How to Discover the Author's Intended Meaning with John Whittaker

[00:00:00] To our job as Bible students, first and foremost, is not to create our own message, come

[00:00:07] up with our own message. It's to discover the message of the text. That's our aim.

[00:00:12] What are the author intent to communicate by what they're saying in this paragraph

[00:00:17] at this point in this book?

[00:00:21] Hey, welcome to the Expositors Collective Podcast episode 320. I'm your host, Mike

[00:00:26] Neglia. And the voice that you heard is our guest for this week, Dr. John Whitaker.

[00:00:32] John has spent the past three decades pastoring and as a professor in various Bible colleges,

[00:00:40] he wants to help people follow Jesus by learning to hear what the Bible actually says.

[00:00:47] And that comes across in this session that you are going to hear. This is a recording of one

[00:00:55] of the main session messages that he gave earlier on how to discover the author's intended meaning.

[00:01:04] In other words, what does the Bible actually say? He is going to teach us what sort of questions

[00:01:11] we should be asking, how do we interpret and then how do we apply God's word to our own heart

[00:01:18] and to those who are listening to us? If you are listening to this episode,

[00:01:24] and if you think, man, I wish I could have been in the room when this was taking place. Well,

[00:01:30] I want to invite you to join me, John and others in Pleasanton, California

[00:01:38] in the San Francisco Bay Area, May 24th and 25th. We do a two-day Bible teaching training workshop

[00:01:48] and I'd love for you and your team to come along. We think that there's something for everybody

[00:01:54] that attends this group, whether you're a brand new novice or whether you're an experienced

[00:02:02] preacher, all of us can benefit from this type of teaching and this type of coaching.

[00:02:08] Visit our website, expositorscollective.com. It's going to give you registration details.

[00:02:14] Hopefully I'll get to see you and your team in Pleasanton, California, May 24th and 25th.

[00:02:22] All right, here's the recording of Dr. John Whitaker on how to discover the author's intended meeting.

[00:02:36] I get to talk about Bible study at least for now that we're going to talk about

[00:02:41] and Jim ended the last session, emphasizing the power and importance of the text.

[00:02:48] That if the preacher simply reads the passage then there's something good that you can take away

[00:02:53] from the sermon, right? And that's because this book is a treasure.

[00:02:59] And we can get so familiar with it, particularly if we spend a lot of time studying it or

[00:03:03] teaching or whatever, that we forget the treasure it is. It's a treasure to us. And so

[00:03:08] if we were merely a stand-up comedians, right? We could come with our own content whenever

[00:03:17] we wanted to put together our own act, our own gig and we could talk. We could make people

[00:03:22] laughing to be great. If we were purely a motivational speaker then the same thing. We could

[00:03:26] come up with some, you know, our own one-liners and things people could tweet out or whatever else they

[00:03:30] wanted to do. We don't get that luxury if we're going to be expositors and that's who we are.

[00:03:35] We're expositors. We don't get to create our own content. We're slaves to this content

[00:03:42] and this is a treasure, not just for us but for those that we get to teach the Bible to and pass

[00:03:48] it on to. And there is in fact the listeners commentary that Mike referenced that has convinced me

[00:03:55] over the last handful of years putting that out and then the emails I get back from all around

[00:03:59] the world. There is a massive hunger among people to say, just help me understand this book.

[00:04:06] Just help me understand this book. What is it really saying? And how can I know God through

[00:04:12] this book? And that's really what we get to focus on in our teaching and preaching as expositors.

