November 25, 2025 • 43 mins
The Bible is the foundation of our faith, yet it’s often misunderstood or misapplied. How can parents help their children not only read the Bible but also interpret it correctly? In this episode of the Gospel Shaped Family Podcast, Josh and Jen Mulvihill share biblical principles and practical tools for guiding children into a faithful understanding of God’s Word.
You’ll learn how to teach observation, interpretation, and application through inductive Bible study. Josh and Jen explain why context matters, how Scripture interprets Scripture, and how to avoid twisting verses to fit our own ideas. They also highlight the importance of family discipleship practices that anchor children in truth rather than confusion.
Discover simple steps and study tools—commentaries, dictionaries, concordances, and atlases—that can equip your children to handle God’s Word with confidence and grow in wisdom.
Subscribe now and join us as we shape hearts, homes, and churches around the gospel one conversation at a time. Check us out on YouTube, Rumble and anywhere you get audio podcasts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Josh and I'm Jen.
Welcome to the GospelShaped Family podcast.
Each episode brings biblical wisdomand practical conversations
on parenting, marriage, and family,and we discuss
how to disciple the next generationwith a biblical worldview.
Whether you're raising children,shepherding a church, or longing
(00:20):
to build a legacy of faith in your home,this podcast is for you.
Join us as we explore how to shape hearts,homes, and churches around the gospel,
one conversation at a time.
Hey, friends, welcome back to the GospelSheep Family podcast.
Hello. Hi, Josh. Hey, Jen.
(00:40):
It's good to see you.
We're, like, three feet apart.
Welcome to the podcast, John.
Thank you. It's so nice of you to be,
It was nice of you to.
I know it's it's good.
All right.
Okay, so today we're talking abouthow to help our children.
Exploring, understanding, correctlyinterpreting and reading the Bible.
(01:02):
Getting our kids into God's Wordlike a huge, important
habit for them to have, andand helping them understand it.
Yeah.
And so I justI wanted to, start by asking you, Jen,
just kind of
from the right out of the gate,what advice would you have for parents
who are trying to help their kidsdevelop the habit of reading the Bible?
(01:24):
That's a good one.
Okay. Really quick.
I don't have notes on this,so, well, number one,
I well, I have a few number one,I would say, read the Bible to them.
So don't let the Bible become somethingthat's just like,
you know, for for adultsor for somebody else.
It's not for me.
(01:45):
Read the Bible to themso that they are comfortable with it.
Number two, give them their own Bible.
Give them a Bible that they can read.
Whether it's like, you know, a children's Bible.
We love this, beginner reader Bible.
I can read the Bible, their ownfull text Bible when they're able to read,
(02:06):
put it in their hands,and then, the third one,
I would say off the top of my head is, make the Bible super exciting for them.
So it's one thing like I was teachingSunday school this weekend,
to like 3 to 5 year olds,and the story was David and Goliath.
And so they use this curriculum,they put a video on the screen
(02:28):
and we watched like a, yeah, cutesyvideo of David and Goliath.
And then, afterwards, in my mind,I was like, not good enough.
The Bible is cooler.
So I like, opened the actual Bible.
And I was like, listen to this.
Like Goliath was ten feet tall.
And how how you're the ceilings in hereand oh my goodness, there was a stone.
(02:51):
And it literally hit himand he was like laying there dead.
And so like,I think that if you show them like how fun
and exciting the Bible actually is,they will want to read it
and they'll be like, well,what else is in there? Right?
Those are just off the top of my head.Off the top. Yeah.
One of the things that helped medevelop a habit, as I was growing up
was seeing how seeing it modeledby my parents and just, you know,
(03:15):
I remember waking up in the morningand coming out into the living room
and seeing my mom sitting therewith the Bible open and the Bible always
present in our home and the valueit was placed on in our family,
but also in my parents life,
if it was important for them, it'sgoing to be important for me.
And so seeing that modeled was huge.
In, you know, in my life.
(03:37):
All right. Well, those are good. Good.
You know, there's probably a ton moreI could probably think of that.
Does it? Yeah, but those are goodcan of good little off the cuff things.
But, you know, so
we're talking about how to correctlyinterpret the Bible to start here.
And, you know, there's a lot of people
that read the Bible and come awaythinking it says,
you know, we can read the same thingand think it says different things.
You know, Christians, Mormons,
(04:01):
Jewish individuals, Catholics, Islam,Catholic, progressive people.
We we can read the same verse and think,it says completely different things.
But of course, there's only one correctinterpretation of the Bible.
There could be multiple applications,but how do each of these groups
hold to all these differentinterpretations of the Bible?
(04:22):
And how do we know who's correct?
So we, you know,we need to have there's some there's
some correct ways to interpret the Bible,which we'll talk about.
And so the Bible,
you know,the Bible gives us a few principles
and also warns us so that we,we correctly handle God's Word.
I want to read you a few passages,just that the Bible talks
(04:44):
about how we correctly handle,the Bible itself.
So second Timothy 215 says,
do your best to present yourself to God
as one approved,a worker who has no need to be ashamed.
And here's the keypart rightly handling the word of truth.
So if weif there's a need to rightly handle
(05:08):
the Bible, that means we can handle itincorrectly, wrongly handle it.
And there's a warning here not to do that.
And, a little shout outany Awana people out there.
This is the verse that we getthe name Awana from a work, a worker
who is no need to be ashamedto rightly handle the word of truth.
And, so we want towe want to handle it properly.
(05:31):
This is Psalm one 1918that I'm going to read.
It says, open my eyes, that I might see
the wondrous things out of your law.
So in other words, we literally some
you know, we don't understand the Biblewithout the work of the Holy Spirit.
So one of the fun things
is if you are reading the Bibleand you understand what it says,
(05:54):
that is evidence that you are a Christianand that the Holy Spirit
is working in your life,because those who are not Christians,
you know, the Bible tells uswe have scales are blind.
They cannot see.
They can't understandwithout God's work in their heart.
That literally, God's,the Spirit of God helps us understand
the Word of Godto transform our hearts and our lives.
(06:16):
And the last one I will read is secondPeter 515 and 16
and it says this, and countthe patience of our Lord as salvation,
just as our beloved brotheralso wrote to you according to the wisdom
given him, as he does in all his letters,when he speaks in them of these matters.
(06:36):
These are some things in themthat are hard to understand.
This is the Bible, easyto understand? No.
This is you know, this is Paul and Petertalking here about, about each other.
