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This podcast episode discusses how to determine the main point of a Bible passage or book when studying it. The guest, John Beeson, explains that understanding the author's intended main point is crucial. He also mentions that there can be multiple points, but there is usually a driving purpose. He gives the example of the book of Proverbs, which is about seeking wisdom and fearing the Lord. The host, Tom Terry, shares his approach of studying longer passages to understand the bigger picture of the entire book. The conversation also touches on how to read a book or letter as the original audience would have understood it, using study Bibles and the book of Acts for context. The episode concludes with the importance of identifying the main point and recurring themes in a book, even if there are other themes present. This is Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org. I'm your host, Tom Terry, and in this podcast, we'll be exploring elements of Bible study so that you can get the most out of your time when studying God's Word. Our guest for this three-episode series on the elements of Bible study is John Beeson. John received his Master's of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is currently the co-lead pastor of New Life Fellowship in Tucson, Arizona, and in addition to his pastoral duties, John is a regular contributor to PreachItTeachIt.org. For this episode, we'll be talking about how to make the main point of a Scripture passage the main point in your Bible study, class, or sermon. John, thanks for joining us again. Glad to be here. First question I want to ask you about our topic today is how do you determine what the main point of a passage or a Bible book is? That's a good question. I think the most important way to answer that, I would pick up from where we left off last time, which is just that question, what do I think the main point of the author is? Or what do I think that if I was an original hearer of the message, I would hear as the main point? It's not to say the classic Baptist preacher has the three points, alliterated for extra points there. It's not to say that there can't be more than one point. Sometimes there is. I'm going to ask you about that in a minute. Yeah, go ahead. I do think that there tends to be a driving purpose. My heart is in the book of Proverbs because we start that here a week from Sunday. I've been processing that. Proverbs is kind of the ultimate book in terms of how could you possibly nail Proverbs down to one thing. The nature of how it's written is all over the map. It feels like spaghetti. There's just everything everywhere. But it's not a surprise that they've been organized in such a way as to lead us in with the very beginning of telling us, no, no, no, the heart of this thing is all about seeking after wisdom. When you seek after wisdom, you're seeking after the things of God. And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of that wisdom. And it's foolishness to depart from wisdom. So that then frames and really ought to then, all the spaghetti strands ought to pull back to that. They're all coming from that main point, if you will. Yeah. Now, when I'm doing my studies, I really get wrapped up in whatever the point is for that particular passage that I'm looking at. And when I look at a passage, I tend to make it a long passage. Some people say, you know, just focus on this verse and this verse and that's it. But I'm like, no, because it's not written in a vacuum. It's got all this other stuff around it that it's trying to tell a portion of the story. But then I find myself sometimes getting lost in that instead of getting to the big picture of the entire book. The exception to that is John. Because in John 20, he tells us exactly why he wrote the book, so that we may believe in Jesus. And in one sense, you can say, well, that's really the point of all the four Gospels and the book of Acts when you really get down to it. But there's a lot more to it than that, isn't there? Yeah, well said. Yeah. Yeah, there really is. And I think beginning and end, you ought to wait, kind of give a special wait to. Sometimes it'll come in the middle, but usually you're going to get your, the hand is going to be tipped early. You know, I love what you're saying about the Gospels, right? So let's take, you know, the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew kind of tips his hand on the centrality of the theme of the Jewish messianic king bona fides of Jesus right up at the front of the book in terms of how he lays out the genealogy of Jesus. And so it gives you the sense, oh, he's writing for a Jewish audience. He's writing to prove them their Messiah has come. The king has come. And I want to prove to you that the king has come, right? Right. John, perfect. Actually, the end is, right, I'm writing it that you may believe. Yeah. You know, as an American in the 21st century, I wish he would say that up front instead of waiting until the second to last chapter. But the front is helpful for John, too. The bookends are helpful because John, how does John begin his book? In the beginning was the word. The word was God. The word was with God. And so John very much is writing. He's a philosopher writer in some sense. He's setting up Jesus' identity right at the first chapter. Exactly. Exactly. So you are believing for John in the connection of belief for John. It's not that it's without culture. It is. But unlike Matthew, who's making a very, very Jewish argument, John is making a very, very philosophical argument in terms of what belief in Jesus looks like and who he is. Okay. All right. How can we read a book or a letter like the original audience would have understood it? Because we are so 2,000 years divorced from their time, I kind of wonder if we could ever get it right. Yeah. So, I mean, the reality is yes. We can't. We can't ultimately get it right. Not in a perfect sense. We can't get in the heart, in the head, you know. My hunch is that those who read the book of Hebrews probably knew who it was from. We don't have that right now. We don't know who that was. Even some of the questions right now, we've kind of shifted over time. For instance, like the book of