How to Study the Bible - Week 6 Session 1

All right, a few things as people are making their way in. Make sure you sign off on the sign-in sheet that you're here; it's in the back. Pastor Mark has it back there in the lobby on the table, so if you are here, sign in. If you're not here, you won't know that I'm even saying this.

Also, as you're coming in, by way of announcement, next week, November 1st, we will not have class. I'll announce this again later for people who come in, but we will not have class next week on November 1st. I am leaving Thursday morning to fly to the Philippines to teach at a pastor's conference, and so I'll be gone for about nine or ten days. We will have our next class on Election Day, the 8th of November, so make sure you're here on the 8th of November.

What we're going to do is that I've been pulling some things together that would have gone on separate weeks, and so we're going to make this an eight-week class instead of a nine-week class. This means that we'll have two more classes after tonight: the class on the 8th and then the class on the 15th, but no class on the 22nd. Just to keep that in mind, we're taking one class off because we put some things together and are consolidating everything from the class.

So again, make sure you've signed in. We have a lot to cover tonight, so I think it would be wise for us to begin with prayer.

Let's pray. God, I pray that you would help us to still our hearts and our minds now, and Lord, that you would prepare our hearts and minds for what you'd like to teach us and speak to us. Lord, it is my hope and my desire that as a result of what we are going through in this class, the weeks leading up to tonight, and everything that we'll cover tonight and over the next two classes, you would use these things to bring us into a place where we are your disciples, true students of your Word, and not only students of your Word but those who are growing in our understanding.

Knowledge of who you are and growing in our relationship with You is essential. So, God, I pray that You would use what we're learning in this class to open the door, if You will, so that we would draw nearer to You. God, speak to us tonight and give us wisdom. I pray that the things we’re going to talk about tonight will make sense, because I recognize, Lord, some of these things are challenging. Open our hearts and our minds, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

What we're going to be looking at tonight requires a bit of a preface at the beginning. This will be somewhat technical, and I've wrestled with whether or not I would even share this approach to the Scriptures. However, I think it is important to help you see the way that I, and many other teachers of the Scriptures, approach the Bible when we’re trying to dissect it and really break it apart.

I shared with you that passage several times over the last few weeks from Second Timothy chapter two, where Paul exhorts Timothy to study to show yourself approved unto God, as a worker who is not ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. What we've been doing over the last many weeks is trying to use various methodologies and approaches to rightly divide the word of truth.

Tonight, we will get into a higher-level way of dissecting the Scriptures. I teach this to the students at the Bible College, and that class covers both how to study the Bible and how to teach the Bible. This is kind of the transition from studying for the purpose of moving this into teaching. Depending on how much time we have tonight, I will either show you how this links directly to the way I present the Scriptures when I teach, or we will cover it when we’re back here for our next class on the 8th. You will be able to see how all of this goes together.

In saying that, what I'm going to show you tonight is like a major fire hose of information, or we could say it’s like a dam bursting with information. What I’m going to show you is kind of like a trailer or a preview to something that is actually an entire...

I have taught a class for 15 to 16 weeks at several different seminaries, where we go through how to get into the Scriptures. I want you to recognize that probably more than the majority of you tonight, at the end of this, will feel like you don't know how to even grasp what I just showed you. That's okay. I just want to show you this process because I have found it very helpful in making it so people can break the Scriptures down into pieces and see the logical relationships of what is going on in the text. This understanding allows us to comprehend what it says, what it means, and then to draw out the application.

This is exactly why we have been talking about all these things every single week. I have shared this slide to emphasize that the purpose of this class is to learn to access the Scriptures ourselves so that we might make them accessible to others. What we are going to look at tonight is really about dividing the text—rightly dividing the word of Truth.

Why is this so important? To illustrate that, I want to go back to the passage where this concept shows up in Timothy. This is Second Timothy, Chapter 2. In verse 15, it says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of Truth."

In this application, if I click on the word "Truth," it will show me the other places in the text where the word "Truth" appears. You will notice that it is mentioned a few times in this text. If we were just doing a study on this section of Scripture in Second Timothy, we would already see a repeated word, and "Truth" would be the focus we want to zero in on.

Paul says to be diligent to present yourselves approved unto God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of Truth. Then, in verse 18, he talks about some who are given to profane and idle babblings that increase to more ungodliness. This message spreads like a cancer. He mentions two individuals by name, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who are of this sort. Imagine having your name immortalized in Scripture as the bad example of what not to do. That would, for lack of a better word, be unfortunate.