Those things that Paul have written,they're hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist
to their own destructionas they do other scriptures.
(06:57):
So there will be people that that twist,distort
and, make the Biblesay things that it does not say.
You see it all the time, all the time.
And the only way to know that iswe have to understand what the Bible says.
You know, the Bible talks
about testing everythingthat is said according to God's Word.
And, and there's a lot.
(07:19):
Yep. There's a lot of that happening todaywhere the Bible's twisted
and, and used for, you know, purposes.
It's not meant to be used for, so.
Okay, so talk to us about it's calledthis is if you want to sound
smart around some friends or family,you can use this term.
It's called Inductive Bible study.
(07:41):
And Inductive
Bible study has three kind of categoriesto kind of walk us through those.
Jen. Yeah.
So when we're teaching our kidshow to study the Bible,
the three categories that we encouragethem to do is always observe,
then interpret and then apply the Bible.
So this is inductiveBible study observe interpret apply.
(08:03):
So the first one is observation.
So when we're observing the scripturewe read the scriptures.
And then we just ask what does it say.
Like what is this saying.
So it's we're we're taking a look.
We're reading the scriptures slowly.
We're reading them prayerfully.
And we're we're just asking that.
And then we're making the observation.
(08:24):
So what does that say aboutGod in the passage?
What does this say about us?
What does this say about, all the facets.
And so we want to understand
through observation,and we want to make sure that we're
just looking with eyes wide open aboutwhat does what is the Bible saying.
(08:44):
So we want to observelooking closely at the passages.
The second one is interpretation.
And we do understand that we want
to, handle the Word of God carefully.
We want to warn againstyou know, something that is incorrect
or that's twisted,or if we're not interpreting it correctly,
(09:07):
and so with interpretation,what we ask is, what does this mean?
What does it mean?What does it mean for us?
And so what is the author trying to say?
What is the author bringing?
What is the culture of the thethe city where things have been written,
the culture,the political climate of the time?
And so what is the authorbringing to the text?
(09:29):
What does it mean?
And then finally,the third is application.
So the question is,what does this passage require of me
or what is being taughtthat can be applied to life?
And so when we're reading the Bible,
our goal is not just to be informationgrabbers, right?
(09:50):
An information is good,we want to be acknowledged or we,
you know, we want to learn.
But really what we're readingthe Bible for is, is transformation.
And so we want to bring the Bible to life.
And so we just want to make surethat we are reading in perspective.
And I will say that, you know,depending on the age of your child,
(10:12):
you know, children are so concretewhen they're younger
that sometimes that like observation,interpretation can come quite
not quite easy, but it can come easier,
you know, like becausechildren are plainly we can say like,
this is what it said and this is whatI think, you know, I'm hearing.
But sometimes that abstractlife application
(10:35):
part can be a little bit more difficult.
And, you know,we've seen that with our own kids.
Like how does this apply in there?
Like, so, you know, it doestake a little bit more help on that end.
But those are the three steps.Those are three steps.
Yeah. So we can teach our kids.
There's a actually a really good book.
It's by Kay Arthur, it's called Howto Teach Your Children to read the book
(10:57):
or how to study the Bible, knowHow to Study the Bible
for kids by Kay Arthur and it's,studying the book of Titus.
And the child is essentially, a detective in that book.
And they're kind of taughtthe inductive Bible study.
So if you're looking for a really goodresource to do what John just described.
Yeah, that's a really,really good tool out there.
(11:18):
We've used that with some of our kidsto, to help to help train them.
All right.
Let's talk about some basicprinciples of interpretation
to get to a right understanding of God'sWord.
In the, in, in systematic
theology, this is called the hermeneutics.
(11:38):
And again, you canimpress all your friends with that term
if you want. But there's, you know,if you go to
I went to Bible college,I went to seminary.
And you'll have whole coursescalled hermeneutics.
You'll have a whole you have a whole classon how to do this, when worse.
You know, we're spending like,here's ten minutes.
You know, there's lots of books,lots of been written.
Lots and lots.
(11:58):
How do you correctly interpret the Bible?
And when we pull stuffout of the Bible properly,
we let the Bible speak and we, you know,we pull those principles out.
That's called exegesis.
When we read something into the Biblethat's called Isaiah, Jesus.
And so, you know, we might takea cultural buzzword like love is love.
(12:20):
And we start reading, you know,we think love the definition of love.
If we import that for what our societythinks about what the meaning of love
is, love is love is not a biblicalmeaning of love.
God is love.
Of course, love is other centered.
It is not self centered.
And you know, these are we're giving outa biblical definition of love there.
(12:42):
If we're importing the love is lovemeaning of love into the text,
that would be considered Isaiah. Jesus.
And so we want to of course, avoid that.
But three quick, principles on interpreting Scripture.
The first one is this,is the literal principle.
We want to interpret Scripturein its literal.
It's natural in its normal self.
(13:04):
So we let the the plain obviousmeaning of the text in mind, come forth.
And of course, the Bible has differentgenres.
I'm not going to spenda ton of time on those.
And the Bible contains symbolic language,figures of speech.
But when, you know, you can think of likeparables are, you know, part of that.
(13:27):
But when those are used, there's truth
being taught in that,in that normal language.
And of course, there,as we think about genres of the Bible,
there are apocalyptic kindsof sections of books
or entire books of the Bible, bookslike Zechariah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, portionsof Isaiah, of Revelation, of course.
(13:51):
And so those have somethose are those genres
are kind of symbolicor apocalyptic in nature.
And so we don't read all of those,of course, literally.
But they literallythey do literally teach truth.
So if somebody ever comes to youand says there is a secret meaning here
in this text, you know, justyour little spider sense should go out.
(14:13):
Every 12th letter was rejected outright.
You know, the Bible codeskind of thing that there's,
like secret things in the Bible.
It predicted certain things, like,no, no, we.
God, Goddidn't hide things in the Bible for us.
He literally communicated themin an easy to read manner.
(14:34):
I think I've read the Bibleis at like a fifth grade reading level.
And, you know, so literally, God gave usthe Bible is easy to understand
as, you know, a child,
literally a child, a ten year old childand younger can understand it.
Of course,it is inexhaustible in its depth.
You can we can spend a lifetime reading itand not exhaust the,
(14:55):
you know, the fruitand the wonderfulness of God's Word.
And John MacArthursaid, right, like right up until he died,
he was still finding new wisdomsand new truths.
And. Yeah.
So it's great.
I mean, that spectrum easy to understand,but a deep well,
inexhaustible will never,you can always be learning from it.
