes, which may be fantastic, but they also may be calvinist or who knows what. You know what I mean? Like, they. They may have some of those things in there that you have to be careful for. Um, so having somebody else stress it can. Can very much help. But that really gets us into the last thing we wanted to discuss, which is discernment, because we want to make sure we are very discerning people in our Bible study. And if you're coming from it going, I don't do it very often, it's really easy to farm that out to somebody else. To find a John MacArthur, um, commentary and to go, okay, well, that's just what I believe, that it's the same thing. We have to be careful. We have to be discerning when we're parsing through commentaries, things like that. One of the things, we just recorded a podcast on this, you have to be careful of the critical theory guys, and there are, unfortunately, a lot of those guys out there where it's all about. And you kind of actually see this like it's a Bible project. A lot of people love the Bible project, and they have some really good stuff. The chiasm in numbers actually was a Bible project thing that I saw, so they have some really good stuff. He also gets into critical theory. He also gets into the downtrodden a lot. And he gets into real squishy on. [00:56:28] Speaker A: That video is hilarious. The diversity that first century Israel had that I had no idea they had. But critical theorists have to animate that stuff into their video of who was sitting there listening to Jesus on the mount. Like, okay, come on. But I think there's a lot of things like that that are getting people excited about the Bible. And I'm happy for that. I'm glad that they're out there doing that. You have to take everything with a grain of salt. Take what we say with a grain of salt, take anybody's. But things like the Bible project, like you said, the critical theory. But there's also the higher academia kind of stuff that, that trickles down into these things will start making you question, well, was the genesis, did that stuff really happen? Was there really a flood? Was it's kind of a framework of creation, and it's not meant to tell us this, that, or the other thing. [00:57:11] Speaker C: Or is that literal? [00:57:13] Speaker A: Is that, and the thing about them, they're very slick, is they don't take a position on these things. They just throw out there. You know, job might just be a fairy tale guy. I'm not saying he is. I'm not going to say if he's an is or not. But, you know, there's us was just a make believe place. [00:57:26] Speaker B: And like, okay, interesting retort tool there. [00:57:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And then get back to, okay, now let's talk about the thing. And now the listener has that in the back of their head. Like, well, maybe I don't actually believe this really happened. And so they're, they're kind of dangerous in that way. A lot of people are really deep into the Michael Heiser demons, nephilim, angels stuff, which, again, can be really useful. And it's one of those where you start reading things in the Bible. Like, I never saw that there before, which is really cool. I don't have so much of a problem with Heiser himself. I have a problem with a lot of people turn that into, everything in the Bible is about this. Everything in the Bible is about a secret demonic angelic war. And we're just kind of pawns. Like, okay, every verse in the Bible has to, you know, like, connect back to that. No, there's a little, there's very little in there. Don't get carried away with that. But these are all useful tools to get people excited about the Bible. We're just saying, notice some of the spit out the directions these go. Yeah. And the same goes for, as you said, macArthur, John Piper, RC Sproul, Calvinists and the Catholics are putting out a ton of material these days. Orthodox are putting out a ton of material, and it's not all bad, but you got to be really careful. The other thing is, the less grounded you are in your faith, the closer to home you need to stay. Like, because you don't. You're not quite as set to spit out bones like that and notice what you're looking for. And so kind of take stock and be like, you know what? I've been studying my Bible for 30 years. I can probably tell when somebody's sneaking something in. Yeah. If, you know, you're a new Christian, you're trying to figure out what you believe, be a lot more selective. [00:58:54] Speaker B: This is when it is helpful to find a somebody within the church who is a preacher. Maybe they put their stuff on YouTube that you know, you can trust. I'm going to shout out Daniel Mayfield here for just a second. I'm still studying through Romans, and I found Bodhi Baucom has a series of sermons on Romans that are very good and very helpful. But, you know, as always, there's calvinist stuff within there, specifically in Romans. So it's like, okay, roll your eyes. Can I take that with a grain of salt? But then Daniel Mayfield, preacher in, is he in Texas now or Oklahoma? He's in Abilene. He was in Romans for what, like three years, it felt like. But he put all his sermons on YouTube, and it was very slow moving through the text, exactly the style that I like. And so it was really refreshing to find that on YouTube and like, okay, cool. I, you know, can pretty well trust most of the things that Daniel's going to say. And so obviously, it's going to be tough to find with everything that you're studying specifically. But, I mean, I think there's stuff like, there are stuff like that out there specifically within the church that you can trust. And that's not say you always trust people within the church either. But finding somebody you trust who Bible knowledge, who's paid to study is helpful. And so there you go again. Shout out Daniel Mayfield. Joe, looked like you had a question there that you were about to ask. [01:00:00] Speaker C: I was going to say just. And then we got to move on. We'll get to Jack's. Think fast. But one that's been getting a lot is rabbis. I know my mom's been into this, and there's other people that have come. [01:00:12] Speaker A: To us with some time, different rabbi sets, not just like one guy, it's guys everywhere podcast. [01:00:17] Speaker C: Correct? Yeah. A lot of people are getting into the jewish side of things and look, they bring a different perspective. They bring a lot of times an eastern perspective where we're bringing a western. And so they can kind of help expand the mind in some ways to see things differently from a jewish perspective. This is how they would have seen it at the time, or even just. [01:00:33] Speaker A: The hebrew literature kind of stuff we talked