Play

Study To Show Yourself Approved. 8 of 11

Steven Findley
05/04/25 - Sunday AM Bible Study

Series: An Eleven Part Series Aimed At Developing And Increasing Bible "Study" Skills.

So those are the two questions.
All you think about them, we'll start with just our,
those through our context, the circles and that.
They should think about like context.
This is like onions, you know.
There's a lot of layers.
So let's, let's go ahead and start there.
What's the first, what's the center?
What's the bull's eye?
Immediate context, yeah.
So, hang on.
Doing it the wrong way.
I say I cover it up in white so I can erase it off and,
and then it looks like a PowerPoint when it's not.
All right.
What's the next one?
The broad context.
Good job.
And what's the broad context mean?
Mason?
What's the broad context?
Yeah.
So you have what you're studying and the things that come
before and immediately after, that's the broad context.
What's the next level of context?
Book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just so you know, Molly was fastest on that.
So she's.
Set it after.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
You got to pick it up or you're not going to ever beat Molly.
All right.
Yeah.
The book context.
Okay.
What's going on within the, who's he talking to?
Historical setting makes a difference.
What is the topic of conversation?
So the book context will give you a lot and so we have to put it
in its place.
If you don't get the book context, it's really easy to make what
you're talking about about something other than what is being discussed.
So we need to know the book context.
What's the last two?
Testimate and Bible.
All right.
Testimate and Bible.
So and this will give you the whole thing.
And so with all of this, this is where you get the saying and
this is kind of the meaning of it.
The sum of your word is truth and every one of your righteous
ordinances is everlasting.
So when we study the Bible, the only way you're going to have a
testament or a whole Bible perspective on a verse to your
reading is if you read regularly.
Like that can't, that's not a Bible study issue.
That is a Bible reading discipline issue because no matter
how much you want to study, I mean, you would have to,
like, so I'll give you an example.
In the restoration movement, that's where kind of the church
of Christ as we know it became, I don't think it came into being,
but it just became, as we understand it, in America,
the church of Christ movement is called the restoration movement.
And it started by primarily some Presbyterians who started
studying the Bible to find is what we believe accurate.
And every topic that came up, you know, there was baptism
topics, infant baptism topics, you know, Presbyterian churches
are usually Calvinistic, so you got to study out Calvinism.
And the way they did it was, they took a topic,
they read the entire Bible with that topic in mind,
in order to see everything the Bible had to say about it,
and once they understood everything the Bible had to say about it,
then they drew conclusions and said, okay, here's the Bible's
teaching, here's the sum of the word.
Now, that is a very tedious way to do a Bible study,
because it takes a long time to read the entire Bible,
but without any sort of tools or any sort of,
any sort of helps, that's what you have to do in order to do it.
And so that would be how you did it.
So even if you were going to do a Bible study, you say, okay,
I want to know all of it, to start cold and read the whole Bible,
you're not even going to understand half of what you're reading, right?
Like these guys were already trained,
and they're still reading the Bible to find what's in it.
And so, to me, that's just got to be a lifelong regular discipline.
If you want to have that perspective on God's work.
And so that's just one of those things.
A couple of weeks ago we had what changes in your life happened.
If you read your Bible, at least four times a week,
more times than you don't, that is the truth of this,
and that will also give you this larger picture.
And there's some things that people who don't do that
or haven't been reading the Bible very long,
they just totally missed some stuff.
That, you know, if you've been in Bible studies
and been reading your Bible, it's really obvious to you,
but people who don't know, you know, if you don't know,
you don't know, and so really important.
But all these things are important for teaching,
and that sort of thing, the media and the broad,
are where you're going to focus.
But for a disciplined book, Testament and Bible
are going to be critical in that.
So that's the context.
So as you read your Bible, you want to, in time,
have a grant, have an understanding of all of these things
as it relates to whatever you're studying.
The next one that we discussed is the how to study your Bible guide.
Now, what are the benefits of the how to study your Bible guide?
Basically, 17 questions that help you to read through the text
and make observations about the text that are within it.
And so, what's the benefit of that practice?
What's the benefit of, oh, so that's something we've covered in
in another class, but basically what it is.
Oh, okay, yeah.
So, I hand it out, it's called the how to study the Bible guide,
but basically it has 17 questions that would be observations
you make about the text.