So I'm going to give you an exampleof what not to do
(15:17):
from a symbolic kind of approachto God's word.
There, you know, you've heard
the phrase in the Bible,take up your cross and follow me.
There is, there'sI heard the story of Christians in China
that took that,that that is a symbolic statement.
We're literally not, you know,
(15:38):
we're not supposed to take a wood crossand put it over on
like a huge life sized cross on our.
Yeah, of course,that's not what that means.
They they took thatas a that's symbolic statement.
That's obviously supposed to meansacrifice and denying self,
kind of approach to life and,and took little wooden crosses
(15:58):
and put them in their pocketto take up their cross, to follow Jesus.
Now that, you know, if somebody wants todo that as a reminder, great for them.
Nothing wrong with that.
But that's not.
No, the that's not the meaning of thattext.
That's not the applicationof, of that text, that figure of speech.
And so, you know, it's a submissionto the lordship of Jesus Christ.
(16:20):
That's what it's teaching us, and that'show we need to interpret and apply that.
You'veyou've probably heard other examples
when people say,people talk about David and Goliath
and we spiritualize giants in our lifeand, needing to
to slay those giants or,
you know, the angelrolling away the stone.
(16:43):
You know, when Jesus is raisedfrom the dead and spiritual izing
the stone of doubt and fear and angerand needing to roll these away and,
Jesus calming the stormand he can calm the storms in your life.
Those are not the meaning of those texts.
That's not why they were written.
And so we need to be careful not tospiritualize, symbolize those texts.
(17:08):
And it's really easy to do what you.
But what is the literal plain reason?
Why did the author write those for us?
And, and we pull that out of Scripture. Yep.
There was a storm.
There was a. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so
I'll give you two other examples herewith kind of a literal interpretation.
You know, the Bible talks about Godcreated the heavens and the earth,
(17:31):
and there was eveningand there was morning the first day.
How do we interpret that word day?
You know, that's,
those are fighting words therethat I just said in certain circles.
And, you know, in Proverbs.
I'll give you another example.
Whoever spares the rod hates his son,but whoever loves him is diligent
to discipline him.
(17:52):
How do we interpret that word?
Rob is day and Rod are those symbolic?
So some people will say day is symbolic.
You know, the day is like a thousandyears, a thousand years, like a day.
Therefore, you know thatwhat we read in all the Genesis,
and what they're trying to do withthat is import evolutionary,
naturalistic worldviews into Isaac.
(18:12):
Jesus, that's an example of Isaiah. Jesus.
That'snot the plain teaching of Scripture.
So why should they be symbolic when,
you know, should we read Godin Genesis one as symbolic?
God created the heavens and the earth.
There's you know, why?
So there's a literal sense herein which God creates,
and then, you know, we've gotI just I'm not going to do a whole long
(18:37):
teaching on this, but you get
you get evidences of why we can take thatliterally, because we have the,
you know, the seven days of the workweek,our come off of the days of creation,
you know, rest on the seventh dayas the literal day that God created.
The seventh day he rested.
And we could go down the list.
Adam is not a, you know, the first Adam.
(18:58):
If the first Adam is not literal.
The Bible tells us in the New Testament,the second Adam is Christ.
So is is Jesus himself not literal?
So we have you know, we have theseliteral meanings of Scripture.
Brad.
You know, we many will try to, you know,say that that's not a literal thing.
It's, you know, it's, it's something different.
(19:19):
I think it is scripturally,that is a literal,
a tool used to discipline a child.
We could talk a lot about discipline.
That'll come at some point here.
But, you know, the, the Bible,we read it with a of a literal sense.
Unless we know it's a differentgenre and we should.
(20:07):
The second principle
is use scripture to interpret scripture.
So, so Scripture is always it'sbest interpreter.
So we, we use clear passages
of Scripture to interpretthe more obscure passages.
And and it helps us read, you know, ithelps if we're reading something
(20:28):
and we say, wow, does it mean this?
We can go to other portions of Scripture
to make sure that we're understanding itcorrectly,
because the Bible will never contradictitself.
It all fits together.
It all says the same thing.
So for example, in first Peter 321,
it tells us that,we get saved through baptism.
(20:49):
I'll just read it to you.
So it says, okay,maybe I didn't pull it up.
You know, I didn't actuallyI didn't pull that up, but in, in, first
Peter three there,it talks about being saved by baptism.
And you could read that and think,oh man, I need if I'm not baptized,
I'm not saved.
There's salvationplus baptism equals, you know, repentance
(21:09):
plus salvation or baptism equalssalvation.
Well,we can go through the rest of Scripture
and look atwhat does the Bible teach about salvation.
And the Bible, of course, teachesthat salvation is by grace alone,
by faith alone, through Christ alone,that no man may boast.
We can go throughout Scriptureand look at
(21:29):
the other principles of baptism and,
and what baptism entails, Romans sixand many of the other passages that talk
about baptism as a, a professionof faith, but not a saving act itself.
And, and so then we can get clarityon, on that.
I'll do another one with baptism as well,since around that, that topic
(21:51):
in first Corinthians 1529,there's a practice in there
that actually the Mormon churchhas built some application around.
I'm going to read it says otherwise.
What do people meanby baptizing on behalf of the dead?
If the dead are not raised at all,why are people baptized on their behalf?
What I just read fromused from first Corinthians 1529.
(22:14):
Maybe you've never,maybe never jumped out to before,
but people look at that and you go,oh my goodness,
are we supposed to go to our churchesand baptize people for the debt?
For debt?
Like baptized for the dead? Yeah.
No. You're not.
And the reason you're not, because you canlook at what the Bible teaches on
salvation and on baptism and realizethat's not what that passage is teaching.
(22:38):
And we can know thatbecause of the rest of Scripture.
Now, Mormons do believe that,
we had some Mormon friendsthat we lived close to and we specifically
said to them, yeah, you are not allowedto baptize on behalf of us.
You know, sothey'll do what's called baptism by proxy,
where they will put on robes, go into,you know,
you know, they'll essentiallyI'm going to be John Mulvihill.
(23:01):
I'm Bapt being baptizedon behalf of John Mulvihill.
Their perspective is in doing that,that will provide salvation
for a non-Mormon personlike Jen or myself.
And that's not what the Bible is teachingof course.
And so we can know that by the restof what what God's Word teaches.
And the last principle is context is king.
(23:23):
So in order to properly understanda verse, we have to understand
the chapter.
