1. What are the two main principles we should consider when approaching the Bible, and why are they important?
2. Can you name some of the ways that the Bible is a unique book?
3. What is the Unity Principle, and how can it help us understand seemingly contradictory passages in the Bible?
4. Why is it necessary to consider the historical, cultural, and literary context when interpreting the Bible?
5. What is the "key" to the map of understanding the Bible, according to the lesson?
   • Answer: The key to understanding the Bible is understanding that it is all about Jesus.
6. What mnemonic devices are suggested for remembering the groupings of books in the Old and New Testaments?
   • Answer: For the Old Testament, the mnemonic is "5, 12, 5, 5, 12," representing the books of Law, Historical books, Books of Poetry, Major Prophets, and Minor Prophets. For the New Testament, the mnemonic is "5, 9, 4, 9," representing the Historical Books, Christian Church Epistles, Pastoral Epistles, and Hebrew-Christian Church Epistles.
7. What does it mean that the Bible has one meaning and many applications?
8. What are some types of figurative language in the Bible?

Introduction

Let's get started by reading 2 Peter 1:19-21

[!bible] [2 Peter 1:19-21 - KJV](https://bible-api.com/2 Peter+1:19-21?translation=kjv) 19. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 20. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 21. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Last lesson, one of our points was that you cannot divorce a text from it's context. You have to understand the scripture as the author intended it to be understood and that means understanding it in context.

Gary Millar (who wrote a great book on this called Read This First) says this about this:

If we are going to read the Bible well, then we have to read it in context. We need to work out what the words meant "back then" before we can work out what they mean for us now.

Today, we are going to talk about context, and we are going to look at five different levels of context to consider.

5 Levels of Context

Have you ever thrown a rock into a lake? I'm not talking about skipping rocks. I'm talking about just taking a big rock and tossing it in to see the ripples.

All of us have experienced this. You toss in a rock and then what happens? There are rings that spread out from the splash in the water.

You can think about context like those concentric rings. You take a verse, be it John 3:16 or Ephesians 2:8 or Leviticus 21:7 or any other verse in the scripture and that verse doesn't really stand on its own. It has levels of context we have to understand.

When I was in college I remember hearing my teachers say "a text without a context is just a pretext."

I still don't know what they meant, but it sounded good.

When we use a Bible text without taking the time to figure out what God was really after, we really aren't preaching or teaching or leading our families with the Bible - we are leading from our own opinion and just using the scripture.

I'm going to be honest with you, can't think of many things more demonic than using the scripture for our own ends. That's what the devil did to Eve in the Garden and to Jesus during His temptation.

We have to get the context. So let's look at these rings of context today.

The first ring we'll call:

1. The paragraph context

This is how a text fits into the paragraph it's in.

I want to let you in on a little secret. You ready? Verses aren't really a thing.

When Paul wrote Colossians, he didn't write 1.

[!bible] Colossians 1:1 - KJV

1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother,

Then write 2

[!bible] Colossians 1:2 - KJV 2. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

How silly would that be? No. Paul wrote a letter like you or I would write a letter. He wrote in sentences and paragraphs.

The chapters and verses were just added later (the verses weren't added until the 1500s) to help us find Bible verses. But once you find the passage, you should ignore the divisions and focus on paragraphs.

Most of the time when I preach, I don't preach from a verse, I preach from a paragraph.

So how do you find paragraphs?

Well, most Bibles have paragraph symbols. That's the little backwards P with two stems:

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That denotes a new paragraph. If your Bible doesn't have those, usually they have some other way of letting you know you are in a new paragraph. Maybe it's a heading. Maybe. it's indentation.

But almost all Bibles are going to tell you somehow that you are in a new paragraph.

So here is an exercise I do all the time. I will read a verse and I'll try to take a step back and ask "what does that mean in the paragraph? What point is the author trying to make in the paragraph?"

Sometimes I will write the paragraph out or put the paragraph in my own words so I can be sure I'm getting the point.

RA Torrey said that when you listen to a sermon, you should always look at what the text before the sermon says and what the text after the sermon says - and when you do that, you can know whether the pastor is preaching what the Bible actually says or His own opinion.

Listen to this quote:

A very large percentage of the difficult questions of biblical interpretation can be resolved by this very simple method of noticing what goes before and what comes after. Many of the sermons we hear become very absurd when we take the trouble to notice the setting of the preacher's text and how utterly foreign the thought of the sermon is to the thought of the text when regarded in the light of context.

So that is the first ripple. The first circle. The Paragraph context.

The second circle of context is...

2. The book context

Just like each paragraph has a point and that point determines the meaning of the sentences inside it. Each book has a point and that helps us understand the paragraphs and verses in it.

Each book of the Bible was written for something. When you understand what that something is - it really helps you not misinterpret what is being said.

So what is the point of the book?

We just finished Colossians on Sunday mornings. Does anyone remember why Paul wrote Colossians?