What are the prepositions?
What are the imperative statements?
What are the nouns?
So you're just going through, and you're reading the text,
you know, well, I'm answering my own question now.
But what you end up doing is you read the text about 17 times through
looking for to answer each one of those questions,
not all of them are relevant, but by the time you're finished reading
through the text that much, you have really spent a lot of time
observing and familiarizing yourself with what you're studying.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're looking at a lot of different perspectives.
And what are the real benefits of that?
Is when you start using outside resources, if they draw a conclusion,
you're going to know immediately if it's accurate or not,
because you know the text.
You're going to know immediately if someone's deviating from the path.
And so that's why that is such a useful tool when you want to understand
a scripture is, because it helps you to really know it inside out.
I know it's, to me, one of the ways I know if I'm ready to, like,
talk about it without any notes or anything is because if I can sit down
and think what happens next, and then what happens next,
and then what happens next.
And if I can put it in order, I don't have to know all the words,
but if I can put that text in order mentally, then I know,
okay, I can talk about this without having to, you know,
keep looking down at my notes and referring to AIDS study aids or whatever.
I can do this from memory.
And that's how I know, though, is because I get familiar enough
where I can say what happens next.
So I read this thing, okay, what are the things that follow,
so I can keep it in order.
So it's not a matter about just memorization, but also memorization
is a really important key to this.
As you read and study the Bible, the memorized verses,
that's going to help you because you'll have quick references
to, especially for living.
You know, if someone's, you start to get angry,
but then you have that verse, you know,
what a gentle answer turns away wrath and a harsh word stirs up anger.
Like if you have that in your mind, it's going to make it a lot easier
to say, how should I respond here?
Is my, or what happened? What went wrong?
Well, I didn't, I gave a harsh response.
And this is, this is what the Bible says.
If you give a harsh response, things tend to go off the rails a little.
And so maybe I should work on giving it so you can understand life
or you can interpret what you're doing through the lens of Scripture.
And so memorization really helps with that sort of stuff.
This morning, we're going to be talking in our sermon about what Jesus said
his disciples need to be willing to do.
And, but, you know, one of the things is deny yourself.
You know, so take up your cross and deny yourself and follow after me.
Well, that's a good thing to have memorized because we live in a very indulgent society.
And so you got to ask yourself, okay, what is preventing me from making the decision I should make?
And am I willing to deny myself here, you know, things like that.
So, so if you, but you can, if you can have that in your mind,
that's really going to help you make decisions that you travel through life.
Kids, especially young people, the more scripture you memorize now,
the better off you're going to be.
Another one that is really good to memorize is,
if any of you lacks wisdom, let them ask God who gives to all generously and without reproach.
And I can't remember the rest of it, but that's the important part of their.
I think it's James 16 or 17.
But the thing is, is that verse, like it tells you,
if you ask God for wisdom, he will give it to you.
Now, from a young age, you start praying for wisdom every time you get stumped.
And you also, here's my hack, my pray for wisdom hack.
So you pray for wisdom, and then you pray for the wisdom to recognize it.
Because a lot of times I feel like, I got the wisdom, I didn't recognize it.
And the other thing that happened, especially when I was young,
is I got the wisdom from my dad who I didn't want to hear it from.
But if you can recognize it and remember it, then that's going to be a huge blessing.
You're going to advance beyond your peers, because most people who don't know the word of God
really don't have wisdom in their life.
And the stuff you see on Facebook and on all the meme stuff, that's not true wisdom.
The scripture really contains the depth of wisdom.
And so some things like that.
So James 1, hang on a second, I'm going to look it up so I can tell you exactly.
But I think it's James 1-6.
You guys get to come with me through, is it 1-5?
And it will be given to him.
Okay, so I guess I did have it right.
I was moving on to the, and it will be given to all generously and without reproach.
And it will be given to him.
That's what I missed.
All right.
Back to our Bible class.
So, memorization.
The next thing we were to work on is writing an outline.
So what does outlining the text you're studying help you with?
The very thing you were talking about, what comes next, what comes next, what comes next.
Yeah, it's a visual representation at home.
Yeah, so Molly was saying, yeah, it helps you to say what comes next.
And the other thing it does, that's super important, is it helps you to ask good questions.