Ephesians, the way that we read that book now, we actually read that book as more of a circular letter than just to the people in Ephesus. So, yes, even though it's authored to the people in Ephesus, we actually read it more as a regional letter that holds writing this letter to that region of churches. And so that shapes and shifts our reading of it a little bit as well. But, yeah, I do think that there's, you know, we mentioned kind of a study Bible. A study Bible can be very helpful in helping you locate kind of when it was written, the location it was written, understanding, you know, what's the context leading up to this book and what happens after this book and why, you know, what do we know? You can, the letters are a great place to go back to the book of Acts. Acts is a super helpful book to kind of help trace, oh, you know, this is to, you know, Ephesians is a good one, right? This is to the people at Ephesus. Oh, well, let's look back and see what happens in Paul's ministry at Ephesus. Oh, okay. So Paul, you know, lands here and now he's, you know, obviously this is a very secular town. He ends up kind of preaching the gospel in this, like, almost doing, like, seminars, lunch seminars every day is kind of his method. It's an interesting method and ultimately he gets traction. But then there's some major consequences for him, right? His life is put on the line and there's the way in which the gospel threatens either the industry, the pagan industry of the town as it play there. And so Acts can be super helpful for the letters with that. I do think that the easiest answer to your question is a study Bible often gives you kind of eyes to see. I never want to be overly confident that I know exactly the location and exactly what those, what that first audience is thinking in receiving it. And yet as much as we can put ourselves in their sandals, if you will, and hear as they heard, the better we are going to be at discerning what is being said and how it's being said. And it really helps us protect against the most egregious mistakes that we can make in listening to a book. And dragging it straight into our culture without considering that culture that it's written to initially. Okay, so let's get right to the main point, which is what is the main point? How do we derive the main point from a book, even a larger booklet? We've talked about Isaiah, you know, in the past 66 chapters. How are you going to get the main point out of that one? Because it's a long one. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think that there's a number of questions there. And of course, you know, again, I would want to pull back and just be careful. So, you know, just because, so, you know, when you read a novel, right, there's oftentimes the main truth that that author is driving at, right? You read a book like A Tale of Two Cities, and at the heart of that book is this question of sacrifice, right? But that doesn't mean that there aren't other themes in it. So I'm going to be careful. I'm going to be careful with the main point that I don't challenge people to say, hey, if you preach the book of Isaiah, you can only preach the main point. That would not be fair. But I do want that to be sort of a guiding thing. And so, yeah, this is where, honestly, one of the things that I love doing is actually reading through a whole book. Actually, I like listening to a whole book because before I begin to preach it, a passage in it, honestly, I find both methods helpful and my brain kind of fires different ways. But one of the things about listening to it, which would have been how most people would have heard, you know, a letter, they would have received a letter in listening form or heard, you know, even a scroll of Isaiah would have been listened to before. Yeah, there was no mass distribution of Bibles. Exactly. So part of whether you're listening to it or reading to it or reading it, listen to those themes that are coming up again and again and again. And what's echoing kind of loudest in there? And let the author of the book then help guide you as you kind of step into the shoes of what's going on in the context of that book. And so listen for repeated words. Listen for repeated themes. You know, in the book of Isaiah, there's a whole series of warnings which you can kind of tune out of. But if you begin to kind of have ears to hear, you recognize that this is a book wooing God's people back to God. And so what does it look, you know, all of these themes then are now connected to a central theme that then is guiding the way that we're preaching that and the way that we're handling the text that's in front of us. You know, the more I do my own study, and I like to outline a bit of passage that I'm reading because it helps me understand the main point that they're getting to in that passage. But the more I do that, what comes across to me is the Bible or this particular book that I'm reading is really sophisticated. You know, we tend to look at maybe ancient literature or religious literature, and we think it's simple and it's not very intelligent. But really, that's not true. I mean, people in ancient days didn't just write willy-nilly and release their book at the Barnes & Noble bought or store, you know. They had very complex things that they wanted to communicate. But sometimes I find myself missing it because, again, I don't have their perspective. Yeah, no, that's well said. You never want to underestimate the intelligence of the Spirit of God working through the authors of God's Scripture. And, no, there's an incredible intentionality and layeredness there. And that's a both-and, right? So there's an invitation into the weeds of the text because you can find really good stuff even in the minutia. Yeah, there's a lot of great nuggets. Yeah, and yet there's an invitation to make sure that we're... I would say, for me, my tendency can be to get into the weeds too deep so that I miss the forest. I miss kind of what are those central guiding themes that are happening here. And that can throw me. That can throw me as an interpreter of it. If I get too deep into the specifics, then sometimes what ends up happening is then I'm grabbing hold of those nuggets and I'm beginning to pull them out and utilize