We have to understandthe rest of the book.
We want to understand, the rest of thethemes and the doctrines of Scripture.
And so, they, theyof course, fit together.
We want to be aware.
You mentioned a little bit of this, Jen,the historical,
cultural, grammatical kinds of principles,that the Bible was written
(23:45):
in a specific cultureat a specific time to a specific people.
And when we start to understandsome of those details around the text,
sometimes it brings things to lightthat you're like, wow, that's
really, really helpful to know.
Yeah, really helpful to know.
And so we want to, you know,we want to interpret them correctly.
I'll give you an example hereon interpreting in context
(24:09):
with verse and chapter.
So all of us have heardfirst Corinthians 13, the chapter,
you know, the portion on love.
You know, love is patient, love is kind,love is, you know, all those things.
You hear that readat almost every wedding?
I don't think that's a horribleapplication of it being read there,
but it's not the primary purposefor which that was written.
If you look at the contextof First Corinthians,
(24:32):
if you read in first Corinthians 12,I'll actually read it to you,
says this now you are the body of Christand individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church,first of all
apostles, prophets, teachers,
then miracles, gifts of healing, helping,administration, various kinds of tongues.
(24:52):
And it keeps going onwith all kinds of spiritual gifts.
That's the end of chapter 12 infirst Corinthians.
Then we get to the beginningof first Corinthians 13, and it starts
this way love is patient, kind, does notenvy, boast, arrogant, rude?
You know that. Okay, so what's it in
context talking about how we operatein our spiritual gifts?
(25:14):
That's whatFirst Corinthians 13 is actually about.
In the context
now, sometimes we separate thoseand we make it about something different.
And and so within that, when we,you know, when we read that in context,
it's like, okay,that makes a lot more sense.
So those are three.
There's a lot more, of course, but thosethose ones will get you pretty far
(25:35):
if we can even do those three thingsand teach those to your kids.
Man, that will be super, super helpfulin a correct interpretation of scripture.
Yeah. All right.
That's great.
We're going to shiftto a different segment,
that we call Favorite Things. Yes.
(25:56):
Special Bible study edition.
Yeah, a special Bible survivalstudy edition of Favorite Things.
Right? Yes.
So these are the toolswith this favorite thing
that you can use to help your kids learn
to have the habit of reading God'sWord, studying God's Word.
So walk us throughsome of those tools, Jen.
(26:16):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, these are all things that we havein our home that we have purchased to
either be on our family library shelfor a lot of these
we've given our children, as individual gifts.
So they each have their own copies.
So we know it's Christmas
time, pick them up for Christmas,put them under the tree.
(26:37):
These are resources that your family,not only your family,
but your kids will usetheir whole entire lives.
I still have some of these resourcesthat I, you know,
my parents picked up when I was younger.
But we'll go from there.
Okay. Well, I'll start with this one,since it's written.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Okay.
(26:57):
So this one that I have in front of meis, a journaling Bible.
These just came out.I'm going to hold it up.
This one is called poetry.
It's the size of just like, a standard,spiral notebook.
But the inside of it is the Bible.
This was put out by Crossway.
It's actually called the Spiral BoundJournaling Bible.
(27:17):
And, we picked this whole set upfor our daughter, who's 13,
and she brings it to church, and I'll justkind of show you what this looks like.
Here it is in Psalms.
So the formatis this on one side of the page
and it folds around, itfolds flat. Is the Bible on one side.
And then onthis side is a journaling compound.
(27:39):
So you can actually go throughand you can with your kids.
Or they can do this on their own. Right.
What are their observations.
Right. Their applications.
If you're studying,
certain passages in Bible studyor at church, they can bring these along.
It is beautiful.
This is just such a very,very beautiful set.
It's kind of an investment.
(28:01):
But we've just seen these used injust really wonderful ways.
So I would recommend this from Crossway.
It just actually maybe came out last year.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Of course we have concordance here.
Let's grab the concordance. These.All right.
So what's a concordance.What do you do with the concordance.
Oh my goodness that sounds so.
That looks intimidating right.
(28:24):
So the concordance I'll hold it
up is intimidatingI love working towards this is so fun.
So a concordance.
But there isif there is a word in the Bible
that you are looking to figure out,what does this word mean?
And how is this wordused throughout the Bible?
The concordance is your best friend.
(28:45):
So if you talk about Scriptureinterpreting scripture,
the concordance is going to helpyou get there.
So, I just opened it up,and the word that I turn to
is the word greatness, greatness.
And so it will give you insidethe concordance,
every, every single place
in the Bible,the word greatness is used in
(29:09):
the same like original formin the original text in the Old Testament.
It will be in Hebrew.
Yes. Is going to help you understandthe Hebrew language of that word.
And in the New Testament.
Yep, it'll be Greek. Yep.
So like this.
The example of greatness is like Exodus15 seven.
In the greatness of your majesty,you overthrow.
(29:30):
And the the root word forthat would be abundance.
So then it gives you like abundance,great greatness.
And so that was like the soand then you got in the back.
Yep, yep. Keep going you say. Yeah.
Then you look it up, they give youa number and you go look up the.
Yeah the original word in the back.
And it'll tell you the, the originalHebrew or Greek meaning of that word.
(29:53):
So you can if you're reading the Bibleand you read greatness and whatever.
What was that verse? Exodus.
I say you're reading through Exodusand you whatever past, you know,
chapter and verse that wasyou come across.
Well, I wonder what that word greatnessmeans in the original language.
You can go look, look it up byalphabetical, not, you know, word in here.
And then look, find the number in the backand then look it at you,
(30:16):
see if you don't know the original,you know,
let's say you didn't take Hebrewand Greek in college, didn't you?
This is the this is the shortcut to learn
all the, you know, all the,the original language and meaning of it.
And it's really fun.
And there, you know, and we lose a lotof the meaning of Hebrew.
In Greek, it doesn'ttranslate over into English very well.
(30:40):
There's so many nuances,you know, like just the word love,
you know, there's 3 or 4 different.
Yeah, meanings of the word of lovein, in the original languages,
we just have one, and you won't know that.
So sometimes you look up the word love
and you'll see a folio, or you'lllook it up and you'll see Eros.
Yeah.
You know, we get Philadelphiafrom that philia brotherly love.
(31:03):
Yeah.
And so it's helpful just to, to seethat, like, there's like six.
No, there's like 12 or 15 pagesdevoted to the word.
Have you have you have.
So this is our this is our fun.
This is our son John's this.