They have strayed concerning the truth. There's that same word, "truth." Then down here, he talks about so that they may know the truth. We want to rightly divide the word of Truth so that we don't stray concerning the truth and so that we might know the truth.

In chapter 3, look at verse 1: "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control." Does this sound like the modern day? "Brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying

We're just recording the PowerPoint, and that's fine. It blesses me that you are here as part of this class to dig into the Scriptures so that you would know the truth. I would say that the error the church has seen throughout history is not new. When Paul was writing those letters to Timothy 2,000 years ago, there was error in the church. Hymenaeus, Alexander, and other individuals were in error concerning the truth. This is not atypical; it is the norm that false teachers rise up because they do not know the truth.

We see so much error in the church today, throughout the world, but especially in America. Many people do not know the truth of Scripture because they receive bad teaching from individuals who either have an agenda or do not know the truth themselves. It is also true that many Christians and churches are not like those in Berea, who searched the Scriptures daily to see if those things were so.

While I would rather you not fact-check me in the middle of my message, I do want you to look into the Scriptures to see if the things I am saying are there. Are they drawn right out of the Scripture? Am I sharing what the text says and what the text means? The applications should flow from the text. That is what we are constantly trying to do here at Cross Connection Church, and what I hope to teach you to do as well. We want to learn how to access the Scriptures so that we might make them accessible to others.

Now, I have to preface what we are going to look at. What I am going to show you is highly technical and will be difficult to grasp. My goal is to show you why I look at the Scriptures this way and why I think it is important. I will explain what we are doing when we break the Scriptures apart and how we will do it. In the second hour, I will actually go through an application that is available on the internet for you to explore the Scriptures in this way.

As I have said, it is not my expectation that all of you will leave this class and immediately put into practice everything I talked about tonight. I do not expect that. However, I believe that if you start to look at the Scriptures in this systematic way over time, it will change the way that you engage with them.

You read the text of Scripture, and what ends up happening is it becomes somewhat second nature. While I'm going to show you a very systematic way of breaking the Scriptures apart using an application that's available on the internet, when I sit down before the Bible to read through the Scriptures for my own personal devotion or if I'm preparing to teach a class or sermon, I intuitively read the Bible this way. I break it apart like this, and I think it's very helpful and important, although it will be challenging as we go through this.

Have I given you enough caveats on the front end? Just walk with me through this in baby steps. I don't expect there to be a test on this, and I'm not asking you to do this for homework. I want to clarify that this is not homework this week. In fact, you're not really going to have homework to turn in for the next week and a half to two weeks. I am going to ask you to go through the Scriptures, and hopefully, it is becoming a habit for you already as a result of this class.

A little bit of review: what have we looked at so far? We have examined devotional Bible study and tips for studying the Bible. We look for the truths to believe and to do, which include the commands and doctrines. Then, I examine myself in light of those things. Do I believe those things? Do I do those things? As the plumb line of Scripture exposes that I'm not in alignment, I plan to obey and pray that I'll be able to put these into practice. I obey by the Spirit's help, asking the Holy Spirit to assist me in doing these things.

That's the tips for devotional Bible study. Then, we discussed purposeful Bible study, which involves looking at the Scriptures through the lens of a question or a series of questions. This approach helps us find what is in the text. For example, what does this passage teach me about Christ? What does this passage reveal about the Holy Spirit? What does this passage say about the Apostle Paul, or what does it say about the people? Whatever it may be, there is a question that you're using as the lens through which you're examining the passage of Scripture.

Next, we looked at word studies and how we can use some of the freely available tools online to explore the various elements present in the original languages. Last week, we went through the inductive Bible study method of observation, interpretation, and application, where you're going through and trying to...

See what the text says by observing it as much as you can. What are all the details of the who, what, when, where, and so forth of the passage? Then, what does it mean? Why is this being said? Who is the one speaking, and to whom are they speaking? What is the purpose of what they are saying in this passage?

So, what does it say? What does it mean? And then, what does it mean for us? This is the application. We will draw the application right out of the text. What we're going to talk about tonight is called Bible arcing, a method for deeper study of the Scriptures. I want to emphasize that this is going to be challenging. This is an entire class that lasts 15 to 16 weeks at several seminaries that I know of. In fact, when I first started looking at this several years ago, I realized that I kind of already do this through the Scriptures, even though I had never seen it formally done this way. It was in a seminary setting where I was watching a class online about how they approach the Scriptures in this manner.