them for my own systems and my own what's important to me as opposed to what's important to that author. Okay, so then how do we avoid doing what you're saying and get to the main point of an entire book, like maybe one of the Gospels or something? You don't want to get caught up in the minutia. What's the main point and how do we grab a hold of it? Yeah, yeah. So, I like that. Let's go back to the Gospels, right? So, you pick up a, you know, a Gospel of Luke. Let's take a different one, right? So, Luke begins in a very different way. It begins taking us kind of through the eyes of Mary into the story of Jesus Christ. Now, it's a very different approach. It's the approach of Luke who really pulls together quite a number of eyewitnesses to the account, Luke not being one of them, which is kind of interesting for a Gospel writer. But Luke pulls together all of these Gospel accounts And in the person of Jesus, we see a Savior who is really, in many ways, kind of shaped by that first, by the entry, which is through the eyes of Mary. It's a Jesus who has eyes for the downtrodden, has eyes for the marginalized, who is very much connected to a kingdom-making vision, which Jesus sets out in his first sermon there, pulled from the book of Isaiah, actually, in his hometown. And he says, hey, you know, you were looking for people to be healed. You were looking for the lame to walk. You were looking for, you know, for those who couldn't see to see. Here I am. I have completed this mission. And that then really shapes the whole book because you begin to see, oh, Jesus is on this kingdom-reversing mission throughout the book of Luke. That really gives you eyes to see. So take that to the very end of his life and these encounters he has with Pontius Pilate, with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish authorities, and all of these people who have their own kingdoms they're building. And Jesus is flipping those, is twisting those. He's reversing what their kingdoms are. And so, yeah, to me at the heart of Luke is this kingdom language. Now, you could say that that's also at the heart of Matthew, and they're similar. But Matthew's kingdom is a kingdom that Jesus is bringing in in very Jewish form. And so Jesus is, throughout the book of Matthew, inhabiting and fulfilling all of the great prophets that have come before, whether that's David or Moses. You know, he is the new David. He is the new Moses. And so you see these motifs very clear. Where in the book of Luke, Luke has a very much, it's not that it's, it is a very Jewish book. And yet it's also a book that's written, if I can use this language, this might be a little bit clunky. But it's a book written with a God who comes for the underdog, a God who sees and is building a kingdom out of underdogs for his own purpose. Okay, last question. What is usurping the text? How do we avoid it, assuming that it's a bad thing? Yeah, so usurping the text is probably the greatest threat really to any Christian. But I would put that mantle particularly strong around sort of the shoulders of a leader, where usurping a text is pulling a text out and it's making that text fit whatever I think, whatever my issue of the day is. Oh, you mean like that stuff that I do every day? Yes, exactly. And so there's ways in which we can do that which are less harmful and more harmful. The ways in which we do that in a less harmful way is a classic, you know, Jeremiah 29, 11. You know, I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to bring you hope and a future. It's great. That is, I think, a truth about God's purposes for me. It's actually, though, written not to me, you. It's written to a people in captivity where God is telling them, life is really, really hard right now. It's going to keep getting, it's going to keep being really hard. But I want you to remember in this context, I haven't forgotten you. I haven't given up on what my purpose is for you, right? The more dangerous form of that, I think, comes in a form of preaching, tends to be topical in nature, that where I'm addressing issues of the day, where I'm being pulled by whatever my hobby horses are, frankly. But how is that different from the systematic? So what do you mean by different? Well, you're talking about, you know, preaching something topically and then getting caught up in what is said with your own agenda. But in a sense, isn't teaching systematics, isn't that similar to topical? You mean like systematic theology? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so, I mean, every form of preaching has its dangers. You know, the classic, and this is not a dig on them because I appreciate this, the classic Calvary Chapel who preaches beginning to end of the Bible verse by verse, there's dangers in that too, right? And, you know, I'll share, as a church, we probably do 65-35. Sixty-five percent of the time we're walking verse by verse or close to it through a book of the Bible. Thirty-five percent of the time we're addressing topical issues. And there can be a danger in both of those. There's a danger in walking through that kind of either systematically in terms of expositionally, walking through verse by verse a book of the Bible in which you're so glued to the minutia of the text, you're really teaching and not preaching. You're not connecting the text to the people's lives. There's a danger in there that you kind of miss some bigger redemptive themes that we've been talking about on this podcast. But the danger of topical, though, is that I become the driving force. The preacher becomes the driving force. And now I'm looking for a text to suit my, you know, whatever it is that I want to say. And, you know, so I'm preaching on, you know, it could be something great. You're preaching on parenting, right? And you preach on discipline as a parent, you know. He that spares the rod spoils the child. You pull it, yank it right out of the book of Proverbs and bam, there you go, right? Well, okay. But, like, what about the bigger themes? Like, are you actually doing justice to that verse? And, you know, what's actually tricky, the actual, you know, I'll step into hot waters here, right? The actual issue of whether or not to have physical discipline on your children and what the Bible says