We just pulled it off his shelf. He's 13.
He got it for his birthday this year.
When he turned 13,that was one of the gifts we gave him.
(31:26):
It's wonderful.
And I will sometimes find our kids just,like, looking through this, for fun,
because it is so interestingjust to look at,
but this one is the ESV Exhaustive concordance, and we'll link it.
But it's and I'm glad you saidthat there are different
depending on the translation of the Bibleyou like to use.
Get the concordance that corresponds.
So the NIV concordance.
(31:47):
Yeah.
ESV concordance have other,you know, King James.
So if you're reading out of the NIV,then if you get the ESV, you're
the words,they're going to be a little different
sometimes they're translated,you know, the meanings the same, but
the translation, how they do thatsometimes is a little different.
Yeah. So get them matching.
(32:08):
The matching matching one.
So our kids all have ESV Bibles.
You have an ESV BibleI like you church uses.
It's a more it'snot it's a more wooden translation.
Yeah. Like NIV is more paraphrased. Yeah.
So I like the more literal translation.
I haven't NIV Bible,
but I've had it for like 100 yearsand so I don't want to switch Bibles.
(32:29):
Yeah.
Old school don't want to switch.
Yeah. Lived in. All right.Tell us the next one.
Oh, sure I can. Yes.
So I'll hold up this one.
I'll do commentaries. Okay.
So I think it's helpful to starta library of commentaries with your kids.
There's, you know, there's a million outthere, and there's 66 books of the Bible.
So generally, the best thing to do with commentaries
(32:52):
is not to buy a full set
of commentarieson every book of the Bible.
You usually are.
You know, you can search.
What are the best commentaries on Exodus?
What's the best ones on Matthew?
And there will be individualauthors and individual series.
You know,they have a whole bunch of authors
that contribute to the different ones,and some are better than others.
(33:15):
And some series are better than others.
So commentaries are simply explaining themeaning and the application of Scripture.
So scholars spend a ton of time studyingwhat the Bible says.
They write about their discoveriesand understandings in commentary.
And so sometimes, you know,
we read Scripture and we look at itand go, man, this is hard to understand.
(33:36):
Or am I understanding this correctly?
We can go look at a reputable,
helpful commentariesto help us understand what the Bible says.
You get a little bit of thiswith Study Bible.
Some of them now have kind of builtin little commentaries.
This year. Does. Yeah.
I prefer my, my, reference materialsand my Bible separate.
(33:57):
That's just a personal thing.
I and here's the here's my reason why.
So if you're a study Bible person,find great.
What I found for meis that I would read a passage,
and then I would quickly go downto read the
the study notes without meditating onor thinking about the Bible
and letting God's Spiritdo his work with me.
(34:20):
And so I decided I can, youknow, commentaries are really helpful.
I just want them to be secondary.
And second,not like read, boom, go right down.
So that was that was why I did that.
But, I'm good with my study Bible.You like to study Bible?
I'm good with it. Okay. Well, good.Good for you. Yeah.
We're just we don't haveto have the same. Yeah. Okay.
I'm okay with that.
Yeah. All right.A couple good commentaries.
(34:41):
This one, our kids get these, andsometimes you can find these on, on sale.
These are. Yep.
This is by JC Ryle.
He's an old school preacher from England,
and he,he writes in more of a devotional style.
I think it's a little easierto understand.
A lot of commentarieswill be kind of academic.
(35:02):
And you read themand you're like, boring, like,
you know, I, I can get about a paragraphand just get bogged down.
His is more devotional style,but it's still very, very meaty.
And so he has forthis comes in a set of four
that's called ExpositoryThoughts on the Gospels.
And, you know, all for,Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
(35:26):
These are really great on the Gospels.
I'll hold up this heresince these are other commentaries.
Okay. We got a morning. I just wanted to show you this.
Just the power of giving your kids tools.
My parents gave me these commentaries.
I'm.
I don't know my exact age.I was a teenager.
I think it was a Christmas present.
(35:47):
47 now. So let's just say I'm 17.
I don't remember that was exact age,but I so 27, 30, some 40.
I've had these for 30 years.
These ones right here, this is calledthe Bible Knowledge Commentary.
And this is one is on the Old Testamentand one's on the New Testament.
So this was a great starterset commentary for me
that I got,you know, doesn't go into great depth,
(36:10):
but at high level we'll go throughall of the Bible in two books.
That's great.
That was wonderful for me as a teenager.
And now if you come to our house,we have a library
and there's an entire bookshelfwith commentaries on books of the Bible.
There's so many good ones out there.
So we're studying through, Psalmswith our kids right now.
(36:30):
And so we went and boughta commentary on Psalms to give them.
And Psalms is a big book.
So oftentimes it's a multiple,
you know, it'smultiple books for the book of Psalm,
but start building their librarieswith, with commentaries.
And this is just the evidenceof the power of tools.
I've had these.
I just literally walked overand grabbed them off my shelf for,
(36:53):
for this right now.
And, so there's.
Yeah, tons of good ones out there.
Good ones.
No, we didn't bring in was a Bible atlas.
I know,I thought that's a bring in an atlas.
Talk about an atlassince you just brought it up.
So BibleAtlas is kind of like what it sounds like.
It's an atlas,and it has, like, illustrations
of what the the terrain wasand where things happened.
(37:17):
And so it's a really great tactile toolto be able to look through and be like,
where were things happening and what didthe culture look like in real time?
And so yes,we have one that we pull out. Yeah.
So it's helpful to knowlike Bethlehem is only.
Yeah.
A short distance from all this Jerusalemclose to God when you
(37:38):
when you hear about Herodsending the troops to kill the babies and,
you know, trying to killJesus after Jesus was born. Yep.
You think, oh, wow,this is actually really close.
It wouldn't have taken very longto get there.
It's helpful to know
that there's an Old Testament Jerichoand a New Testament Jericho.
You learn this from an atlas.They're not the same place.
When Jesus walked up two places.
(38:00):
That's a that's a geographical reference.
He literally was rising in elevation.
And so just these things,are just helpful.
Helpfulto know we were like, looking at a donkey.
We're like,looking at this like actual donkey.
And I said to the kids, I was like,do you think that
that donkeycould have carried Mary all the way?
(38:20):
You know, Mary and the baby Jesusall the way to Bethlehem?
And they were like,no way. Let's look at how far it was.
Bible Atlas Bible out.
There you go. Okay. Last one.Oh, no. You know.
Yeah, you do that one.
Tomorrow,the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary.