Right, because when you're reading it through looking for something, that's one thing.
But sometimes you got to read it through.
And in order to really kind of, at least for me, connect all the dots that are there.
I have to ask the right questions.
And a lot of my time studying is looking for either asking the right question or answering the right question about the text.
So here in our text in James chapter 2, it's James 2, I believe, 8 through 13, or 1 through 13.
One of the things that art is, is you go through it that is not immediately obvious when you read it.
But as you study it out and look through there, what you find is it talks about partiality and it applies it in two ways.
The first part applies it to people.
They'll be partial with people.
And the second application here, which I think is probably the more pervasive application is, don't be partial when it comes to sin.
Because it's really easy to say, see, I wasn't murdering someone.
I just showed someone more generosity or more consideration than the other guy.
And James says, you don't get to choose what's sinful.
If you break one of the laws, you broke all the laws.
So if you show partiality, you're just as guilty as a murderer as far as violating the law of God, violating the law of Christ.
The royal laws, he calls it, to love your neighbor yourself.
You're guilty of breaking that law.
You don't get to say what sins are more sinful than other sins.
Because if you're saying that, back up, you're judges with guilty motives.
Or you're judges with evil motives.
So I say, okay, well, showing partiality isn't nearly as bad as this other thing over here, right?
Being nepotistic, which is kind of the same thing, but we'll make distinction.
I'm not, I'm at least choosing people outside my family.
They only choose people they're related to.
And his whole family is ridiculous.
So you start saying, okay, well, at least it's not that.
Does that make it better?
You know, that's where you start getting to the point where, you know, when Jesus said, you got a log in your eye.
You're trying to remove a speck from your brother's eye.
Well, why do you got it?
Why is it a log in your eye that you're not noticing?
And his speck seems like such a big deal to you.
You're weighing them with different sets of weights.
And if you have injust weights and measures, which is what being partial with sin is that's having injust weights and measures,
injust weights and measures makes commerce like in the real world.
If there's not a standard pound, if every grocery store has a different definition of a pound,
you cannot have commerce.
It can't exist.
Like commerce stops without standardized weights and measures.
Like that's how big of a deal it is.
And the Lord says, injust weights and measures is an abomination to me.
It is, I can't stand it.
What he says, you know, you need a just EFA, a just measurement in order to determine things.
Yeah, exactly.
And apply the same standard to yourself as you apply to others, right?
That don't be a hypocrite.
Jesus said that over and over.
Don't be a hypocrite.
Well, that's what, that is the topic of James chapter 2, 1 through 13.
Is really hold to a just righteous standard when it comes to sin.
When it comes to how you interact with each other in the church.
Don't elevate one sin over another.
Now, there are some physical consequences to sin that are more significant.
But don't like say, okay, we're willing to tolerate this from everybody because it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to us.
Or it's culturally acceptable to us or whatever the other thing is.
As James says, no, you don't get to be a judge to determine who's going to hell based on what.
That's God's job to determine that.
You get to determine, I'm going to be loving, I'm going to be faithful.
I'm going to be what's he say gentleness in verse 13.
He says, for judgment will be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment.
And so you start looking at this and really what he's going through and saying is, look, you need to measure yourself.
If you're not being loving, then you're breaking the law just as much as anyone else who breaks the law.
Who's not being loving?
So I think it's hard for us because we want to justify, well, I'm like this for our sins because of these things that happen or because of this or that.
But we don't ever give the same mercy or grace to other people because we don't really know what we think we don't know.
We think we know what they're going through, but anyway, we justify to ourselves why we are not perfect.
But we don't allow other people the same grace or mercy.
Yeah, we justify to ourselves.
And so, and the other side to this is that does not mean I'll overlook your sin if you overlook my sin.
No.
See, that's also a partiality, right?
If as long as you're willing to give me something that I benefit, then I will give you a benefit.
That's also a judge who's taken a bribe, right?
Going for the rich guy instead of the poor guy, that's a judge taken a bribe.
And that's what he says.
You're a judge with evil motives.
And God's not like that.
In fact, God's the opposite of that because he chooses the people who are willing to be rich in faith and willing to accept him.
That's the ones that God has chosen.
And so, he's doing it in a just way.