about that is actually a really tricky one, right? So we have this one proverb, but we recognize that it's not built up. There's not a lot of context around that, right? And so we can say, yeah, but there's truth to that. And yet there's not a lot of other places to go in Scripture where we can say, hey, this is clearly taught kind of through and through. So I have to be careful in the rigidity in which I bring that as a preacher. Am I really bringing, hey, these are the top hits of John Beeson's parenting. These are the things that will work great for me. And so they're going to work great for you? Well, you know, they might have worked great for me, you know, by God's grace. There's many different kinds of children and there's many different challenges that parents face. I have to be very careful to grab one little verse like that and now I'm doing a sermon series on parenting and boom, there you go. And then, you know, now my next topic is, you know, if you help... I'm blanking on the verse right now. I apologize. The verse about if you help, if you raise your children in a godly way, then that's kind of the way in which they're going to go. I apologize. I'm butchering that verse right now. You're still good. You're still good. And, you know, I pull that verse out and now I'm saying, hey, listen, if you're a godly parent to your kids, then they're going to end up as godly kids, right? Well, again, we have to be careful. This comes out of the book of Proverbs. It's a truth, but it's a truth in a meta sense, not a micro sense, right? There are things that tend to be true. It's the way the world tends to bend, right? And so now I'm usurping the text for my own agendas as a preacher. And you could say the same thing about, you know, anything from dealing with whatever political, whatever the political issues are of the day. You know, if you're concerned about, you know, I remember sermons being preached on violent video games as a kid, right? And I look back on that sort of thing and it's not as though I support and think violent video games are great. I just don't think that actually it's pretty... The Bible is a pretty tricky place to go for that, right? You can say, well, you know, we go to Philippians and we say, you know, we're supposed to think about that which is honorable and lovely and, well, but the Bible is full of violence though too. Like the Bible is a violent video game. If it was a movie, it would be rated R. And so we have to be really careful that we don't just pluck these verses out and then just yank them and drop them into the laps of our congregation with a, thus saith the Lord, when it's really, thus saith John. So isn't part of the danger of topical that the gospel can get lost through that process really easy as opposed to teaching through a book or the life of Jesus? That is really well said. Okay, show's over, thanks. There's some preachers today that I really appreciate and respect, but I would call them wisdom preachers. They give great sermons filled with great life lessons that are podcasts and books I've listened to. But at the end of the day, are they really preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ? Yeah. Are they really? Is it Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection that I'm being pointed back to again and again? Yeah. I'm not so sure. You know, I got a little story about this I'm going to share here. Please do. My primary career for the last 35, almost 40 years now, has been broadcasting radio and television. And so I teach on it, I consult on it, I work on TV broadcasts for Campus Crusade. And I've noticed something in American Christian radio that really kind of floors me. I've driven across the country at least 24, 25 times, going back and forth all over the country, from Orlando to Washington to everywhere else in between. I've listened to a lot of Christian radio. I've been on Christian radio. And I can tell you there's one thing missing from Christian radio, and that's the gospel. You can't tune in to a Christian radio station today. If you do, you're going to be lucky. I've never once heard a radio announcer during that music program or something else just explain the gospel, with the exception of teaching programs, but that's what they're supposed to be doing behind the ball. But anyway, you don't hear it on regular radio. It's just missing. And so when I consult and train, I focus on your primary audience. Forty percent of your audience doesn't know Jesus. So you need to take advantage of that. And every day, at some level, you need to share the gospel. And that is, frankly, missed in our industry. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's, unfortunately, you talk about it's what teachers are supposed to do, preachers are supposed to do. Yeah. But honestly, it can be missed by us as well, right? Like if my heart is being wrapped up with outrage or frustration or concern over whatever the topic of the day is, I have a real danger as a preacher that that's going to drive my preaching, as opposed to my concern that I lift Jesus high and clearly present the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And at the heart, I mean, you know, circling all the way back to the beginning, the presupposition of that is that every single book of the Bible points to Jesus Christ. Every single book of the Bible tells us of our desperate need for a Savior and of the unbelievable gift that he is in his death and resurrection for us. All right, John, thank you so much. Appreciate your wisdom and insights. Thank you. Really appreciate you. All right, we'll look forward to talking to you again on more topics. You've been listening to Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org. Today we've been discussing how to make the main point of a passage the main point of your Bible study, class, or sermon. This is the last in a three-part series. Future episodes will feature other guests helping us to understand how to study and apply Scripture. I'm your host, Tom Terry, with PreachItTeachIt.org. Be sure to visit our website for tools and resources to help you craft your sermon or Bible study. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next time on Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org.
