Understanding the Bigger Picture

In this episode, Dr. Gregg Watson and Dr. Paul Kelly talk about understanding scripture within the broader context. They emphasize the importance of grasping the big picture before delving into the details, dissecting every verse can sometimes obscure the author's intended message. Using the analogy of the armor of God from Ephesians, they illustrate how each piece contributes to the larger theme of spiritual warfare and the necessity of prayer in facing spiritual challenges.

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr. Gregg Watson

Associate Dean of Academic Services & Professor of Old Testament Studies

Host

Dr. Paul Kelly

Professor of Educational Leadership

Host

Tyler Sanders

Director of Communications

Producer

Courtney McCaa

Digital Media Specialist

What is The Bible Teaching Podcast?

Practical instruction for today's church leaders with Dr. Paul Kelly and Dr. Gregg Watson.

Speaker 1 0:00
Hi, I'm your host, Tyler Sanders and with me is Dr. Greg Watson and Dr. Paul Kelly. Today, our topic is the big picture, how individual verses or sections of Scripture fit into the broader context. And I think we're going to talk about not just how it fits into maybe the passage it's in or the book, but kind of how it fits into the whole narrative of the Bible. So why don't you take us there, Dr. Kelly.

Dr. Kelly 0:25
Yeah, I think that's really important, Tyler. Because it seems like to me that there are an awful lot of times when we teach scripture, and we're kind of trying to walk verse by verse through it. And there's a lot of folks that really wanted to verse by verse teaching, and there's some value to understanding every verse in a passage. The challenge for us, is that sometimes when we get really deep into one verse at a time, we can miss what the passage is actually trying to say. It's one of those kind of things where you get so captured by the individual blades of grass, that you sort of miss the field. Or you have one tree that you're so focused on that you miss the whole forest. And I think it's not just a matter of me only getting a piece of the truth with each verse, it's a matter of misunderstanding the big picture of the passage, because I'm so focused on one verse at a time, I break everything up into separate pieces of it. I can't really do a good job, I think, of interpreting a passage of scripture by looking one verse at a time, that I need to understand what the thrust of the passage is. And then based on that, see how the verses put that together. So sometimes the approach that we want to take to be really, really biblical may actually work against us in our understanding of the passage.

Dr. Watson 1:56
As I call it, atomizing the text. Look, we can get caught up breaking it down into words, phrases, clauses, sentences, verses, and so forth. And look, there's a place for that. I'm an exegete, I love doing that kind of work and stuff. But that microview can often obscure, because we must always be ready and have the ability to back up and get a broader view of how, what we're reading fits into a larger picture. I put it like this; I can say 'I love pizza.' And you got a pretty good idea of what love means there. But if I say 'I love Kim', who's my wife, almost 35 years, it automatically changed. All I did was change the direct object clause there, and it changed the meaning of the word. But to understand what that really means, you'd have to go back 37 years ago when I met her and trace through getting married and being at seminary together and being poor and working-not that we're wealthy or anything-but you know.

Dr. Kelly 3:02
You're like the Associate Dean, you're making the big bucks.

Dr. Watson 3:08
Yeah, believe me. Boy, that just derailed me. But look, you cannot understand the little bitty parts in isolation. Like, take the word "agape". Ask anybody, what does agape mean?

Dr. Kelly 3:27
It's love.

Dr. Watson 3:28
Yeah, but what kind of love?

Tyler Sanders 3:30
Big Love.

Dr. Watson 3:31
Unconditional love.

Dr. Kelly 3:32
Yeah.

Dr. Watson 3:32
Well, do you know there are places it's used, where it doesn't mean that at all.

Tyler Sanders 3:35
Sure. Yeah. There's still a contextual-

Dr. Watson 3:37
You've got to have context. It's everything.

Dr. Kelly 3:40
Right. Right.

Dr. Watson 3:40
And also, atomizing can have you mix the big picture within a passage. Because if you're breaking things down into little minimal parts, you may be missing the author's point entirely.

Dr. Kelly 4:02
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that there's a way of reading scripture or a way of understanding scripture that sort of approaches every verse as if it's a proverb. That in the book of Proverbs, there are a lot of verses that are just a verse. And that's what it means, and then we're gonna move on to something else. And I think sometimes there's a way that Bible teachers approach scripture, where we look at every verse as if it's a standalone, one statement, and this is what it means, and then I can pull out of that. And it may be even worse, I can pull something out of that, and then go chase all over scripture to try to supplement what that means. And maybe I'm not even talking about the word in the right context, within the context of what we're talking about. That I think that understanding the big idea of a passage before I start trying to understand how the pieces fit is is essential if I'm going to be able to do good Bible study.