So, but when you go through this at first, it's really easy to get hung up on this surface level partiality and miss that deeper element of being having a just consistent standard, not just for the same thing you apply to yourself, you apply to other people.
And also, taking everything God says is right, you know, as good.
And so, you say, okay, well, now I'm showing partiality over here.
What his point is, is you're making a decision God didn't make.
You can look at what God does and he doesn't do it that way.
So, why are you doing it that way?
And if you're deviating from God's path, you're not following the law of liberty.
And so, that's an important thing.
So, to me, as you go through this, asking the right questions, why is this, why did he bring up God chose the poor?
Why did he bring up, you know, the law of liberty and loving your neighbors yourself?
Like, how did that fit into here?
Why does he bring up this comparison?
Well, you say I don't commit adultery, but you do commit murder.
He's like, don't you realize the same guy who committed adultery, who said don't commit adultery, said don't commit murder?
And so, the point is, is these laws need to be consistent or consistent with the character of God.
You don't get, they don't get ranked by what seems worse to me.
And so, as we look at that, that's really an important thing.
Yeah, and so, any thoughts or comments as far as asking questions understand, we kind of get a really in-depth and a little bit more robust understanding as you go through this.
And a lot of times, it is our, it is our, this process of asking questions, looking it over, thinking it through, saying, all right, why did he put it this way?
And when you organize it in an outline, that helps you to ask the right questions.
When you look at the conjunctions like the four and the so, and therefore, and all those words that lead on, it's like, okay, so is a conclusion of something.
So, that tells you, okay, why is this the conclusion of that?
Why does this statement lead us to conclude this statement?
And when you start asking those kind of questions, letting the cues and the text following them,
so you can understand why he's saying it, why he put it in there, then you're going to start seeing the, really the true teaching of scripture in that.
So, that's really an important aspect of, of, of doing this.
So, we've gotten this far, which is, I believe this is our seventh or eighth class.
We've gotten this far without anything but a Bible and a worksheet with some questions on it, which, but, you know, pretty, pretty Spartan work, right?
Pretty Spartan things to come up to be able to really, I mean, and I, how many of you are pretty satisfied with our understanding of the text at this point?
So, do you feel like, it already feels like we did a pretty good job fleshing out what's there, and we didn't use any tools yet.
So, you see how this process is really, and not all texts are this easy, like I chose this one on purpose because it's pretty, you can get most of out of it with, it makes me, makes my class a little easier, not all things work this way.
There are some things that you're just like, I have no idea. Like, I don't know why it's put that way or why it said that way, and you really need to get some tools looking to the degree, find out what's going on in this, but this text is not that way.
James is pretty straightforward.
So, now we're going to start, we go ahead and we look at, all right, I got my basic understanding, been through this process. Now, there's a few words I'd like to understand in here.
How do we go about getting a definition for a word?
And so, there's a couple of ways I can, so you can look it up in a dictionary, right? Now, what's the problem? I mean, there's a benefit to this. Websters is a part of a Bible study, or we don't use Websters anymore, we Google it or whatever, but I think still using Websters.
But, all right, so, what, you look up the definition of the English word. All right, that's helpful. Mike, do you have a comment?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and even, let's not go back two thousand years. You're reading a King James, you're using the King James version of the Bible and you pull out of Websters this dictionary.
Is that going to work out for you?
I wanted to come to you, but I was let. What does that mean, Mason? What does it sound like it means? I wanted to come to you, but I was let.
Well, doesn't sound like someone let you go, but in the King James version, it actually makes that statement and let means prevented.
So, if you look up let an dictionary, what does it mean? Allowed. You look up let in King James Bible, it means prevented.
So, a lot of words, the meaning isn't quite the same as we reckon, and there's several words that way that you're like, wait a minute, what?
It's the opposite. It's like, somehow it became the opposite of what it used to mean.
So, a dictionary is going to be limited to some extent unless you have like a 16-11 dictionary, and then that might help.
I don't even know if they had dictionaries in 16-11, but maybe they retroactively went back and did that.
So, you need that. You need the right word definitions, but you're still translating an English word, which was a choice that a translator made to represent a Greek word, or it's a phrase that represents a Greek word.
So, what's the next best thing? So, English dictionary gives us limited. What's the next thing you could do?
So, what is strong, and what does it do?