[00:04:18] And so in order to do that well, in order to teach this book well to be expositors, well,

[00:04:25] we're a slave to this book. We have to dig into this book and understand it. And so when it comes

[00:04:30] to that, the first thing we need to make sure we understand is what is our aim? What's our aim when

[00:04:36] it comes to Bible study? We're talking about inductive Bible study. And when we say aim, notice

[00:04:43] the three letters, a-i-m. What is our aim? Our aim as expositors, as students of God's word,

[00:04:55] is to identify the author's intended meaning. That's the aim. That's what we're after. And that's

[00:05:04] because this book is intended to be communication and any communication, whatever it is, there is

[00:05:10] an intended message that the speaker or writer is intending to get across. So our job as Bible

[00:05:19] students, first and foremost, is not to create our own message, come up with our own message. It's

[00:05:26] to discover the message of the text. That's our aim. What do the author intend to communicate

[00:05:32] by what they're saying in this paragraph at this point in this book? So that's what we're after. Now

[00:05:38] how do we do that? How do we discover the author's intended meaning? Well, that's what I want to

[00:05:45] talk about over the next few minutes. And this is going to be super fast. If we're drinking from a

[00:05:51] fire hose all day, well then this is going to get a start off going really fast. I taught a 15-week

[00:05:58] semester course on this topic. We're going to do it in 15 minutes. So we're flying. So real quick

[00:06:07] overview. Here's the overview. There's three parts to inductive Bible study and it looks like this.

[00:06:13] Observation, interpretation, application. Observation is reading the text and just kind of getting a

[00:06:20] feel for what's there. What do I see? Interpretation is then digging in and wrestling with the text and

[00:06:26] saying, okay now what does it mean? And then application is standing back and prayerfully engaging

[00:06:32] with God and thinking about the text and talking to God until we can say, here's how I respond.

[00:06:38] Observation, interpretation, application. We'll come back to the details of that but let's just

[00:06:44] this is do a little practice real quick before we walk down. How do we do that? Psalm 1. If you have

[00:06:51] your Bible open it to Psalm 1. Hopefully have your Bible because you're going to be using them a lot

[00:06:56] today and tomorrow. Psalm 1 and I'm working out of the the new American standard it says this,

[00:07:04] how blessed is the person who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the path

[00:07:09] of sinners nor sit in the sea to scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and his law he

[00:07:14] meditates day and night. If we were to make some just some initial observations right we just read

[00:07:21] those two verses real quick. What are some of your initial observations? I know we're just getting

[00:07:27] started but still is the middle of the afternoon so maybe a little interaction might help kind of

[00:07:31] purchase up a little bit. So what are some initial observations on Psalm 1 versus 1 and 2?

[00:07:38] What do you see? Okay, meditate day and night. We could even ask some questions about that. One is

[00:07:46] what does it mean to meditate? How do I do that? Also day and night. What about my job?

[00:07:53] What about my kids? What does it mean to meditate day and night? We're going to have to think that

[00:07:59] through. How do we work that into just all the responsibilities of life? So how does meditate

[00:08:04] and life actually go together? We're going to wrestle with that. What else? What are some other

[00:08:08] observations? Okay, who's the ungodly? If you read verse 1, he does not stand in the council

[00:08:16] of the wicked or the path of sinners, see to scoffers. Who are those people? The ungodly, the wicked,

[00:08:21] the scoffers, right? Who are those people? What kind of people do we refer to by that? What else?

[00:08:28] Bless. What does it mean to be blessed? Right? And what sense are they going to be blessed? I've

[00:08:32] done some pretty righteous people that didn't seem so blessed from at least the American standard. So

[00:08:37] what are we talking about by blessed? Right? What else? Walkstand sit. That's an interesting progression.

[00:08:45] Right? Walk. Stand. Now I'll send you seated. Is there any significance to that? Right? We make

[00:08:52] observations like this as we're working through the text. Let's just look at verse 3 real quick and

[00:08:57] then we'll talk about what we did. Verse 3 says, the person who meditates on the law of the Lord will be

[00:09:04] like a tree planted by streams of waters which yields its fruit in its season whose leaf does not

[00:09:11] wither in everything he does. He prospers. All right, what are some observations about verse 3?

[00:09:20] What does prosper mean? Does it mean I'm going to have a rich bank account or what? What does prosper mean?

[00:09:27] What else? What is the fruit? What kind of fruit are we talking about? Notice it says it yields

[00:09:33] its fruit. It's very specific. It's not any random fruit. It's the particular fruit of that

[00:09:39] particular tree. It's fruit. That's interesting. What does that mean? What else?