So, what is Bible arcing? Bible arcing is a graphical tool used to discern, display, and discuss the flow of thought in a Biblical text. We are going to go through this step by step, and I will use a lot of terms that, at first, may leave you scratching your head. I encourage you to just wait, because it will come together as I start to explain all of this. You will see how this works and how it gets utilized to help you understand what the text says, what it means, and how to share that with other people. You will see how this logically plays out.

My aim, either at the end of tonight or in the next class, is to show you how this actually breaks down into a teaching that I gave here at the church several years ago using this exact method.

Now, what does it look like when you have arced a text? Don't freak out by this, but this is what it looks like. Arcing the text helps Bible students see the logical progression and structure of it and determine its meaning. This is Galatians Chapter 2, verses 15 and 16, and this is the breakdown of those two verses. Over on the right, you see these weird symbols; these are the arcs for this passage.

Where did it go? There we go. I want to say at the outset that some of this is more art than science. I'll explain what I mean as we go through this.

Now, the breakdown of how this passage breaks down involves looking at the propositions and the clauses that are present. Each individual clause is examined, and then we consider how they relate to each other. The different symbols and arcs represent the various ways that this passage connects. I'm going to explain this as we go through it. Again, I understand that this may look really strange; I've never seen anything like this before.

So, what are we doing when we step into this method called Bible arcing? Step one is to divide the text into its propositions at the clause or proposition level. We break a sentence or a paragraph down into each individual section of what is there.

To give an example, consider the passage from Galatians: "We who are Jews by nature are not sinners of the Gentiles," which is verse 15. Then, verse 16 states, "Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law no flesh will be justified."

One of the challenges here is that this is a big run-on sentence. There is a lot to unpack, and Paul the Apostle, who wrote 13 New Testament letters, is notorious for very long run-on sentences. To understand the thought progression of what Paul is saying, this whole method becomes really helpful and important.

There are times when, as I read the Scriptures, I start to break things down into very small bite-sized chunks in my mind. However, there are also times when I will use this approach to go through a particularly challenging passage of Scripture to understand the flow. For example, if you've ever read Romans chapter 7, the argument that Paul makes throughout Romans is one long chain of challenging arguments, one after another. Paul anticipates what his reader's response or question is going to be, and he says, "But you will say..." He is anticipating your response and then deconstructs all of it.

To understand what Paul is doing in Romans, it is helpful to break it down. When I was teaching through Romans chapter 7 at a Bible college, I was also translating into German, which made it even more challenging. I had to say one or two sentences and then stop to let the translator speak in German. At least three or four times every ten minutes, the translator would ask me to say things more simply. I found myself thinking, "Goodness gracious, I don't know how to say that more simply."

I had to break down everything in Romans chapters 7 and 8 to grasp Paul's flow of thought in this passage. I used a method similar to what I am showing you here tonight. By breaking the verses down into their clauses or propositions, I could see how each one relates to the others and understand the flow of the text.

I recognize that some of you may be thinking that you shouldn't have come tonight, but just wait. We will walk through this slowly, and I will show you why this becomes important as we go through the text.

Step one is to break the passage down into its clause or proposition level. Step two is to discern the logical relationship between each proposition. This is where it becomes very technical, if it hasn't already. What I am going to show you is the process we all do intuitively with language. As someone speaks, you break down what they are saying. If you have taken higher-level grammar classes, you may remember how you diagrammed a sentence in the past.

Here is a diagram of the opening sentence: "We who are by nature Jews and not sinners of the Gentiles." This is the breakdown of the text. I know this may seem strange, but many seminaries teach their students the original languages by having them do this in Greek. This is the breakdown of those two verses in Greek in a sentence diagram, and I am not asking anyone to do this.

You'll probably never do this, but understand and recognize that when you pick up an exegetical commentary, the scholar who wrote that commentary likely engaged with the text at the language level to understand what it says. This is what makes that exegetical commentary so great; the scholar has spent considerable time breaking down the text to convey its meaning to you and to me.

You might wonder how we can be sure that this is what the text is saying. The answer lies in the scholar's work of dissecting the text into its component parts. For instance, in the Greek text, the phrase "we by nature who are Jews and not sinners of the Gentiles" may look strange, but scholars who compile exegetical commentaries are doing this work at the language level.

In Hebrew, the approach is slightly different. Scholars often use a method called block diagramming because Hebrew does not break down sentence structure in the same way. Hebrew is a complex language, but they create entire block diagrams of the text to determine its meaning when translating from Hebrew to English. My professor for Hebrew at Gateway Seminary, Dr. Watson, was on the translation committee for the Christian Standard Bible. He would analyze texts in the Old Testament, breaking them down at the word level and block diagramming everything to comprehend what the translation should convey.