Okay, so you're saying the strong, is it called the strong dictionary? Well, you're saying concordance, but that's not what she's saying.
What's the thing in the back of the strong that you use the word to go finally Greek word? That's the strong, is it a lexicon or dictionary?
I think it's dictionary. I think Strong's is a proponent of using English...
Well, Vines is different.
That section in the back of the Strong's concordance is the dictionary.
Yeah, he never uses it. Yeah.
Yeah, an inner linear can be helpful, because that'll, but that mainly just lets you know what Greek word, and that's the same.
Essentially, functions like a concordance, but see what we're getting to is, okay, defining an English word has limited benefit, defining the Greek word is more helpful.
Now, a lot of resources like if you're going to look up thairs or something, they don't have Strong's numbers in thairs, or low in Nida, they don't have Strong's numbers in low in Nida.
And so now, okay, we got to figure out how do I get to that Greek word from the English word, and really that's what Strong's does.
So, if you look on your paper here, on the right side column, basic word study, here's the process.
So, wait, real quick, how many people know what a Strong's concordance is? Okay, most of us know. How many know what an Englishman's dictionary is?
Alright, what's the other thing? Strong's, Englishman's, how many know what vines is? Okay, so that, and then we got dictionaries, so here's the process of doing a word study.
Now, word studies, I don't think are super helpful, and I've seen a lot of them go awry, so through the course of my life.
But, I mean, if you wanted to find a word, and you have limited vocabulary skills like you don't speak Greek, then this is the process, this is a process that helps you, what it helps you to do is not just define the word, but kind of define the word within the biblical corpus like, what did it mean as it's used in the Bible?
So, that's what you do. So, you look up the English word and the Strong's exhaustive concordance, that's the front part, not the back part, the back part is the lexicon.
What Strong's does is, you look up word like, in our sermon, I did a word study, it was Denai, so whoever denies me.
So, you look up the word Denai and the Strong's, and it's going to give you a list of every time, and it minds the new American standard Strong's concordance.
So, it's going to give you a list of every time that word is translated, or any Greek word is translated Denai in the new American standard, so that's what it gives you in the concordance.
Each word translated that way gives you a number, and so you can look down and say, okay, this one has this number, this one has this number, this one has this number, so there's different numbers, because sometimes they use different Greek words to translate to the same English word.
And so, you go through, and you what you'll do is, you'll find the number, and then for the verse you're in, and the word you're using in that verse, and I believe, it's been a long time since I've actually done this manually, I can't recall if you just have to go through and copy down every verse that has the same number, or if there's a spot you can go, and it gives you every verse that number.
That number is used, I can't recall now, because sometimes different words are translated by the same number, so I think, yeah, you go to a spot where you look up the number, and then the number will give you every verse that that Greek word is translated into English in there, and then so you can do that.
Is that the English phrase that does that, or is that the strong? All right, yeah. I have one up there. I used, like, I learned when I was like, I don't know, 10 or 11 years old, how to do a word study, and I've used it a lot, but now I do, my word studies are a lot more efficient than this, so I'll show you that in a second.
The only thing is, I guess I'm not going to try and teach this robustly, but what I'm saying is there's a process you can use, and so the goal of a word study, you find the verse, you can read, you can write down every verse that that Greek word comes up in the Bible, and as you read each verse, what you say is, okay, how is it used?
And this gives you some period information how it's used in the time period, because the Greek word can have different meanings just like English words can have different meanings over time.
And so you say, okay, how's it used in the Bible? What are all the different uses of it? And as you go through what you do is, you just write a report.
Here's how this Greek word seems to be used in the scripture, then you go to a lexicon, and you use your strong number to look it up in a lexicon that's going to give you, here's a basic Greek definition, you can use like, I think the Englishman's concordance or several lexicans will have strong correlated, a strong numbering system, basically strong numbering is, they gave a four digit number to every Greek word in the Bible, or every Hebrew word in the Bible.
And so each number represents a word. And so we can't read Greek, we can read numbers, so we get a number.
So you look the number up in your lexicon, which is a dictionary, and it will say, here's what this Greek word means, and a lot of times here's how it's used, and they'll give you more verses you can cross reference.
So you can write down your meaning, you can write down how it's used, and what you do, at the end of a word study, you say, okay, here's kind of how this word is used in the Bible.