So we have, Bible dictionaries.
And again,
like you would use a dictionarywith your kids
(38:42):
if you're looking upthe meanings of things.
But this is just so greatbecause you can look up the,
the biblical meaningsof, of everything from there.
This is a picture of a skull.
You know, like the names of people, the names of the books of the Bible
concepts, any anything
(39:03):
you would want to look up in the Bible,it will give you just a nice overview.
So just like you would look upthe meaning of a word, you can look up
the meanings of things in the Bibles.
And a good Bibledictionary will have some maps in it.
It'll have some,you know, good illustrations.
It'll give you some, like, springboardsto moving through other things.
(39:23):
But we like this one, the HolmanIllustrated Bible and then illustrated.
But I think you can get themfor like 2025.
But they're notthey're not expensive and they're great.
They're in hardcover and they'll last up.
They'll keep them forever.
Yeah okay. Last one, last one.
I'll mention, for your kidswhen they get into like the early teen
or teen years, get them a really goodsystematic theology book.
(39:46):
There's a number of good ones out there.
Wayne Groom highly recommend.
Erickson's a good one.
The one I grabbed here.
We've got a bunch of them on our shelves.
This is oneI grabbed because this is our oldest son.
Jay has this one. This one is called.
He loves this biblical doctrine,a systematic summary of Bible truth.
(40:06):
This one is by John MacArthur.
And it's a I mean, it's a beast.
If you look on here, it's it's heavy.You'll be strong.
You're not going to probably startat the beginning and read through this.
It's a reference material.
So as you're as you're coming acrosscertain things, this you know,
they're learning.
What does the Bible teach about.
Pick the topic. Really good.
This is an investment.
(40:27):
You know, this this one by MacArthur.
I, I can't remember the exact price.
I think it was maybe 60, 80 bucks,something like that.
But these are great.
I mean, you get, you can give,we can give our kids, like, a Lego bar,
a box of Legos for 80 bucks,you know, set that
they'll they'll have funwith for a short time, and then it's gone.
But, like, something like this.
(40:47):
This will last.
This will, this will, you know, thesethings will, will help them immensely.
And, you know,at first they might, you know,
I don't knowhow excited your kids are to get books.
Ours get pretty excited.
We help them become lovers of of booksand reading.
But, you know, at firstyour kids might be like, oh, man,
(41:08):
I was kind of wanting something differentthan these things for gifts
or for, to have in my room.
But here's the thing.
When they're around,
as their interest is piqued,if they're not, like, super
excited about this kind of stuff,my guess is they will walk over,
they will start to peruse, they'll use it.
(41:30):
If you start to integrate thisinto even your study of the Bible
with your kids, like we specifically
utilize the Bible dictionary,
we utilize the concordance,we utilize commentaries in our study.
When we're going throughbooks in the Bible with our kids,
they start to learn how to usethese reference materials and begin
to incorporate them into their own studyof the Bible, to observe correctly,
(41:55):
to interpret correctly,to apply Scripture, to their life.
And we, of coursewant our kids to be like the Bereans
who are mighty in the scriptures.I'll read this.
This is, you know, one of the desireswe have for our kids is now these Jews
or more noble than those in Thessalonica.
(42:15):
They received the word with all eagerness,examining the scriptures daily
to see if these things were so,examining it
like I love that examining the scripturesdaily and
and the eagerness, just that, you know,that that excitement to be in God's Word.
This isn't a duty.
This isn't like a, this is like.
(42:35):
Yes, I's the wondrous things.
Oh, yeah.
The wondrous things in God's Word.
It's it's a delight.
It's honey, it's wonderful.
And it's, you know,we start to come into contact
with the living,the true, the wonderful God.
Starts to transform our lives.
And, it's a great. It's a great blessing.
Yeah. It is.
All right. That's.
(42:55):
I think that's all we have for today.
Information. Hopefully
you guys will pick up on a couple thingsand start studying the Bible.
Yeah, yeah.All right, well, thanks for tuning in.
And we'll see younext time, you guys. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to the GospelSheep Family podcast.
Please share this episodeand give us a five star rating
(43:16):
wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Josh and I'm Jen.
Welcome to the GospelShaped Family podcast.
Each episode brings biblical wisdomand practical conversations
on parenting, marriage, and family,and we discuss
how to disciple the next generationwith a biblical worldview.
Whether you're raising children,shepherding a church, or longing
(00:20):
to build a legacy of faith in your home,this podcast is for you.
Join us as we explore how to shape hearts,homes, and churches around the gospel,
one conversation at a time.
Hey, friends, welcome back to the GospelSheep Family podcast.
Hello. Hi, Josh. Hey, Jen.
(00:40):
It's good to see you.
We're, like, three feet apart.
Welcome to the podcast, John.
Thank you. It's so nice of you to be,
It was nice of you to.
I know it's it's good.
All right.
Okay, so today we're talking abouthow to help our children.
Exploring, understanding, correctlyinterpreting and reading the Bible.
(01:02):
Getting our kids into God's Wordlike a huge, important
habit for them to have, andand helping them understand it.
Yeah.
And so I justI wanted to, start by asking you, Jen,
just kind of
from the right out of the gate,what advice would you have for parents
who are trying to help their kidsdevelop the habit of reading the Bible?
(01:24):
That's a good one.
Okay. Really quick.
I don't have notes on this,so, well, number one,
I well, I have a few number one,I would say, read the Bible to them.
So don't let the Bible become somethingthat's just like,
you know, for for adultsor for somebody else.
It's not for me.
(01:45):
Read the Bible to themso that they are comfortable with it.
Number two, give them their own Bible.
Give them a Bible that they can read.
Whether it's like, you know, a children's Bible.
We love this, beginner reader Bible.
I can read the Bible, their ownfull text Bible when they're able to read,
(02:06):
put it in their hands,and then, the third one,
I would say off the top of my head is, make the Bible super exciting for them.
So it's one thing like I was teachingSunday school this weekend,
to like 3 to 5 year olds,and the story was David and Goliath.
And so they use this curriculum,they put a video on the screen
(02:28):
and we watched like a, yeah, cutesyvideo of David and Goliath.
And then, afterwards, in my mind,I was like, not good enough.
The Bible is cooler.
So I like, opened the actual Bible.
And I was like, listen to this.
Like Goliath was ten feet tall.
And how how you're the ceilings in hereand oh my goodness, there was a stone.
(02:51):
And it literally hit himand he was like laying there dead.