This meticulous process ensures that when you pick up the Christian Standard Bible and read a passage, you can trust that they did a good job of breaking it apart. Having gone through classes and observed how this is done, I believe you can have confidence in the Bible translations you possess. The scholars are working diligently to help you understand what the text is actually saying in each passage.

Step two is to try to discern the logical relationship between the propositions. All of this effort aims to rightly divide the word of truth so that we understand what the text says, what it means, and how we should apply it. So, what are the logical relationships we will be examining? This is where we encounter various symbols and letters that represent these relationships.

I will present this information in a way that may seem like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, but I want to illustrate how this whole process works. Recognize that if you were actually engaged in this study, you would see the depth and complexity involved in understanding the text.

Going to employ this would take a lot more understanding. There's a website where you can go and watch hours and hours of videos to see how to do this if you are interested in doing it. However, I do want to show you how this all works.

First, we are looking at coordinate relationships and subordinate relationships. A coordinate relationship connects two independent propositions or independent clauses. Each proposition makes its own independent contribution to the whole. The negative way to say this is that neither proposition supports the other.

Now, just go with me here. There are four different kinds of alternative coordinate relationships that we are going to look at: alternative, progression, series, and both. All we are doing here is breaking down a statement or a sentence into its clause or proposition level and seeing whether they are independent clauses or dependent clauses.

Those of you who remember back to English in the 8th, 9th, or 10th grade, when you were talking about these sorts of things that you may not remember anymore, this is what you were discussing. We do this in the language that we are fluent in, our native language. We just do this intuitively. You don't think about what was the subject of what someone just said, what is the predicate, what is the predicate nominative, what is the prepositional phrase, or what is the preposition. You don't think about all that stuff because you are just hearing it and responding. But that's what's happening at the language level.

When we are looking at a text, any sort of text, if you are reading the newspaper in your own language, you are basically doing that and getting the gist. You know when someone is a bad writer because they put the preposition in the wrong place and made other mistakes. You may not be able to grade it with a red pen and point out where they went wrong, but you know it just didn't read right. You can tell a bad writer pretty quickly because it's one of those books that you have a really hard time reading. By the time you get to page 20, you might think, "Forget it, I'm going on to another book," because they are not a very good writer.

On the other hand, a person who is a good writer makes it so much easier to read and comprehend what they are saying. Basically, you are intuitively breaking down the grammar as you are listening to a person talk or reading whatever a person is writing, and you are seeing all these things. So, if we are looking at coordinate relationships, these are...

Independent clauses are important in understanding scripture. Today, I drove to the church, went to the store, and bought milk. Each of these statements stands on its own: "Today I drove to the church," "Today I went to the store," and "Today I bought milk." However, there is a series of independent clauses put together.

When we go through the scriptures, we are essentially doing the same thing. We break the text apart to see where the independent clauses are, where the dependent clauses are, and how they relate to each other. This helps us understand what is being said in the text. It becomes especially important when you come to a passage that, even after reading it multiple times, still leaves you scratching your head, wondering what Paul is trying to say.

You can take comfort in the fact that even the Apostle Peter acknowledged that Paul writes many things that are hard to understand. You might find yourself saying, "Thanks, Peter, I'm with you," because Paul indeed writes many complex ideas. For example, go read Romans 7, and you'll see that there is a lot going on. When you start to break it down, you can begin to see how everything is linked together.

These relationships can be categorized into coordinate relationships and subordinate relationships. Coordinate relationships involve independent clauses in a series, where each proposition makes its own independent contribution to the whole main clause. Subordinate relationships connect two or three dependent propositions or clauses, where one proposition supports the others.

We have different kinds of relationships, such as restatement, distinct statement, and contrary statement. I will show you how these concepts break down as we continue.

So, how do all these different relationships work? There are many types of relationships to consider. In that diagram I showed you with Galatians Chapter 2, verses 15 and 16, all those arcs, letters, and dots illustrate the relationships present in that passage. After spending time analyzing it, you can identify the relationships that exist within the text.

To summarize, coordinate relationships consist of independent clauses in a series, where each proposition contributes to the whole. Keywords that signal these relationships include "and," "moreover," "furthermore," "likewise," and "neither."