So, and then that's what a word study does, here's how this word is used in the Bible, here's the different words it's translated to, here's the commonality in usage, that's really what you're looking to find is, what's the commonality in everywhere that this word is used, so I can understand how it's being used in the verse I happen to be studying.
So that's what a word study does, that's the first four steps is what that does.
So that's important, at least conceptually to understand, so read through that when you get time, just kind of follow the steps, if you want to go through the steps, talk to me, I have all the books up in my office so I can walk you through the process if you want to do that.
But here's why this is important to understand is because if you pull out something like vines or mounts, they're both basically what they do is they do the word study for you and just give you the conclusion.
So vines basically is a pre-made word study, so when I was being raised is I'm not going to trust vines to do a word study for me, I'm going to do it on my own.
Now it's faster, for sure, faster to use vines, but you do, you may get a little bit of a different conclusion if you're using vines versus doing the study yourselves.
So, but that's a way, if you just are quick, and so here's a way I will use vines or mounts or pre-made word studies, this would be a process I would use.
All right, I'm going to read in the new American standard because that's what I study from, and then I'm going to find a word, okay, what does that word mean?
I'm going to look through, what is the ESV use, what is the new King James use, what is the home and Christian standard use, what is the King James use, what is young's literal translation use, which is basically an interlinear.
So you go, I go through and say, okay, I'm going to look at all these kind of variety of Bible translations, and if the words are the same in each one of them are very close to the same in each one of them.
You know what I say? Probably the scholars, you know, because, yeah, old scholars and new scholars and different types of translation approaches, if they all come to the same conclusion, I probably am not qualified to think something different, because I don't understand the language, I don't understand the choices they make, and even sometimes it doesn't make sense to me.
But if it's consistent through all translators and I say, okay, these Greek scholars recognize something about the word that I don't recognize, I'm satisfied going with that, but I might look it up and binds anyway just to get a little bit more of a robust understanding of that word.
Now, if you look in, there are certain times where you look in all these different versions, and they each give a different word for the same thing, and you're like, okay, there's some controversy over this, and then that's when you can maybe do a little bit more of a robust kind of word study in order to find what is this mean, how is it being used, and do a little bit more of your research in that.
That would be kind of use vines, if it's pretty standard, but you still want to be able to have something, sometimes having a definition you can say clearly, that's what vines will give you or different people will give.
That's the way you would use that. So real quick, with our last few minutes, word study pitfalls.
So, everyone wants to be a Greek scholar, and if they can get vines, concordants and Englishmen, they think they're an expert.
So here are some problems you can come up with that I have heard in my lifetime from people who are preaching, and even the guy I grew up who was pretty good Bible scholar, but he told me never use a commentary.
Only get a study or Bible with a strong and addiction area that's all you need. So there is some merit to it.
I had to be talked into using other resources from the guy I did my preacher training with because I was not open to that really at first, but here's some problems that come along with that approach.
So here's the first one, anachronism, taking the meaning of an English term and imposing it on a New Testament Greek word.
We've all heard this. Romans 117, the word of God is the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation.
Have many people have heard a preacher say, now that word power is the Greek word dynamos, where we get our English word dynamite.
So now you see the explosive power of the word of God. How many of you have heard a sermon like that?
Yeah, you know what? That's called anachronism. That is taking the meaning of the English word that's similar and imposing it on the Greek word.
The Greek word does not mean explosion or dynamite or anything like it. The Greek word does mean powerful, but it's not the same as dynamite.
And when you make a definition that way, you're going backwards. You're actually using the English to define the Greek.
Wouldn't really the Greek should define the English. And so when you're doing word studies, it's easy to say, oh, I see, I see how they relate.
And then you start making connections that aren't there or really correlation equals causation is what you're saying because they correlate then this must be equal and it's not.
So when we're doing word studies, be careful of anachronism. Make sure you define the Greek word and then let the Greek word meaning be the thing you go with.
Don't go with the English word and don't get paid attention to people who are teaching and using it that way.
Not that they're that far off the mark. And maybe that's a good sermon illustration, but that's not why dynamite is used that word.
I think it actually might be using a Latin term when they made that up, not a Greek term. Like it's not very often that you're going to find an English word that has Greek roots rather than Latin roots.