about. [01:00:36] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. However, I would also be cautious because they, a lot of times they can take from rabbis and they can take like former rabbis, they can take from the Talmud, which is an absolute train wreck and clown show, like, don't, don't be taken too much from that. And some of the times they can throw things out and what are you going to run it up against? It's. We've never. Nobody on our side, our side, quote unquote, kind of the western side, I guess, is what I'm saying. And the christian side is going to have that information because a lot of times, I should say, sometimes it just doesn't exist. That's something they passed down orally, an oral tradition. You have to be careful on some of those things. So once again, take it with a grain of salt. There are some really, really helpful things with those things, and there are some things that are just, in my opinion, kind of flat out made up. So be careful on the jewish side of things, though, it can be a. Once again, Jack's point stands. If you are more grounded in your faith. Yeah, maybe consider you can, you can maybe spit out the bones there. If you're not, be very careful on that. If you're kind of just getting into this, stay close to home with a lot of church Christ commentators, things like that, as much as you can find, just to not be challenged so much at every direction. So that's the only thing I have to say. Anything else, fellas, before we get to Jack's, think fast. [01:01:52] Speaker A: I was going to ask you, I. [01:01:53] Speaker B: Was going to ask you guys kind of to go through how you personally study. Like, you know, we've kind of given our recommendation. Like, personally, when you sit down for an hour, what do you do? We'll have to save that for the deep end. It looks like we are running flat out of time, but that'll be a good topic for the deep end. So, guys, we need to write that down, make sure we don't forget it. But Jack, take it away. [01:02:12] Speaker A: All right, so in the news has been Elon Musk, SpaceX, the Mars or the, the rocket stuff. But he's also just talking all the time about, we got to get to Mars, we got to get to Mars. I don't know why he's obsessed. Kind of the interplanetary thing, and we got to get off of Earth. I'm not so sure about that. Do you guys think within, say, our kids lifetime, a human walks on Mars? And if so, why or why not? And I want to bring a biblical angle to it. Does God, you think God doesn't want us doing that or does want mankind exploring the stars? [01:02:46] Speaker B: I don't know that God question. [01:02:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know that God has a specific, we're not all going to go to Mars. I can tell you that. I don't think God is going to stop people from walking on Mars. And yes, I do believe in my son's lifetime, somebody will walk on Mars. But do I think we're going to move civilizations? No, the earth matters. God makes it very, very clear, as gnostic as sometimes we can be, the earth is groaning. You can read romans eight. You can read a lot of different stuff. Uh, this is God. This is where he wants us ultimately. Now he may let us explore the stars. We walked on the moon. I don't see how Mars is any different. But, no, we're not. We're certainly not moving civilizations. Earth matters to him, and he set it up exactly as he wanted to. Um, and when he comes back, it's going to look exactly like the garden of Eden, in my opinion. And so, yeah, that's where I stand on it. [01:03:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I agree with most of that. I think, um, if Goddesse wanted or desired us to go live or set up civilization on another planet, he would have, you know, set up another planet to be able to support life, and he has not done that. There's one planet that he did, and that, and that's earth. I don't think that was just accidental, that that was coincidental, that, oh, there's only one planet that can support life, and it's the one we just happened to be on. God designed, to Joe's point, God designed Earth for us specifically to live on. And so, yeah, I don't, I don't differ at all. I do think at some point we have the technology, we will be able to walk on Mars, explore Mars, whatever it is. I'm with you, Jack. Which I don't really see a point to it. I think it's cool. It's a, you know, nice story. It's innovative. Musk is a brainiac and, you know, ton of money and is willing to fund and go into that, and so good for him, I suppose. But I don't see the point in that when I don't think we will ever set up civilization on any kind of other planet, because, again, we weren't designed to. We were designed to live here. And any. I've said this before with transgenderism, I've said this before with. With other areas. Anytime you try to tamper with or go beyond what God has designed for us, getting into a little bit of dangerous territory there, treacherous territory. Again, it's not to say that, you know, we'll never explore it. We'll never set foot on it. But, like, musk's vision of people living there and having a civilization I don't think are realistic, personally. What are your thoughts? [01:04:59] Speaker A: I can kind of see the argument of, like, God wanted us to explore his creation and gave us brains and tech, you know, the ability to develop technology and all that. I kind of think God doesn't want us going elsewhere. I don't know that we will ever walk on Mars. [01:05:11] Speaker C: This a babel situation. [01:05:13] Speaker A: I don't know if it's a Babel situation so much as when Jesus returns, if there's people on Mars, what do you. What do you do? I mean, like, not that, that. Not he. Not. That's a problem. Not that it's a problem he can't solve, but, like, I mean, I. I think he put us here. Like you said, it's the only inhabitable planet that we know of or within reach or anything like that. And no, I think this planet matters a little more than. Than we think sometimes. So I'm going to say no. [01:05:38] Speaker B: Okay. [01:05:38] Speaker C: It's very interesting. I still don't understand the fascination with Mars. Like, why aren't we colonizing the moon? Why aren't we. [01:05:44] Speaker B: I don't know when we're still doing the thing. Deeper podcast in 15 years. When it happens, we can tell Jack I told you so. There we go. [01:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts on that, be sure to let us know in the comments there, bible study stuff, requests, things like that you'd like us to talk about, especially if you're on focus. Plus, if you're not, focuspress.org. plus, join us over there for deep end, those daily DeVos Joe mentioned and more, and we'll talk to you guys next time.