Speaker 1 4:55
I think this is probably a particular problem that seminary students face. Or people straight out of seminary, because you get introduced to this world where, when you're doing research, there are articles and maybe even whole books sometimes written about a word. Like it goes very, very deep. I remember, I had a Hebrew exegesis class with Dr. Arbino on the book of Jonah, which is a very short book. But it's every week, you're going word by word, and you live with a microscope to do that. And I think it was the 11th or 12th week, pretty deep into the semester, he played for us a recording of someone, it was kind of like a chant or like singing, the whole book of Jonah. And it's like, four and a half minutes long. And it was such a breath of fresh air to get thrown that far back in your perspective of like, okay, I've been spending weeks and weeks on this going letter by letter through this, but like this whole book, you can read it really quickly. You can get to the whole thing-like and you should see it like this, because that's a way to understand this whole thing. Like, we need to know all the nooks and crannies of this text. But we also need to know the big curve, the arc that this whole book takes. And that was a hugely eye opening experience.

Dr. Kelly 6:21
Yeah, you know, I was taking Hebrew. We were translating a passage about Abraham and Isaac. And I was just working word by word trying to translate this using the tools that they'd given us with Hebrew, and I get to this word, 'Issaak'. And I'm like, 'Okay, I know that this has something to do with laughing. But what is this? What is this configuration?' And so I'm like, working like crazy to try to figure out what this is saying about-is it he laughed? Well, that doesn't fit the context, or he's laughing or what did I-. I get to class, and I just wrote down laughing, and I get to class and I'm thinking, 'okay, he's gonna kill me, because I haven't got this one.' And he starts reading the passage, and it's "Isaac". But I think there is that ability for us to get so microscoped in, in trying to understand, that we miss what's really going on in the text.

Speaker 2 6:29
And it's important to learn how to get down to those details. But it's also important to learn how to zoom out and kind of see the bigger picture. There's a guy named Grant Osbourne, and he wrote a book, pretty dense thing, but it's called...it's called...oh, for crying out loud. Why does my brain shut down at moments like this?

Speaker 1 7:45
This is-so we have another podcast at the school, where I interview pastors. And I have to prep everyone before I ask them the question of, what are you reading right now? Because it's really hard, there's something in the human brain, that when you have like a microphone in your face, and you have to remember the title of a book...

Dr. Watson 8:01
Well, he wrote something, it's on interpretation...oh! The Hermeneutical Spiral. And what his point is, is look, you got to dig into the details. But as you do it, you've got to always look back and see where you've come from, and how what you've learned related to where you've come from. You know, it's important to atomize but it's important, even more important, to be discerning as to whether that's what the author intended you to do or not.

Dr. Kelly 8:32
Right, well, and the truth is, is that if I have to pick between getting the big idea of a text and understanding what a specific word in verse two means, I want the big idea. If I have to pick between those things, that's what's going to be most important. I guess, the way I got thinking about this podcast and what we might do with this, is at my church our pastor decided that we were going to preach a series of sermons on the armor of God. And so we like picked each different piece of armor and did a separate sermon on each one of those things. And I was assigned to do the shoes. I actually had a lot of fun with that just because I was like, they get all the cool pieces armor and I get the shoes. But I started digging into, okay, how do we preach a sermon about your shoes with the gospel, the preparation of the gospel? And I was like, well, everything that I started wanting to do with it, was building on other things that were going around in the text, and trying to separate that out and say, Okay, let me talk about the shoes as different than the helmet of salvation, or as different than this or that. It just all didn't make a lot of sense. And I started to think, I think we've pulled this apart without really saying, what are we trying to accomplish big picture, what are the things that we're trying to do? And I'm not saying that we can't look at those pieces of armor individually. But I think when we start looking at those pieces of armor, we need to start by saying this is an analogy that Paul's using. What does the analogy mean?

Dr. Watson 8:49
This is an important part of our hermeneutics, because you go listen to sermons and it's just like you said, man, they jump in and they want to spend a week on every single piece here. But look, what does he say? Put on parts of the armor? Put on the whole armor of God! And then he puts that in kind of a thing to describe what each of those are. But "the whole armor". And look, you've always heard this thing that the only offensive weapon in all of this army is the Word. Right, it's the sword. Look, I'm a martial arts guy. I love martial arts. And I love reading about arms. Stuff like that. Armor has never been about defense. What is the purpose of having defense? So that you can take a strike and strike back. Look, do you think Bruce Lee would agree that shoes are purely defensive? No, your feet, you kick with them! You think a soldier, a Roman soldier, would not use his feet to kick? If somebody strikes and they swing their weapon and you block it with your greaves, you're gonna go around and strike again-I just hit the microphone.