[00:09:45] Planted. Notice they didn't find itself there by accident. It's planted. That sounds more

[00:09:50] intention on deliberate. It's an important observation. Right? So this is what we're talking about. It's

[00:09:55] observation. Interpretation then would come back after that and say, okay, we would do some research

[00:10:01] and try to figure that stuff out. And we would say, okay, so walkstand sit. That does seem like a progression

[00:10:08] and we learned that in Hebrew poetry there's different kinds of parallelism. Some lines will restate

[00:10:14] this exact same thing in different language sometimes it'll add to. It seems like this is adding to.

[00:10:19] So we want to research that. Check that out. This planted actually mean planted. Is this really what

[00:10:25] it sounds like where it's not just accidentally seed blown there deliberately put there? We could even

[00:10:30] research stream and realize, oh, that actually might be referencing some sort of irrigation canal. I

[00:10:36] don't know if you have those around here in Temecula. We have those in Boise because it's a desert. So

[00:10:41] if you're going to get any water, you got to have canals that move the water to where you need it. Right?

[00:10:46] You could keep working through the whole thing and you could talk about chaff and research chaff

[00:10:50] and what that is right? Interpretation. We begin to wrestle with what does this mean

[00:10:54] until we can put it back together and then how do we respond?

[00:10:59] All right? That's inductive Bible study observation, interpretation, application. So let's take those three parts

[00:11:09] and talk then about, you know, although we just kind of real quickly hit Psalm 1, let's talk about what we

[00:11:15] were doing and then give you some tips for how you can do each of those three those three stages

[00:11:19] of inductive Bible study well. Right? So observation. The key thing we're talking about with observation is what do I see?

[00:11:27] That's what we're asking. What do I see when we read the text? And so we want to merge ourselves in it.

[00:11:33] We want to read it over and over again. We want to read it probably in multiple different translations

[00:11:38] and just kind of fill our minds of text and see what we can see. And one of the things that helps me

[00:11:44] think about different kinds of things to look for is a simple little acrostic cure. What's the cure?

[00:11:50] And these stands for various things. So the C stands for connected. How are things connected?

[00:11:57] What's the relationship between ideas? What's relationship between sentences? How does this paragraph connect

[00:12:02] with the paragraph before and the paragraph after it? How are things connected? You're looking at

[00:12:07] therefores and so that's and because and however in those kinds of words, right? And how things

[00:12:12] are related by how they're connected unfamiliar to you. So you might as you're doing observation

[00:12:18] you might want to mark down to things that are unfamiliar. What's chaff? Like Psalm 1 mentions

[00:12:24] chaff. What's chaff if you're not a farmer, you know, you may not know or you've never grown wheat

[00:12:29] or barley, you may not know what chaff was right. So you have to think that through and or other

[00:12:34] unfamiliar things. I'm familiar customs and habits when we will look at a passage here in a second

[00:12:41] out of Luke chapter 7. This woman's crying at Jesus' feet. How in the world did you get to Jesus'

[00:12:47] feet when he was eating? There's something going on there, right? It's custom. And so we want to

[00:12:52] look at unfamiliar customs or post-resurrection in the gospel of John. It says that Peter was stripped

[00:12:58] for work. Was he fishing buck naked? Like what does it mean to be stripped for work and how should

[00:13:04] we picture that? I'm familiar or you know a denarius or a lepton or different denominations

[00:13:10] of currency that show up in the gospels, right? Or unfamiliar people groups who in the world

[00:13:15] the emalachites and why does God want the Israelites to kill them all?

[00:13:20] Right. So things that are unfamiliar or the R stands for repeated when you start to see

[00:13:26] repetitions in a book, repetitions in a paragraph, or even a repeated pattern that you saw

[00:13:32] you know earlier in the Bible. Now this pattern's showing up again. Hmm. Why is that? Let's pay

[00:13:38] attention to those things. So note things that are repeated or the E stands for emphasized one

[00:13:45] way to emphasize things is repeating it. But in other ways to list it off, right? And things

[00:13:50] of that sort are the things that seem to be emphasized in the way it's put in the text or shows up in

[00:13:55] the text. So that helps just wrestle with what do I see? Another another little strategy or tool

[00:14:02] that will help you do observation well is the standard kind of journalistic questions. Who? What?

