How to Study the Bible - Week 6 Session 2

The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. (1 Peter 5:1-4)

How dissecting a passage into its parts produces the very sermon you preach from it.

A Tool for Arcing the Text

The website biblearc.com (b-i-b-l-e-a-r-c.com) was built and put together by Bethlehem Seminary in Minnesota, where they teach it as a first-semester course in their seminary program. Fuller Seminary in Pasadena has used this same process as well, and there are probably others. You can use the site for free, though the free version limits how you save your work; they also have a paid option.

When you go to the website, there are different things you can do. I mentioned sentence diagramming and block diagramming—you'll often use sentence diagramming for Greek work in the New Testament, and block diagramming when parsing Old Testament Hebrew passages. What we're going to use here is the discourse arcing I talked about earlier. You choose a passage, copy it in, and I've already copied in 1 Peter 5:1-4. I'll use this program to break the passage into its propositions and clauses, then group the propositions together using these arcs and identify what they are, so you can see how the verses logically flow.

Breaking the Passage into Propositions

The tool makes this easy—a little slash mark appears as I move through the text. "The elders who are among you" / "I exhort" / "I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ" / "and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed." So I've taken verse 1 and broken it into five clauses. You might break it differently—some of this is more art than science. I'm simply breaking it apart.

Then I continue: "Shepherd the flock of God which is among you" / "serving as overseers" / "not by compulsion but willingly" / "not for dishonest gain but eagerly"—do you see a positive-negative comparison already?—"nor as being lords over those entrusted to you" / "but being examples to the flock" / "and when the Chief Shepherd appears" / "you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away."

I did that quickly because I have a cheat sheet—I did this for a class I taught at the Bible college seven years ago. If you were doing it fresh, it would take longer, but it's not rocket science to break it into its component parts so we can see all that's going on.

Grouping the Propositions

Remember, there were two steps: first break the text into its propositions, then go back and see how each proposition relates to the others, so we can understand what Peter is actually saying. You keep reading through the passage over and over to see what's there. I've only taken four verses, yet you could spend two or three hours seeing how it all groups together.

To group, I hover and a dot appears, and a hamburger menu opens with all those relationships I described in the first hour—series, progression, alternative, both-and, action-manner, and the rest. That's why I went through all of them earlier: so you'd understand what's happening as I do this.

So "the elders who are among you, I exhort" goes together. Then "I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed"—I see a series there. Up at the top, "the elders who are among you / I exhort" I'll label situation–response: the situation is the elders among you, the response is "I exhort." We might call it something else, but for now that's it. The rest of verse 1 I'll call explanation.

Action, Manner, and Comparison

Coming into verse 2, "Shepherd the flock of God which is among you" with "serving as overseers" is an action–manner relationship: the action is "Shepherd the flock of God," and the manner—how?—is "serving as overseers."

Then: "not by compulsion but willingly," "not for dishonest gain but eagerly," "nor as being lords over those entrusted to you but as examples to the flock." Each of these is a negative-positive relationship, and I group them all together as one big section explaining the manner of the command. So you Shepherd the flock not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly, not as lords but as examples.

Finally: "when the Chief Shepherd appears" / "you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away." That's an action–result: the action is the Chief Shepherd appearing, the result is receiving the crown—and there's a progression: what kind of crown? One that does not fade away.

Why a Bible Teacher Uses This

At this point I've broken everything into its parts to see what's going on, which could take significant time. From here you can really think about the text and construct how you might share it with someone else. I had to go through all those relationships at the beginning so you'd understand them. If this interests you, BibleArc offers hours and hours of video teaching it.

So why would I, as a Bible teacher, use a tool like this? First, I've broken the passage into very clear language so I can follow the progression of what's being said. Once I have that, I can begin to build a message from it.

Does this look familiar? That exact passage—1 Peter 5:1-4—is what I went through. I've highlighted things, underlined "fellow elder" in verse 1c, and noted "with humility" next to it. I taught through this passage years ago; maybe you were here when we went through 1 Peter. This is how I approached it. You who attend this church get a sermon guide, and the points on that guide come directly from the passage.

Building the Sermon Points from the Text

"The elders who are among you"—they're among the people in the church. My first point: leaders are not lords.

Then Peter says, "I who am a fellow elder." That's saying something, because by the time he writes this letter Peter is a big deal—the Catholic Church even sees him as the first pope, and at the very least we see him as important in the church. Yet he calls himself a fellow elder. So point two: leaders must maintain humility.

"Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers"—there's that "among" idea again. Point three: the greatest leaders are great servants. That comes straight from the text.

Where the Shepherd Language Comes From

Where did Peter get this idea of leadership as shepherding? Remember the word study a couple weeks ago—Jesus and Peter's conversation in John 21:

So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Feed My lambs." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed My sheep."