We are looking at 1 John on Sunday Nights. 1 John is a book that has a lot of phrases in it that can be misunderstood. But when you understand the purpose of the book - to give tests that help confirm true Christians in their assurance of salvation, it keeps you from some doctrinal errors.

We are about to start the book of Luke. In Luke, the point is to tell the story of Jesus in a detailed way to a gentile audience.

There are several resources I would recommend if you want to do a book study.

1- Grace to You Bible Book Introductions: https://www.gty.org/library/bible-introductions/MSB01/Genesis 2 - "Explore the Book" by J. Sidlow Baxter

I almost never start preaching a book without looking at these resources. But you have to understand the chapter context and the book context.

Ok. Let's go out another level. Let's talk about...

3. The local context

When I talk about the "local" context, I'm talking about how people talked and lived when the book was written.

Very often in the Bible, there are some historical and cultural details you have to understand to get what is being said.

Take the book of Ruth for a second. (We are about to go through the stories of Ruth on Wednesday evenings.)

Ruth is full of "local" context.

• Ruth was a Moabitess - what is the significance of that?
• Ruth and Naomi survive by gleaning - what is gleaning?
• Ruth becomes Boaz husband because of the "near kinsman" law. What is the near kinsman law?
• Boaz deals with ruth at the city gate? Why?
• Boaz and the other man exchange a shoe? Why?

Local context could be:

• Geographical
• Governmental
• Dialect
• Religious
• Cultural

Think about all the stories of Jesus and how much these things come into play:

• Galilee and Samaria and Judea
• The Roman government and Sanhedrin
• The Pharisees and Sadduccees
• They synagogue system
• The religious feasts (passover, the festival of lights)
• Biblical wedding customs
• Customs like feet washing.

Understanding these things is really important to understanding the story. So you have to figure out the local context.

How do you do that? As you read a passage, if something stands out to you as odd, write it down and look it up.

You can look it up in a commentary. I really like David Guzik's whole Bible commentary which you can find on Blueletterbible.com. Matthew Henry's is a classic for a reason.

You can look it up in a Bible dictionary or even on wikipedia. The important thing is to be conscious of them and ready to look things up when you need to.

Ok, so far we have talked about paragraph context and book context and local context.

There is a fourth ring...

4. The historical context

You have to ask this question: Where does this thing I'm reading fit into the big history of the Bible?

In his book on how to read the Bible, Gary Millar lays out 8 historical movements. (Old timers used to call these dispensations.)

Let's talk about them:

1. Creation - Gen 1-2

God created the world and it was perfect. No sin. No sickness. That is one epoch of history. We don't know how long it lasted.

But in Genesis 3 you have the first sin and that brings us to the second section...

2. Fall - Gen 3

From Genesis 3 on it gets dark. Cain murders Abel. Things progress until the flood.

Then shortly after the flood you have the tower of Babel. It's just a dark period. But starting in Genesis 12 we see the next period, which we can call..

3. Covenant - Abraham through Moses

This starts with the story of Abraham and the Patriarchs and God giving them promises and extends to Egypt and Moses and the Mosaic Covenant at Mt. Sinai.

Then, in starting in Joshua, the people enter the land and you start the next period...

4. Kingdom -

It starts with conquest in Joshua, we see disfunction in Judges, and finally the kings - but that turns out to be a mess and the kingdom is quickly divided into Israel and Judah.

After a few hundred years, God brings judgment and we start the next period...

5. Exile

The children of Judah are carried off to Babylon and spend at least 70 years living in Exile. Because of this, jews are spread all over the world by the time of Christ.

Books like Daniel and Nehemiah are set in this period.

Eventually, the exile ends and the jews are allowed to return to their homeland - which brings us to the next period of biblical history:

6. Return

The children of Israel return and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, but things are never the same as they were.

God doesn't speak to Israel again for 400 years. But that ends in Matthew with the next phase:

7. Jesus

Matthew - John tell the story of Christ and His 33 years on earth. But He ascends into Heaven in Acts 1 and that starts the final age, the one we have been living in for 2000 years...

8. Church

So when you read your Bible, it is helpful to ask "What age did this take place in? What was God doing in that age?"

Let's consider Ruth. Who wants to Read Ruth 1:1

[!bible] Ruth 1:1 - KJV

1. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehemjudah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.

So it was in the time of Judges - which was kind of the transition period between the covenants and the kingdom. What was going on during that time? Were people living godly lives? Were they serious about following God?

This is helpful stuff for understanding Ruth.

So we have paragraph context, book context, local context, historical context.

One more level of context is...

5. Big picture context

What is the Bible all about? Remember?

[!bible] Luke 24:27 - KJV 27. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

The Bible is all about Jesus. So an important question to ask when you are studying a passage is "How does this passage point us to Jesus?"

In Charles Spurgeon's lectures to my students he said this:

“Don’t you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text of Scripture there is a road to Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, now, what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if ever I do find one, I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.”

So what about Ruth? What is the Big Picture context of Ruth?

• Jesus is our "kinsman redeemer"
• Ruth was in the genealogy of Christ