[00:14:09] Where? When? Why? How, right? Like those sorts of questions. Ask those questions as you read the text.

[00:14:17] Who are the ungodly we had asked when we were looking at Psalm 1, right? Who are the scoffers?

[00:14:23] It's not a word I use every day. Who are the scoffers in Psalm 1? What does it mean to meditate?

[00:14:29] Right? And how do you meditate and still do life? We're going to have to wrestle with that. So

[00:14:34] ask these questions or if you're reading a narrative text, where is this place?

[00:14:39] You know, Ephesus in Acts chapter 19 they burn a whole lot of magic books in Ephesus. Can we

[00:14:44] find anything about Ephesus and its relationship to magic that might explain why that's a big deal

[00:14:49] in Ephesus? So we're going to do a little research about the city of Ephesus and where it's at

[00:14:53] and the significance that it played in the first century world. So ask who, where, when, why? When

[00:14:58] you do that if you ask to those cure kinds of things and these kinds of questions all of a sudden

[00:15:04] you have a bunch of data you're looking at. It's like you've gone to a crime scene if you watch

[00:15:11] you know crime scene TV show type stuff, right? And you've now got all this data but you've got to

[00:15:16] still figure out what does it mean? What does it mean? That's the next step. So observation says

[00:15:22] what do I see? But interpretation is well now I've got all these questions, all these initial

[00:15:27] observations, all these initial ideas, what do I do with all that? Well what you do is you begin

[00:15:33] to try to figure out the answers to the question so you can ask what does this passage mean?

[00:15:39] What does this passage say? What's the significance of it? And so we move to interpretation and we ask

[00:15:46] what does it mean? What does it mean? And when you're doing interpretation the key things

[00:15:50] we're looking for primarily have to do with context. These top two on this list have to do with

[00:15:59] the two main sources of context we want to pay attention to, the historical context and the literary

[00:16:05] context. When we talk historical context what we have to recognize is that when you pick up your

[00:16:11] Bible and read or when you tell somebody else to pick up their Bible and read it's like traveling

[00:16:19] to a foreign country in a time machine. That's what you're doing. You're traveling to a foreign

[00:16:24] country and you're doing so in a time machine because you're going back in time to a place that

[00:16:34] is probably different even than that place is today because of the time difference. And so

[00:16:40] there is a massive amount of historical and cultural background that this isn't readily apparent

[00:16:45] to us we don't automatically know it, we didn't live there, we didn't have their hopes,

[00:16:50] their dreams, their fears, we didn't have their historical experience and so we've got to dig

[00:16:54] into the historical background. We got to try to bring it to life, we got to try to understand

[00:16:59] the cultural context and who these people are and why they're doing some of those things

[00:17:03] and when we begin to do that also not only does the story or the text kind of become three

[00:17:10] dimensional jump off the page but things that seem confusing is like oh in their culture that made

[00:17:15] a lot of sense. Why does Sarah say to Abraham here's Hagar you're servant make a baby with her

[00:17:25] to us it's like weird to Abraham and Sarah is like perfect sense they didn't have

[00:17:31] been vitro fertilization you needed to protect your family property and your family land

[00:17:37] and your family lineage and heritage how do you do that surrogate?

[00:17:44] So Sarah saying since I can't get pregnant let's use a surrogate. Weird dust made sense in their

[00:17:50] cultural context it was the standard way to do it they were just doing it the normal old human

[00:17:55] way and that was the problem. God's like wait hold on hold on hold on I got a better idea let's do

[00:18:01] my way. Cultural context we have to know the cultural background and the historical background

[00:18:07] that includes the situation the story of the prodigal son very familiar who's the original audience

[00:18:13] for the story of the prodigal son. Well Luke chapter 15 tells us the Pharisees the story is not

[00:18:23] addressed to out and out sinners who are off in Las Vegas you know doing whatever they can do