Dr. Watson 11:03
What you can't see on the podcast is him blocking strikes.

Dr. Watson 11:38
We got nunchucks.

Dr. Watson 11:43
And that's the point. Armor is not just defensive.

Dr. Kelly 11:46
Yeah, yeah. Well, let me read the passage. We're in Ephesians chapter six. And I'm going to read verses 10 through 20. Paul says, "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. But on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. That I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak."

Dr. Kelly 13:28
And I just think this is such a rich passage, because it talks about, first of all, the need for us to be able to have a consistent life given and devoted to God. That all this stuff about standing against the enemy, Paul just makes it really clear that our enemy is not an enemy of flesh and blood, that it's not an enemy of my brother in Christ, or even somebody that I disagree with. Or for that matter, even though rulers that I'm facing in this world, but that there are spiritual enemies that I'm fighting with. So I have to learn how to fight spiritually. And so when he talks about this armor of God, it's not so much talking about, okay, I've got the helmet and that's salvation and the heart is supposed to be covered by righteousness-that sort of stretches this point. What Paul is really trying to help us to understand is that we need the gospel of Christ enveloping us. Put on every part of our body, so that we can walk. And he uses these different words as a way to sort of help us to flesh out these different aspects of the gospel but our weapons are spiritual in nature. The way that we fight this battle is spiritual in nature. And I need to help folks, as I'm teaching, to understand that if I get all locked up and I have to get up in the morning and put on my helmet of salvation, then I've sort of missed the point. That the point is that God has given me this spiritual life. It's not really all that different from what Paul talks about when he talks about us clothing ourselves in righteousness.

Dr. Watson 15:11
There's a few..."be strong in the Lord", or "be strengthened by the Lord. Put on the whole armor of God." I think you're right with the analogy. But I think what the analogy is pointing to, and the outworking, how it works. How do I put on this armor? Verse 18, "Prayed all times with the Spirit." That the key to being armored is to be consistently in communication and fellowship with God.

Dr. Kelly 15:45
Yeah. And even pushing beyond that, it's praying not just for myself, but praying for those around me to be involved with them in the fight that they're struggling with against the spiritual enemies that we're facing.

Dr. Watson 15:59
And you go back and you read in these chapters...you know, Ephesians is such a rich book. But he moves- in all of his letters or most of his letters-he moves into the sections where, on the one hand, he talks about life within the household. These household commands, but he also does these community type things where he's doing these exertations about how to live-that's what we're in, partially, here. He does that and then it goes into the household things. Wives and husband, children and parents, slaves and masters. And then it comes to spiritual warfare. And so he's hit all the social and all these domestic things. And now he's saying, so how do we get ourselves ready and prepared to deal with? So do you see how it fits?

Dr. Kelly 16:48
Yeah, yeah. So my wife is not my enemy. I'm dealing with spiritual enemies. That my children are not my enemy.

Dr. Watson 16:57
She might be throwing stuff at you but number one, you probably deserve it. And number two, it's probably not spiritual darts she's throwing, right?

Tyler Sanders 17:06
So then, if we're doing a passage like this, how do you practically kind of move back and forth in your lesson? If you're going to teach Ephesians over a couple of weeks or months, even maybe. I mean, certainly, you see churches that will preach through a book like this for several months. How do you weave back and forth getting big picture and then getting into the weeds again?

Dr. Kelly 17:30
I think that having folks look at what he's talking about in terms of the different aspects, starting by saying, okay, he's talking about us armoring ourselves. And then talking about these different aspects of that and how they're alike and what this piece brings that's different, becomes helpful. And then saying, and so if we put that all together, what is Paul trying to say? I think both starting with the big picture in mind, and then inviting folks to look into the weeds and then start to pull it all together and say, when we wrap it up, what does it say for us? What is this telling us? What is this trying to get us to do? So rather than saying, Okay, let's go through and deal with each one of these pieces of the analogy? I mean, we can deal with that. But then at the end of it, that's not the application. The way I want to be thinking about this is, how do I put all this together? What's the principle that Paul's talking about? What's the goal that he's telling us to try to reach out to? What's the practice that he's looking for in all of this? And I think by bringing them back to the big picture, that we can start to get that. I mean, actually, I think there's some really interesting things when you get down into the weeds of this. Like, this is one of, maybe the only time, that Paul refers to the gospel as the gospel of peace. I just think that's interesting. I'm not really quite sure what it means. But I think it's interesting. So I think there are some things that you could deal with as you get down into the weeds. But if I focus on that, and I miss the point of the passage, I've sort of done a bad lesson.