I remember when I said that some of this is more art than science. When I was taking Greek, we had to diagram our homework, which involved hours and hours of diagramming sentences in Greek. We diagrammed the first half of the book of Philippians. If you break apart every single verse, we would get together for a three-hour lecture every week to go through all that material with the professor. Some of it would be variable; sometimes the professor would say, "I like what you did there. Maybe that's a better way of recognizing this text."

So, some of it is kind of more art than science, but there's a lot of grammar-level science that goes into this. When we're doing a series in that arcing diagram, we use the letter S as the symbol. For example, in Matthew chapter 24, verse 29, it states, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

We have a series of independent clauses in this passage. If I were to arc this, it would look like this: I'm breaking it down. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days" is the first proposition. "The sun will be darkened" is independent. "The moon will not give its light" is also independent. "The stars will fall from the heaven" and "the powers of the heavens will be shaken" are independent as well. You see the letter S over on the right; it shows us graphically that there's a series of coordinate relationships.

I totally understand if this is going over your head. There they are, a series. But sometimes you have a progression, like a series, which can be a problem. Each proposition is a further step towards a climax. Main clauses climax using keywords. Sometimes the keywords will have some crossover. This is where we get the art versus science, using the words "then," "moreover," and "furthermore." We would illustrate this with the letter P. Let me give an example.

Moreover, Romans 8:30 states, "Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; whom He justified, these He also glorified." You see how there's a progression to the language here. It steps down, step by step, all the way through. There is a progression in what Paul is saying, and he does this a lot in the Book of Romans. You can see a progression of ideas, where one thing carries the next. Without the previous one, you're missing some information, so you've got to follow the logic of what he is saying.

This is where I have a real hard time with people who get into the whole seventy layers of Torah. You can read it, and you can have fifty of us read the same passage and come up with fifty different ideas about what it means. It's like, well, hold on a second. Paul had a logical argument that he was making, and we should be able to clearly see what that is. There shouldn't be fifty different interpretations of what Paul said. If you break the text apart to see what is being said, you can clarify the meaning.

There have been times when I've had conversations with people who tell me, "Well, this is what this passage says," and I respond, "I don't think that's what that passage says." Let's go through it together and see. We break it apart to understand what is being said in the passage. We do this by breaking it down to its most fundamental, basic level—words, subject, predicate, and so forth—so we can see what is there in the text.

Next, we have an alternative coordinate relationship. Each proposition or clause expresses a different possibility arising from a situation, presenting contrasting ideas. Keywords are "or," "but," "while," and "on the other hand." We use the symbol "A" to highlight this. For example, "Some were persuaded by the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved." Here, we have an alternative relationship with two different things going on.

Now, we will move to subordinate relationships. I hope this isn't too far above everybody's head, but follow along with me. We have an action manner, which is a statement of an action followed by a more precise statement that indicates the way or manner in which the action is carried out.

Some keywords in that are by using the symbol "action manner" (ACMN). Where do we see this in the text? An example is Acts 14:17. Nevertheless, He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

This is where Paul and Barnabas are in the region of Galatia, sharing the gospel with a group of Gentiles. They say that God did not leave Himself without witness. That's the action: God has left a witness. In what manner did He leave a witness? He gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. This is one of the ways in which He has made Himself known in the world.

So, that's action manner comparison—the relationship between two statements expressing an action more clearly by showing what it is like. Key words will be "even as" or "as." For example, Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." Here, we have a comparison: I am sending you in the same way that the Father sent Me.

Now, let's break down and see what the text says. Here's one that's a little bit more simple. We will see this as we look at some of the texts tonight: negative positive. This is the relationship between two alternatives, one of which is denied so that the other is enforced. It is also the relationship implicit in contrasting statements using my favorite words: "not," "but," and "and." We just use the positive and negative signs for the symbol here.

For example, in Ephesians 5:17, it says, "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is." The negative is "do not be unwise," and the positive is "understand what the will of the Lord is."

Another subordinate relationship is idea explanation. This is the relationship between an original statement and one clarifying its meaning. The clarifying proposition may define only one word of the previous proposition. The keyword here is "again." We will go through this, and I will show you examples. The symbol we would use in this situation is "ID EXP."

For instance, Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me..."

No one is good but one, and that is God. The idea is that no one is good except for God. This leads us to a question: what does the scripture say? The answer to that question can be found in Ephesians 5:17.

Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, all of this might seem rather pedantic when you break it apart and analyze it, but what you're trying to do is see the logical flow of what the author is writing in that passage. You can observe how it breaks down from general to specific—a proposition stating a whole, followed by a second statement that outlines one or more parts of that whole.