[00:18:28] you know living it up and partying it up and the story is told to the religious people are

[00:18:32] sitting at church who were looking down on that person that's the original audience that changes

[00:18:37] the angle on how we read the story and how we hear the ending of the story that the older brother

[00:18:43] is still outside. So you're going to soften his heart and see actually going to come into the party

[00:18:46] or not. The situation that's part of the historical context literary context literary context is how

[00:18:55] does this fit into the flow of thought of the book and how does it fit in relationship to the paragraphs

[00:19:00] before and after it or to the stories before and after for reading narrative how does this fit

[00:19:05] in the flow of what is written that's the literary context we have to pay attention to that right

[00:19:11] and so again you're paying attention to connections at that point there is therefore now no

[00:19:17] condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for for what the law could not do because it was

[00:19:20] to the flesh God did sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin he

[00:19:25] condemns him in the flesh right Romans chapter 8 notice there is therefore now no condemnation

[00:19:32] we're so quick to grab onto the end of Romans chapter 7 the things I want to do I don't do and the

[00:19:37] things I don't want to do I do we miss the solution. Romans chapter 8 there is therefore now no

[00:19:44] condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus this is telling us how to be set free from the peril

[00:19:49] of Romans chapter 7 you do it by not walking according to the law but walking according to the

[00:19:53] spirit by faith in Jesus Christ context and so we got to pay attention to the literary context as

[00:19:59] we do that that'll involve things like words and grammar and paying attention to specific words

[00:20:04] and having to do word studies and things okay maybe that's an unfamiliar word and I'm not sure

[00:20:08] what that means we're going to dig into that and sort that that word out we're going to have to

[00:20:12] think through meditate and Psalm chapter 1 what does it mean to meditate day and night we're

[00:20:17] gonna look at that phrase we're gonna look up the word meditate and we're gonna learn that word

[00:20:21] actually is used sometimes of like a lion lying on its prey and you're just meaning the idea of the

[00:20:27] word is to ruminate to chew it up and that's what we're doing with scriptures can you do that as

[00:20:31] you're going about your day yes you can you can chew it up as you're going about your day

[00:20:36] get those free moments when you're driving in the car and set of listening to something the car

[00:20:40] you keep silently just ponder what you were reading that morning or whatever else it is right

[00:20:44] you look at the word and you wrestle what does that word mean and we dig into it we figure it out

[00:20:49] and then oh now I get what's really going on genre what's a genre it's type of literature

[00:20:55] there's different types of literature in the Bible you got historical narrative you got poetry

[00:20:59] book of Psalms and some of the prophets and some of the other wisdom writings are poetry you got

[00:21:05] apocalyptic literature the book of Revelation what in the world is that most of us feel that

[00:21:10] when we read Revelation right pocket it's a particular type of literature it was common

[00:21:15] to the Jews they were familiar with apocalyptic they knew how it worked even if we don't so we're

[00:21:18] gonna have to figure out the different genres and figure that stuff out and then this last

[00:21:23] little bullet point under interpretation is so often overlooked in classes on how to study the

[00:21:29] Bible books on how to study the Bible it's so critical after you have done all the observation

[00:21:34] and you've done all your research what do you have a bunch of scraps a bunch of pieces which doesn't

[00:21:41] do a whole lot of good unless you put it all back together and say what's the main point

[00:21:46] and so we've got to before we're done with interpretation we got to you know kind of reassemble

[00:21:51] this whole thing and say step back and read the whole paragraph and say oh what's this paragraph

[00:21:57] about I get it and if you're looking at Psalm chapter one right we would say oh I see what this

[00:22:03] paragraph is about it's about the outcome of the wicked and the righteous what's the outcome

[00:22:10] of a wicked life and what's the outcome of a righteous life well the way of the wicked will perish

[00:22:15] but God knows the way of the righteous it'll last right now we know this what's it's about

[00:22:22] this is making a point about there's two different ways to choose in life the way of the righteous

[00:22:27] or the way of the wicked one leads to life one leads to death put it all back together