Dr. Watson 19:00
Again, you go in, look at Paul, look at the church at Ephesus, look at what was going on. And what do we know about the church at Ephesus, and what was going on at the time we believe Paul wrote this? How does that shape the message? I think in terms of how we teach, we got to slow down. And we've got to take the time to lay out the big picture. And then as we go into the more immediate, specific things, draw them back out and hang them. Let the big picture have those hangers. And let's hang it and remind again and again and again, remember this is the big picture. When I was teaching through John, when the Sunday School literature was going through the Gospel of John earlier in the year, we start off John One, I said, Why did John write his gospel? Jesus is God. And every time I taught, every tight passage, every passages we hit. Why did John write this gospel? So how does this passage fix that? How do we hang on that? Remind them, given those touchstones.

Dr. Kelly 20:15
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think you can approach that in a couple of different ways. I mean, I think what Greg's talking about is really good that you say, Okay, let me paint for you what it is Paul's trying to accomplish. And then let's look at the ways that he accomplished it. I think that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to start with a little pieces and start to say this, and then add this to it. Oh, gosh, what does that give us? And then add this too, that does something new, and then add this to it. And then when we get all of it together, say, so what's the whole thing look like? So that we can-I don't necessarily have to broadcast up front, this is where we're going. I can let them discover that as we go. But I've got to know where I'm going. And I've got to turn loose of things that are extraneous, it that helps me to get to the big picture.

Speaker 1 21:02
That's a good point, is the prep side. You really, as a teacher, you have to know what those big ideas are and how everything relates back into it.

Dr. Watson 21:10
Adductive, deductive. And can you mix those things?

Dr. Kelly 21:17
But if I don't have the big picture, if I don't have a big idea in mind of where I'm trying to go...and really, this is true for a sermon as well as your Bible study, if I don't have a big picture in mind someplace that I'm trying to get to, what's the core idea? And I can't just come up with a big idea, it's got to be there in the text. It needs to be what the text says. Ideally, the core idea of the text, if I miss that and I'm wandering through the minutia...we're just the Jews wandering through the wilderness yet again.

Speaker 1 21:53
Yeah, one of the toughest assignments I had in one of Dr. Wegner's class, an Old Testament professor here, was I had a class on Daniel with him. And he would make us...you only had one page, and you had to make a slide that was visual. It couldn't just be jammed full of text. It had to be like visually appealing. He wanted you to make a handout that like if you're preaching on Daniel, or teaching on it, here's a handout you can give to everyone in the church that they can understand. An overview of the whole book. And I'm telling you, no matter how many words you had on there, it was too many. And we would work through this thing and work through it. But it was all condense, condense, summarize. But you really start to think through like, what would I need to put on here to provide that historical context? What do I need to say about the shape of the book? What are the major sections? What are the themes as they break down? And then what's the big picture? And he would really press us to do that. But it was a really good practice, because it makes you take all those tiny ideas and put it into something where you can really...it's not just conceptualizing it, it's putting it in a way that you can easily say it. Becuase if you can't, you might have the idea in your head, but if you can't really just, one sentence, say what the book is about like, you're never gonna get there in a lesson. You'll just be circling and circling and circling.

Dr. Kelly 21:53
So good.

Speaker 1 22:28
I think it would be really important, too, and this is something that I struggle with, because in class there's so much information, like in Old Testament intro, especially in the spring, we have 33 books. We got Isaiah, Jeremiah, you know, 50-60 chapters.

Tyler Sanders 23:33
It's probably the most pages you have to go over.

Dr. Watson 23:35
And Psalms. It's crazy! So you don't have time. But one of the things I would really love to be able to do is, instead of just feeding out information in classes, actually take the time to get students to learn how to do that themselves. You know, I don't just want you to learn the small picture and the big picture, I want you to go in and find that small picture and the big picture.

Dr. Kelly 23:53
That's so good. And I think one of the challenges for us is that we sort of have this assumption that I've got to teach everything in the passage. And I'm of the opinion that I'm never going to get there. That the Bible is so rich, that I'm never going to exhaust a passage of scripture. And so if that's true, then if I'm walking verse by verse and trying to pull out everything that's there, I'm never going to get finished. And I'm never going to be able to really get to what the big picture truth is. On the other hand, if I understand what the passage is trying to teach, if I understand what this is saying, then I know I can pick out these four ideas out of the 10 ideas that are here, and they'll help somebody to understand the passage in terms of what it's teaching, even though there's minor details we just don't have time in one Bible study to be able to get to.