So here's the second one. It's called the entomological fallacy, but basically I've talked about this before using the entomology of a word to create a definition.
I want to show you this really quick. So hang on one second. We got a.
All right. I'm just going to choose a word here randomly. So we're going to say stumbles. I'm showing you how I do a word study.
I use my computer, which is faster, but still. So here we go. Just click on word study. And there you go. There's your word study done for you.
So, you know, that process we were talking about, but what this does. Okay. So here's the word stumble. This is actually not a very good word study for you.
My tablet has to be connected to have a internet connection. So hang on one second. We're going to try again.
Now. There we are. So you can see we're talking about. I lost my.
Oh, the entomology word. Okay. So you see how. Yeah, this is not the same as I would see on my computer, but so we'll just go to low and not out of here.
And. So what this isn't showing you that I wanted to show you is there's it like a Greek word has its root, which is called its lemma.
And a lot of times there's two Greek words that go together. And I'll give you an example. In the sermon this morning, it says, Confess Jesus.
Anyone who confesses me, I will confess them. And so the word is homo, logeo. And so the logeo means word. And homo means the same as.
And so tech like in this is actually a could be an etymelological fallacy, but it's not because I'm using it properly.
But the Greek word literally means to speak the same as. And that's what confessing is is to speak the same as or to try to adopt association with Jesus.
So if I'm Jesus is disciple, I'm going to be looking like him. I'm going to be speaking like him. I'm not going to be denying him by saying, I have nothing to do with that.
Rather, you're going to try and associate yourself with it by saying speaking the same as. And so homo, logeo is a good use of entomology.
But if we're going to use an English word, if we'll use the etymelological fallacy and anachronism.
So you say, all right, butterfly is a dairy product that flies. That is a problem. Or what a pineapple is an apple that grows on pine trees.
See, back in the day, they used to have pineapples. And that's just an apple that grows on a pine tree. So the pine tree used to be different back when they wrote this book.
That's the etymelological fallacy because a pineapple is nothing to do with that. Sounds like that means something completely different.
And so we need to make sure as we go through and you start breaking down Greek words and stuff, you can't reverse engineer every word to its root meanings because meanings of words change.
So another example is a lot of people will say, okay, well, when it says an Ephesians 5, 19, that you should teach one another with Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
The word Psalms is the Greek word solo. And if you look back like 800 years before the Bible was written, the word solo meant to play.
So people will say, see, right there in the Bible, it tells you you can play instruments in church.
Well, if you actually look at the, that might be the entomology and the original meaning, but if you actually look at how the word is used in time, it actually came to mean sing songs.
They'd never had anything to do with playing Psalms. And so that's not a good argument to support that position.
But what they're doing is they're doing a entomological fallacy by trying to take the precise meaning of the parts of the word rather than the actual how it's used in its time.
So same as the changing and, anyway, changing and meaning over time.
Here's one more mistake in this way and this is an important one because I've heard this a lot of times in my life, and I've realized almost every time I've heard it, it's been wrong.
I just didn't know, but if you, someone tells you something, that's why you look it up. I would say some, you listen to someone say, well, see, in fact, here's a recent one.
When I was, it's been studying in Revelation, I was told every time the Bible uses the Greek word gay, it's talking about the earth or the land, like particularly the land of Israel.
And so I thought, okay, well, it's used a lot of times, but I was going to look it up. So I do a word study, I look it up, I look up every location, it's used, I start reading, it's translated earth a lot of times, a lot of times nothing to do with Israel.
He'll talk about, you know, parts of like Rome or Greece or other places, then also call it the same name.
But someone told me that every time it's used, it's pointing at this particular thing. And that's just not true. And so, but I've been told a lot of things like that, and many times I've seen it fall short.
Well, every time you looked at it was, but it's not every time it's used. And so the point is, is that type of reason why I've heard people do it.
If they, someone says it, always verify before you repeat something like that, because that's usually not the case. Language is a lot more nuanced than that. And it's just not usually so cut and dry and every time it's used, it's this way.
So just be careful of that.
Well, I know and stop here talking about word studies, but, you know, what these are useful for is helping you to get a concept of how a word is used and how it's useful.
And that's going to help you in your Bible study. So let's go ahead and close with a word of prayer.