And so like,I think that if you show them like how fun
and exciting the Bible actually is,they will want to read it
and they'll be like, well,what else is in there? Right?
Those are just off the top of my head.Off the top. Yeah.
One of the things that helped medevelop a habit, as I was growing up
was seeing how seeing it modeledby my parents and just, you know,
(03:15):
I remember waking up in the morningand coming out into the living room
and seeing my mom sitting therewith the Bible open and the Bible always
present in our home and the valueit was placed on in our family,
but also in my parents life,
if it was important for them, it'sgoing to be important for me.
And so seeing that modeled was huge.
In, you know, in my life.
(03:37):
All right. Well, those are good. Good.
You know, there's probably a ton moreI could probably think of that.
Does it? Yeah, but those are goodcan of good little off the cuff things.
But, you know, so
we're talking about how to correctlyinterpret the Bible to start here.
And, you know, there's a lot of people
that read the Bible and come awaythinking it says,
you know, we can read the same thingand think it says different things.
You know, Christians, Mormons,
(04:01):
Jewish individuals, Catholics, Islam,Catholic, progressive people.
We we can read the same verse and think,it says completely different things.
But of course, there's only one correctinterpretation of the Bible.
There could be multiple applications,but how do each of these groups
hold to all these differentinterpretations of the Bible?
(04:22):
And how do we know who's correct?
So we, you know,we need to have there's some there's
some correct ways to interpret the Bible,which we'll talk about.
And so the Bible,
you know,the Bible gives us a few principles
and also warns us so that we,we correctly handle God's Word.
I want to read you a few passages,just that the Bible talks
(04:44):
about how we correctly handle,the Bible itself.
So second Timothy 215 says,
do your best to present yourself to God
as one approved,a worker who has no need to be ashamed.
And here's the keypart rightly handling the word of truth.
So if weif there's a need to rightly handle
(05:08):
the Bible, that means we can handle itincorrectly, wrongly handle it.
And there's a warning here not to do that.
And, a little shout outany Awana people out there.
This is the verse that we getthe name Awana from a work, a worker
who is no need to be ashamedto rightly handle the word of truth.
And, so we want towe want to handle it properly.
(05:31):
This is Psalm one 1918that I'm going to read.
It says, open my eyes, that I might see
the wondrous things out of your law.
So in other words, we literally some
you know, we don't understand the Biblewithout the work of the Holy Spirit.
So one of the fun things
is if you are reading the Bibleand you understand what it says,
(05:54):
that is evidence that you are a Christianand that the Holy Spirit
is working in your life,because those who are not Christians,
you know, the Bible tells uswe have scales are blind.
They cannot see.
They can't understandwithout God's work in their heart.
That literally, God's,the Spirit of God helps us understand
the Word of Godto transform our hearts and our lives.
(06:16):
And the last one I will read is secondPeter 515 and 16
and it says this, and countthe patience of our Lord as salvation,
just as our beloved brotheralso wrote to you according to the wisdom
given him, as he does in all his letters,when he speaks in them of these matters.
(06:36):
These are some things in themthat are hard to understand.
This is the Bible, easyto understand? No.
This is you know, this is Paul and Petertalking here about, about each other.
Those things that Paul have written,they're hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist
to their own destructionas they do other scriptures.
(06:57):
So there will be people that that twist,distort
and, make the Biblesay things that it does not say.
You see it all the time, all the time.
And the only way to know that iswe have to understand what the Bible says.
You know, the Bible talks
about testing everythingthat is said according to God's Word.
And, and there's a lot.
(07:19):
Yep. There's a lot of that happening todaywhere the Bible's twisted
and, and used for, you know, purposes.
It's not meant to be used for, so.
Okay, so talk to us about it's calledthis is if you want to sound
smart around some friends or family,you can use this term.
It's called Inductive Bible study.
(07:41):
And Inductive
Bible study has three kind of categoriesto kind of walk us through those.
Jen. Yeah.
So when we're teaching our kidshow to study the Bible,
the three categories that we encouragethem to do is always observe,
then interpret and then apply the Bible.
So this is inductiveBible study observe interpret apply.
(08:03):
So the first one is observation.
So when we're observing the scripturewe read the scriptures.
And then we just ask what does it say.
Like what is this saying.
So it's we're we're taking a look.
We're reading the scriptures slowly.
We're reading them prayerfully.
And we're we're just asking that.
And then we're making the observation.
(08:24):
So what does that say aboutGod in the passage?
What does this say about us?
What does this say about, all the facets.
And so we want to understand
through observation,and we want to make sure that we're
just looking with eyes wide open aboutwhat does what is the Bible saying.
(08:44):
So we want to observelooking closely at the passages.
The second one is interpretation.
And we do understand that we want
to, handle the Word of God carefully.
We want to warn againstyou know, something that is incorrect
or that's twisted,or if we're not interpreting it correctly,
(09:07):
and so with interpretation,what we ask is, what does this mean?
What does it mean?What does it mean for us?
And so what is the author trying to say?
What is the author bringing?
What is the culture of the thethe city where things have been written,
the culture,the political climate of the time?
And so what is the authorbringing to the text?
(09:29):
What does it mean?
And then finally,the third is application.
So the question is,what does this passage require of me
or what is being taughtthat can be applied to life?
And so when we're reading the Bible,
our goal is not just to be informationgrabbers, right?
(09:50):
An information is good,we want to be acknowledged or we,
you know, we want to learn.
But really what we're readingthe Bible for is, is transformation.
And so we want to bring the Bible to life.
And so we just want to make surethat we are reading in perspective.
And I will say that, you know,depending on the age of your child,
(10:12):
you know, children are so concretewhen they're younger
that sometimes that like observation,interpretation can come quite
not quite easy, but it can come easier,
you know, like becausechildren are plainly we can say like,
this is what it said and this is whatI think, you know, I'm hearing.
But sometimes that abstractlife application
(10:35):
part can be a little bit more difficult.
And, you know,we've seen that with our own kids.
Like how does this apply in there?
Like, so, you know, it doestake a little bit more help on that end.
But those are the three steps.Those are three steps.
Yeah. So we can teach our kids.
There's a actually a really good book.
It's by Kay Arthur, it's called Howto Teach Your Children to read the book
(10:57):
or how to study the Bible, knowHow to Study the Bible
for kids by Kay Arthur and it's,studying the book of Titus.
And the child is essentially, a detective in that book.
And they're kind of taughtthe inductive Bible study.
So if you're looking for a really goodresource to do what John just described.