[00:22:34] into a coherent whole and so at that point then once you have all the parts put back together

[00:22:40] the whole now you're ready to say so what do I do how do I respond how do we respond as the people

[00:22:48] of God and how do we respond in relation to each other how do we respond in relationship to God

[00:22:54] how do we respond in relation to the world how do we respond to the text and that's application

[00:23:01] and just to help help us do that well here are four questions that'll help us be really intentional

[00:23:09] about application had Robinson who some of you might know that name he was one of the most well-known

[00:23:16] teachers of preaching for probably 50 years in the United States he used to say more heresy happens

[00:23:22] at the point of application than any other point in the sermon so we need to be really intentional

[00:23:28] and deliberate at this move when we go from interpretation to how do we respond we can't be

[00:23:34] haphazard or sloppy so four questions tell what's the original purpose of the text why was this

[00:23:40] text written in the first place what are we trying to achieve at this point in the text why did the

[00:23:44] author put this here what's the original purpose what was the original response in other words how

[00:23:49] would the original audience needed to respond what was the original author trying to get the

[00:23:54] original audience to do in response to this text how are they going to respond then we can ask how

[00:24:02] are we similar and how are we different from the original audience there are some similarities

[00:24:07] and differences we're not them right when you read you know Ephesians or Colossians or Galatians

[00:24:13] just have to accept you're reading somebody else's mail you're not the Galatians no one's coming

[00:24:21] into your church well it could happen these days with the Hebrew roots movement but most likely

[00:24:26] probably know it's coming into your church and saying unless you're all circumcised you're really

[00:24:30] not part of Abraham's family you're not really justified right so then what do we do with Galatians

[00:24:36] since that's not the exact same issue that's the issue that was going on behind how are we similar

[00:24:40] how are we different and then once we have that sort of sorted out then we can we can begin to say

[00:24:46] okay so what's our response how do we respond and view of what the original purpose of this text is

[00:24:53] and what and what the original writer was after and their response how do we respond now that we

[00:25:01] understand all of that and that helps move us to being very intentional in our response now I

[00:25:09] would be remiss if I didn't just say this as we wrapped up this session to echo what Jim said

[00:25:16] the ultimate goal of scripture is not for us to do something to the text we're we've got to

[00:25:24] do our study to make sure we're being responsible and we're teaching the truth but at the end of the day

[00:25:29] the text wants to do something to us and so as we dig in and as we look at it at some point we just

[00:25:38] need to step back and remember this is God's word it's a treasure given to us to help us

[00:25:45] know God and know ourselves and know who we are and where we stand and we ultimately sit under

[00:25:51] this text not over this text and so once we do our Bible study and once we think we have some

[00:25:57] of the details figured out then let's push push back and meditate on the text and talk to God

[00:26:03] about what we're seeing in the text and engage with God and let them speak to us in the text so that

[00:26:07] when we stand and speak to others we're not just giving a bunch of historical facts and a bunch

[00:26:13] of random data we're giving a word from God because we've encountered God in the text ultimately

[00:26:19] that's all right all right thanks for listening all the way to the end man that was powerful that

[00:26:27] was like lot of content wasn't it well in the show notes still be links and resources where

[00:26:34] you can find other stuff from John Whitaker about understanding the Bible and putting it into practice

[00:26:42] he actually is the brain and the voice behind the very popular listeners commentary which is an

[00:26:50] audio book week by week chapter by chapter commentary through the Bible he's currently going

[00:26:57] through Matthew but there's a great back catalog it's not like sermon it's not like a regular

[00:27:02] podcast it truly is like an audio commentary basically you've got to check it out for yourself I

[00:27:10] love it I listen almost every single week also I forgot to mention this but John is on the

[00:27:18] leadership team of expositors collective he's just one of the brilliant minds behind the scenes

[00:27:26] that are trying to cultivate and create a resource that is going to benefit you and that is going

[00:27:32] to help your Bible teaching because we believe that by equipping and enriching and empowering you

[00:27:40] it's going to benefit the men women children that are going to listen to your Bible studies

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