There are some keywords to look for, such as "for example," and we can use symbols like GN (General) and SP (Specific). For instance, in Romans 7:7, my favorite passage for this kind of analysis, we read: "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For example, I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'"

The general principle here is that I would not have known sin but by the law, and specifically, it states that I would not have known covetousness had the law not said, "Thou shall not covet."

Next, there is another kind of subordinate relationship known as a grounding statement. This describes the relationship between a statement and the argument or reason for that statement. We use words like "for," "because," or "since," represented by the symbol G. An example of a grounding statement can be found in The Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." The key word "for" grounds this idea.

Finally, we can look at inferences, which describe the relationship between a statement and the argument or reason for that statement. Supporting propositions proceed from this. Keywords to identify inferences include "therefore," "wherefore," "consequently," and "accordingly." As we go through this purposeful Bible study, we are looking for various keywords. For example, in 1 Peter 4:7, we read: "But the end of all things is at hand; therefore..." Here, we have a grounding statement.

Be serious and watchful in your prayers. We have a subordinate distinct relationship called a bilateral proposition, which supports two other propositions: one proceeding and one following. This is illustrated using the words "for," "because," "therefore," and "so."

In the symbol bilateral, here's an example from Psalm 67, verses 4 and 5: "Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you shall judge the people righteously and govern the nations on the earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you."

I understand that some of these concepts may seem obscure at the moment, but we will get there and explore how they work.

Another relationship is the action-result relationship, which connects an action with a consequence or result that accompanies that action. The keywords for this relationship include "so that," "that," and "with the result that." We can use the symbol action-result.

Here's an example from Matthew 8: "And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves; but he was fast asleep." In this case, the action is the tempest, and the result is that the waves covered the boat. It may seem obvious, but breaking the text apart helps us understand what is being said.

Next, we have the action-purpose relationship, which connects an action with the intended outcome. The keywords for this relationship include "in order that," "so that," "that," "with a view to," and "to the end of." We use the symbols AC and Pur for action-purpose.

An example can be found in 1 Peter 5:6: "Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time." Here, the action is to humble yourself, and the purpose is that he will raise you up in due time.

Lastly, I love conditional statements. I talk about this constantly in my teaching. This relationship is similar to action-result, except that the existence of the action is only potential. The keywords include "if," "then," "provided that," and "except." We will use the symbols "if" and "then," with "th" for then.

Conditional relationships are prevalent throughout the Scriptures. For example, "If you are led by the Spirit, then you are not under the law." In this case, we are looking for temporal markers in the passage, which indicate the relationship between the main proposition and the occasion when it can occur.

Occur using the keywords "when," "whenever," "after," "before," and the symbol "T." For example, in Matthew 6:16, it states, "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites who with sad countenance disfigure their faces so that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward."

Like a temporal marker, we also have a locative marker, which indicates the relationship between a proposition and the place where it can be true. The words we are looking for are "where" or "wherever," using the symbol "L" for "where." For instance, "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in the midst of them."

How many of you are kind of like, at this point? Okay, we'll get there.

Next, we have anticipation and fulfillment, which describes the relationship of a proposed promise along with its accompanying fulfillment. The keywords are "and so," and the symbol is "A-N-T" for anticipation and "F" for fulfillment. An example is found in Galatians 6:2: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

We are almost done with these.

Now, let's discuss the concessive relationship, which is the relationship between a main clause and a contrary statement. The words used are "although," "yet," or "nevertheless," and the symbol is "CSV." Here’s an illustration: "For this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth."

Then we have what we call a situation-response relationship, which is the connection between a situation in one clause and a response in another. The keywords are "and," and the symbol is "SIT R." An example is found in Matthew 7:22: "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"

We are looking at the relationships between these clauses, trying to understand what is being said in the text. We are breaking it apart into all its component parts. All that craziness is called Bible arcing, and what we're going to do is look at how all this works. I'm going to give you a 15-minute overview.

Take a break, everyone. Decompress and grab some candy or a cookie. When we come back after 15 minutes, I will go through a passage and show you how I approach this, or how we would do it together. It will make a lot more sense when we put it all together. I know at this point you might be thinking, "I have no idea what you just said for the last 45 minutes." That's okay; we'll try to pull it together, and you'll see why this becomes important in our next portion.

Make sure you sign in on the sign-in sheet. Take a 15-minute break, and at the top of the hour, we will start going through a passage. You can also turn in your homework up here, please.