This idea of leaders as shepherds of the flock came from a conversation Peter had with Jesus decades before writing this letter. Those who looked at the original language know that when Jesus first asks, "Do you love Me?" He uses agape, and Peter responds with phileo. Among the Greeks, agape is the highest form of love—best pictured in 1 Corinthians 13, "love suffers long and is kind." Phileo is still a wonderful love, a brotherly, friendship love, but not as high as the self-sacrificial love of agape.

So twice Jesus asks "Do you agape Me?" and Peter answers "I phileo You." The third time Jesus comes down to Peter's level: "Simon, son of Jonah, do you phileo Me?"—almost questioning whether Peter even has that. Peter was grieved, not merely because Jesus asked a third time, but because at that point Jesus asked, "Do you even phileo Me?" This happened three times, mirroring Peter's three denials. Then Jesus says, "Feed My sheep."

From that I add another point: love is the greatest leadership qualification—quality love for God and love for His people. Do you love God? Do you love His people?

Stewardship and Reward

Then comes the positive-negative comparison: "not by compulsion but willingly." So: leaders are compelled by love to serve willingly. Next, "nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but by being examples to the flock"—that idea of being entrusted means leadership is a stewardship. The flock isn't mine; it's God's flock, entrusted to me as a leader.

Finally, "you will receive the crown of glory." Point seven: faithful stewards will be rewarded.

When I went through the text years ago and put together the sermon guide, the points were exactly these—straight from the text. Where did they come from? From spending time in the text, breaking it into its component parts, seeing what's there, and drawing out the applicable teachings and truths. I could teach the entire message from one sheet of paper, because the whole thing is just the text broken down.

The Goal: Rightly Dividing the Word

I know this is a higher-level approach—I gave you that caveat repeatedly. But the purpose is to see the logical progression of what's being said so you can understand what it means, and from that see the clear applications that flow from the text. This is why we call what we do at Cross Connection Church expositional Bible teaching or preaching: we expose what the text says, what it means, and what it means for us—the takeaways.

I've taught this exact material at pastors' conferences. This passage is one of the clearest teachings in the New Testament about what we're called to do as ministers of the gospel, and it comes right from the text. It's a lot of strange-seeming work to get there, but the whole aim is to rightly divide the word of truth—to break it into its parts, see how each relates to the next, and clearly articulate what the text is saying for us.

Questions

How much text should we gather at a time? Where do we start? Gordon Fee's book emphasizes learning to read the Bible in paragraphs, which is very helpful—look at a paragraph and break it down. But sometimes there's too much. In Ephesians 1, Paul has one run-on sentence spanning 14 verses, and arcing the whole thing would run 77 pages. So sometimes you take a verse, break it apart to see what's going on, then see how it relates to the next. 1 Peter 5:1-4 is an opening paragraph that breaks down pretty easily. Other times it's a long continuous thought, like Romans 7 or 8. In Romans 7, breaking it apart reveals that Paul switches between "I" and "me"—"O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?"—and there's much debate among teachers about that passage, but you only see the distinction when you break it apart. So start with a paragraph; if that's too much, reduce it to a couple verses.

Do different translations break down similarly, or are some better? BibleArc's default is the ESV, because that's Bethlehem Seminary's primary text, but you can use others. The more literal, word-for-word translations are easier—NASB, CSB, ESV, NKJV break down better than the NIV or NLT. The NIV and NLT are great translations, but they're more thought-for-thought than word-for-word. The closest to the original Greek is the New American Standard Bible, so it breaks down closest to the original.

Is there a library of analysis already done? They have some available, though I think you need the paid tier to see what others have submitted. A number of people post these online. John Piper, who was president of Bethlehem Seminary for many years, does something called "Look at the Book," where he puts a text on a black background and circles, highlights, and underlines—basically this same dissecting process—as he talks through a passage. He's a great Bible teacher, though I'll warn you he is heavy, heavy, heavy on Calvinism; that's my biggest issue with him. I like him for many things, but he sometimes preaches more Calvinism than Bible, and I have an issue with that. I'm fine if you're a Calvinist—just don't make it the primary thing.

Closing Announcements and Prayer

I get that this is a lot of crazy things, which is why it's not homework—I'm not sending you off to arc a passage. If you were in my Bible college class, I would; but you're not, so I'll be gracious. Make sure you turn in last week's homework. We won't have class next Tuesday—I'll be in the Philippines, and I'd appreciate your prayers. I'll be speaking at a pastors' conference on the book of Philippians in the Philippines, which seems to fit well. We'll be back for class on November 8th, election day, choosing—electing—to study the Scriptures together.

Let me pray. God, pour out Your Spirit upon Your church. Give us a love for Your word and a desire to know You and Your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. God bless you.