Dr. Watson 25:02
Paul can have a relatively short passage where he's got three major topics. And each one of them are relevant to what he's saying in that context. You don't have to preach all of them. Or teach all of them. Pick one of them, mention the other two and say, but we don't have time to do that. We're gonna dig in on this one. And do it.

Dr. Kelly 25:24
And I mean, I think the challenge in that in deciding what I'm not going to teach is that if I understand the purpose of the text, that that's what ought to drive me.

Tyler Sanders 25:33
Yeah, that'll help you prioritize.

Dr. Kelly 25:35
That if I understand the big picture, then that ought to help me drop-I mean, I don't want to just pick out the pieces of that, that I like the best, I want to pick out the pieces that most make the point that Scripture is trying to make.

Speaker 1 25:48
Yeah. I mean, it's fantastic. Well, let's spin the wheel. I love this passage because I feel like this is one of those passages that probably gets taught a lot to young-it seems like we always end up on a young age group, but it's probably one that gets taught a lot for little ones.

Dr. Watson 26:05
Again, I remember the flannel thing and you got to the devil shooting!

Tyler Sanders 26:15
Oh, even better college. People who may be too sarcastic for the felt. And to dress up in armor. That's a good one.

Dr. Kelly 26:26
I mean, I think I'd say the same thing for college students that we've been talking about. That this text really is talking about an ability to stand in terms of my faith and that I am standing with spiritual tools, with the gospel. And that everything in this text is focused on me living out the gospel, and being engaged in the Gospel. And so we can stop and talk about the different aspects of it. But I think, with college students, if I miss the big picture, then they're gonna walk away with sort of this list of things to do. And I think that misses the intention of the passage.

Dr. Watson 27:15
I think Ephesians speaks to some of the most places where college age people are so vulnerable. We talked in another time, about what God...when you say "God", some people are thinking, 'well, I'm god.' Some people have their own version of God. And in the popular society, man, that's kind of cool. God, the universe, whatever. When we Christians talk about God, we mean specifically, "God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit," we've got this Trinitarian belief, and our college age folks are just inundated with reasons not to believe that, with challenges to the ethical life they lead. Paul's writing in Ephesians, I love the subtitles in the Holman Christian Standard Bible, chapter 4:17 and following, "Living the new life, light versus darkness, wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters." And then in our passage here, "Christian warfare". And Paul ends up this whole entire section, he says, "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with every prayer and request" because all of these things are places where that view is challenged. And he's saying, Look, cover yourself with the gospel. Cover yourself with prayer. And one thing that armour does as well, and this is one thing I've learned in martial arts, is when you feel pressure going one way, you've got two choices. You can either fight back directly against it, or you can flow around it. You can move around it. Sometimes I gotta fight, push back. But you know, for the most part, I don't have to give up where I'm standing to move around the force that's been directed at me. I don't have to lose ground as a believer, simply because the pressure on the world is coming. I can stand firm, I can stand eye to eye and toe to toe, and I can move around. And I've got offensive weapons that I can use here. I can fight back.

Dr. Kelly 29:33
Yeah, it's good. You know, one of the things I think about college students too, at least I think about my college days, and how things were just coming online for me in my spiritual life in a way that they never had before in high school. But I think there's a tendency in those young adult years to really want to focus a lot on sort of getting things right, getting the specifics. And I think teaching them to read the Bible the way that we're talking about would be huge. Getting them to say, look, we're going to understand all these things about the armor, but the question is, can you identify the big picture when you're talking about it? What is the passage trying to say? If you miss the big picture-and going back to your Jonah idea, I think with college students saying, Okay, you can look through all the details of it but the question is, what's the story about? I think that's a really good question and really a way to help college students start to...they're being challenged in all of their classes to be able to dissect things and take things apart. And to be able to say read the Bible with the intention of understanding the whole thing, not just how a word works.

Tyler Sanders 30:46
Yeah. You have to be able to do a little bit of both. Well, I think we have a good challenge for this week. I'm going to use the title of the book, you mentioned, the hermeneutical spiral. I think that'd be a great thing to do. Prepare a lesson this week, and really focus on that spiral. Try to go big picture, get in the details. Go back up to the big picture and just check your work. Look at it, make sure you're still headed the same direction as the text. That's it. Thanks so much.