How to study the Bible Week 2 - Context

Intro

Last week we began a new series entitled “How to study the Bible” and one of the things we talked about was Bible translations. This week while I was browsing social media a friend of mine posted about a new “Translation”…and I use that word very loosely. But I kid you not. There is now a book out that you can buy called “The Gospel according to Gen Z” and they took stories from the Bible and they put them into GenZ language.

So I want to bless you this morning with a reading from Luke 1.

Gen z Luke 1

Mary was a pick me girl for God and was simping for him in prayer when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and said ayo you're a real one and the Top G is feelin you but she thought his compliment was sus and gave him the side eye so he said babygirl chill

god sent me to tell you you've passed his vibe check and low key he wants you to have the main character! you'd name him jesus and they will say HES HIM the one prophesied in the divine dad lore who solos all and whose crushing it never ends

he will take the w from all his opps and his kingdom will go hard forever

she said how can this be, since i promised him my body count will always be “Zero” ? respectfully

he said this aint about cuffing season… for the Holy Spirit will live rent free in you and your boi jesus will be a DIVINE BRO, besides, your cousin Elizabeth is with chile

she who is already older than a boomer and whose husband is way past beekeeping age?

so Mary said bet and Gabriel left her on read and she let the holy spirit cook

Amen!!!

We started out last week with a couple foundational statements and I think its really important to revisit them quickly before moving forward.

And the first thing we noted was that

“There is no greater way to get to know God, His character, His nature, His goodness, and the life the He has for you than reading His living Word.”

If you want to know the living Word (Jesus) you have to be in the written Word. (The Bible) Because You cannot know Jesus Christ apart from the Bible.

We said If you want a realistic picture of what your relationship with Jesus looks like…then take a look at what your relationship is with the Word of God.

We saw that our first two steps when beginning to study the Bible are

Choose a translation you understand

Choose a time, a place, and a plan to study the Bible.

And we talked about the different translations, and we have more translation charts at the welcome center so feel free to grab one after the service. But we talked about the necessity for having a consistent time, place and plan to study the Bible. Because without these most of us will not be in the Word every day.

And we saw that there are incredible stats of what the Bible does to the chemistry of your brain when you’re in the word at least four times a week.

How many of you made an effort to be in your Bible’s more this week? Awesome!

This morning we want to continue learning how to study the Bible and the third thing we must do when reading the Bible is

3. Understand the context!

How many of you know that Context is important! Context matters!! Without it you and I can be lost and really have no idea what something is about. Let me know show you what I mean! I’m going to read a short paragraph, and I’ll even put it on the screen for you. And as I read it, I want you to see if you have any idea what we’re talking about.

PUT POEM UP

A seashore is a better place than the street because you need lots of room. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Birds seldom get too close. If there are no snags it can be very peaceful. But if it breaks loose, you won't get another chance.

What in the world are we talking about? Now, without any context to frame the sentences, this paragraph doesn't make any sense. Now let me read it again, but this time let me provide some context— I’m going to give you one simple word or interpretive key. The one word is kite. Now see if it makes sense:

A seashore is a better place than the street because you need lots of room. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Birds seldom get too close. If there are no snags it can be very peaceful. But if it breaks loose, you won't get another chance.

It all makes sense now doesn’t it! It’s talking about flying a kite.

Context matters right! The context helps the paragraph make sense.

Let me give you another example:

Put Blue Picture up

Take a look at the image shown here, which is just a tiny snippet of a photograph.. What do you think it is? You can’t tell? What’s wrong with you guys? It’s clear to me. You don’t see it? How many of you think its a picture of the sky? How many of you think it’s a picture of the ocean? If you picked either one of these…you’d be wrong. Here’s the actual picture

Put house Picture up

What this is in reality is a close-up of a snowy field. Amazing, isn't it? Who knew that snow was so dark, and so blue! The snow which is white looks blue when there’s a shadow and that first picture was just a zoomed in picture of the white snow.

We have to read God's Word in such a way that we see the big picture -- the full context of what God is saying to us. When we only read it one verse at a time, we can easily be deceived into thinking it says something that it really doesn't say, just as you might have been deceived by the little snippet of a photo at the top of the page.

In the same way, when it comes to the Bible (or theology, or Christianity, or the gospel), once you have the context or the framework, then the details start to fall into place. In order to understand Scripture or key doctrines of the Christian faith, we need to understand the context first

Because the Context matters more than you can imagine.

So let's talk about the broad picture of context for the Bible, let's start here. The Bible, we need to understand, is a library. It's not just a single book. In fact, I'll explain it this way.

The Bible is a collection of 66 different books.

Last week we mentioned that

It’s written in three languages…Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was written across three continents, over a 1500 year period by 40 different authors, including shepherds and farmers and tent makers and doctors and fishermen and priests and philosophers and kings and on and on, what is it?

It's actually

The Bible is a collection of poems, prophecies, letters, laws, histories and biographies written by people and inspired by God telling one unified story that shows us our need for Jesus and teaches us to become like Him.

So when we understand what the Bible is, then we want to understand the context of what we're reading, and we're gonna ask essentially three simple questions every time. Every time you read the Bible you need to ask these three questions.

Who wrote it?

To whom was it written?

What is it’s purpose?

Who wrote it? To whom was it written, and what is it’s purpose. And I would encourage anyone who wants to study the Bible, or dig deeper into the Word to invest in a good Study Bible. Because all three of these questions and a whole lot more are addressed in great detail on the pages right before the first chapter of the book.

You can read all about the context of Philemon. You’d learn that the entire book of Philemon consists of only 335 Hebrew words. You would learn that its the shortest letter that Paul ever penned. And so a study Bible or Bible Commentary you want to go even deeper will tell you everything you want to know about a passage of scripture.

But today let’s jump into the text and see if we can answer these questions.

And in order to do that that we are going to read the entire book of Philemon.

Philemon 1–25 (CSB)

1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother: To Philemon our dear friend and coworker, So already in verse one we see the answer to the first two questions. We see that Paul wrote it, Timothy was also present. If you were to study deeper you would find out that Paul wrote it however Timothy was there with Paul to give witness to the letter being written almost as a notary would be to authenticate a document today. And then we also see that Paul addresses the letter to Philemon.2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your home. 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love for all the saints and the faith that you have in the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that your participation in the faith may become effective through knowing every good thing that is in us for the glory of Christ. 7 For I have great joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. 8 For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right,(Can I just highlight that verse and tell you when you are dealing with Christian bother or sister don’t simply go to them and command them…instead do this) 9 I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, 10 appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I became his father while I was in chains. 11 Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. 12 I am sending him back to you—I am sending my very own heart. 13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. 14 But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. 15 For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, 16 no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would me. 18 And if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—not to mention to you that you owe me even your very self. 20 Yes, brother, may I benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Since I am confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 22 Meanwhile, also prepare a guest room for me, since I hope that through your prayers I will be restored to you. 23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings, and so do 24 Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

So let’s list out what we know from our reading:

Philemon was written by Paul (from a Roman prison) to a wealthy man named Philemon, who led a church in his home.

We also know that

It was written about Onesimus, a runaway slave who had stolen from Philemon.

With a little bit of research, you’ll find out that in that culture is was a really big deal. If you look it up in good study Bible or Commentary you’d learn that that there were roughly about 60 million slaves in Rome at that time. Slavery is never right, it's never been right, wasn't right then, it's not right now. But at that time, because there were so many, if a slave owner didn't deal with a rebellious slave, the slaves might revolt. And so you'll learn with just a little bit of research that anytime a slave runs away, they would brand F on their brow, which stands for fugitivist, which is where we get our word fugitive. This guy would be branded at the very least , and then sadly, and this is horrible and we hate it, but they could legally beat the slave or they could actually kill the slave.

So here's what Paul's gonna say. He's gonna say, "Hey, Philemon, I know this guy stole from you, he, escaped, who put you at risk, he embarrassed you, But I want you to receive him back and treat him not as a slave, but as an equal, treat him as a brother." Why would Paul lay it all on the line for this slave? Because what we also read from the text was that

Onesimus met Paul in Rome and Paul led Onesimus to Christ.

And because of the Gospel, Paul now has a relationship with Onesimus. And so Paul says…Hey Im not gonna say you owe me Philemon…but you owe me your very salvation because I led you to the Lord. Paul saying, because your a man of God, I trust you will do the right thing. And so we see that

Paul’s purpose was to encourage Philemon to forgive Onesimus and accept him as a brother in Christ.

And quite honestly that’s a really big ask isn’t it. It’s one thing to forgive somebody isn’t it. It’s a whole other thing to accept them as an equal brother or sister in Christ isn’t it.

Okay, So we have done the first three things. We’ve answered the questions

Who wrote it?

To whom was it written?

What is it’s purpose?

And then the fourth thing we have to do is

4. Read slowly and ask questions.

We always want to ask questions. But the two biggest questions we're always gonna ask of anything we're reading in the Bible is

"What does this say about God?” And “what is God saying to me?" If you ask anything every time, "What does this say about the character, the nature, the goodness of God? And what is God saying to me?"

That’s why we talked about having a specific time, place and plan when reading and studying the Bible. Have a journal, have some pens, or your laptop, and answer the questions, and write down what God shows you in His Word.

If you wanna go a little bit deeper, I want to give you FIVE specific questions to ask yourself about a text and it forms the acrostic S-P-E-C-K, speck. And I encourage you to write this down in the front of your Bible. Or write it in your journal as you study your Bible so you can

As you read the text slowly you can ask yourself these questions.

Is there a SIN to be avoided?

Is there a PROMISE to be claimed?

Is there an EXAMPLE to follow?

Is there a COMMAND to obey?

Is there something to KNOW about God?

If you wanna take out your phones to take a picture when we get all through, you can, because this can be a game changer when you're studying the Bible. As you're going through the text, is there a sin to be avoided? Is there a promise to be claimed? Is there an example to follow? Is there a command to obey? Is there something to know about the character, the nature, and the goodness of God?

And after we have asked these questions, we are always going to pray. And here’s what we want to pray… we want to

5. Pray for God to speak to you and help you apply whatever He shows you.

Next week we're gonna come back to this and you're gonna see how studying the Bible in context, empowered by God, the Holy Spirit, can speak to you, can form you to the image of Christ, direct your steps, renew your mind, change your heart, make you more like Jesus, and literally change your life. See what you need to know is that yes you have to take initiative and read. Yes you need to be disciplined and do the hard work. But it is the power of the Holy Spirit that will illuminate it and do a work in you that cannot be done without Him.

I love what Paul says in verse 11 as he’s writing to his friend Philemon, and he’s talking about forgiving Onisimus, and receiving him back as a brother. Paul reminds Philemon of the sovereignty of God that.

Philemon 11 (CSB)

11 Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me.

Isn’t amazing how God takes someone in their sin, allows them to have a divine meeting with a Christian, and because of the cross, and because of forgiveness, God took a runaway thief, welcomed Him into the kingdom, and sent him back no longer as a slave but as a brother.

WRAP UP

I don’t know where you’re at today and what you’re going through, but with each and everyone of us there is a was and a who.

I want to tell you that God wants to use your situation and where you have been and who you have been and He wants to transform you through the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through you as you get into the Word of God. I believe God has incredible plans for each one of you and as you get into the Word the Lord will begin to write a new story to your life…and He will give you a future, and fill you with hope.