Yeah, that's a really,really good tool out there.
(11:18):
We've used that with some of our kidsto, to help to help train them.
All right.
Let's talk about some basicprinciples of interpretation
to get to a right understanding of God'sWord.
In the, in, in systematic
theology, this is called the hermeneutics.
(11:38):
And again, you canimpress all your friends with that term
if you want. But there's, you know,if you go to
I went to Bible college,I went to seminary.
And you'll have whole coursescalled hermeneutics.
You'll have a whole you have a whole classon how to do this, when worse.
You know, we're spending like,here's ten minutes.
You know, there's lots of books,lots of been written.
Lots and lots.
(11:58):
How do you correctly interpret the Bible?
And when we pull stuffout of the Bible properly,
we let the Bible speak and we, you know,we pull those principles out.
That's called exegesis.
When we read something into the Biblethat's called Isaiah, Jesus.
And so, you know, we might takea cultural buzzword like love is love.
(12:20):
And we start reading, you know,we think love the definition of love.
If we import that for what our societythinks about what the meaning of love
is, love is love is not a biblicalmeaning of love.
God is love.
Of course, love is other centered.
It is not self centered.
And you know, these are we're giving outa biblical definition of love there.
(12:42):
If we're importing the love is lovemeaning of love into the text,
that would be considered Isaiah. Jesus.
And so we want to of course, avoid that.
But three quick, principles on interpreting Scripture.
The first one is this,is the literal principle.
We want to interpret Scripturein its literal.
It's natural in its normal self.
(13:04):
So we let the the plain obviousmeaning of the text in mind, come forth.
And of course, the Bible has differentgenres.
I'm not going to spenda ton of time on those.
And the Bible contains symbolic language,figures of speech.
But when, you know, you can think of likeparables are, you know, part of that.
(13:27):
But when those are used, there's truth
being taught in that,in that normal language.
And of course, there,as we think about genres of the Bible,
there are apocalyptic kindsof sections of books
or entire books of the Bible, bookslike Zechariah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, portionsof Isaiah, of Revelation, of course.
(13:51):
And so those have somethose are those genres
are kind of symbolicor apocalyptic in nature.
And so we don't read all of those,of course, literally.
But they literallythey do literally teach truth.
So if somebody ever comes to youand says there is a secret meaning here
in this text, you know, justyour little spider sense should go out.
(14:13):
Every 12th letter was rejected outright.
You know, the Bible codeskind of thing that there's,
like secret things in the Bible.
It predicted certain things, like,no, no, we.
God, Goddidn't hide things in the Bible for us.
He literally communicated themin an easy to read manner.
(14:34):
I think I've read the Bibleis at like a fifth grade reading level.
And, you know, so literally, God gave usthe Bible is easy to understand
as, you know, a child,
literally a child, a ten year old childand younger can understand it.
Of course,it is inexhaustible in its depth.
You can we can spend a lifetime reading itand not exhaust the,
(14:55):
you know, the fruitand the wonderfulness of God's Word.
And John MacArthursaid, right, like right up until he died,
he was still finding new wisdomsand new truths.
And. Yeah.
So it's great.
I mean, that spectrum easy to understand,but a deep well,
inexhaustible will never,you can always be learning from it.
So I'm going to give you an exampleof what not to do
(15:17):
from a symbolic kind of approachto God's word.
There, you know, you've heard
the phrase in the Bible,take up your cross and follow me.
There is, there'sI heard the story of Christians in China
that took that,that that is a symbolic statement.
We're literally not, you know,
(15:38):
we're not supposed to take a wood crossand put it over on
like a huge life sized cross on our.
Yeah, of course,that's not what that means.
They they took thatas a that's symbolic statement.
That's obviously supposed to meansacrifice and denying self,
kind of approach to life and,and took little wooden crosses
(15:58):
and put them in their pocketto take up their cross, to follow Jesus.
Now that, you know, if somebody wants todo that as a reminder, great for them.
Nothing wrong with that.
But that's not.
No, the that's not the meaning of thattext.
That's not the applicationof, of that text, that figure of speech.
And so, you know, it's a submissionto the lordship of Jesus Christ.
(16:20):
That's what it's teaching us, and that'show we need to interpret and apply that.
You'veyou've probably heard other examples
when people say,people talk about David and Goliath
and we spiritualize giants in our lifeand, needing to
to slay those giants or,
you know, the angelrolling away the stone.
(16:43):
You know, when Jesus is raisedfrom the dead and spiritual izing
the stone of doubt and fear and angerand needing to roll these away and,
Jesus calming the stormand he can calm the storms in your life.
Those are not the meaning of those texts.
That's not why they were written.
And so we need to be careful not tospiritualize, symbolize those texts.
(17:08):
And it's really easy to do what you.
But what is the literal plain reason?
Why did the author write those for us?
And, and we pull that out of Scripture. Yep.
There was a storm.
There was a. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so
I'll give you two other examples herewith kind of a literal interpretation.
You know, the Bible talks about Godcreated the heavens and the earth,
(17:31):
and there was eveningand there was morning the first day.
How do we interpret that word day?
You know, that's,
those are fighting words therethat I just said in certain circles.
And, you know, in Proverbs.
I'll give you another example.
Whoever spares the rod hates his son,but whoever loves him is diligent
to discipline him.
(17:52):
How do we interpret that word?
Rob is day and Rod are those symbolic?
So some people will say day is symbolic.
You know, the day is like a thousandyears, a thousand years, like a day.
Therefore, you know thatwhat we read in all the Genesis,
and what they're trying to do withthat is import evolutionary,
naturalistic worldviews into Isaac.
(18:12):
Jesus, that's an example of Isaiah. Jesus.
That'snot the plain teaching of Scripture.
So why should they be symbolic when,
you know, should we read Godin Genesis one as symbolic?
God created the heavens and the earth.
There's you know, why?
So there's a literal sense herein which God creates,
and then, you know, we've gotI just I'm not going to do a whole long
(18:37):
teaching on this, but you get
you get evidences of why we can take thatliterally, because we have the,
you know, the seven days of the workweek,our come off of the days of creation,
you know, rest on the seventh dayas the literal day that God created.
The seventh day he rested.
And we could go down the list.
Adam is not a, you know, the first Adam.
(18:58):
If the first Adam is not literal.
The Bible tells us in the New Testament,the second Adam is Christ.
So is is Jesus himself not literal?
So we have you know, we have theseliteral meanings of Scripture.
Brad.
You know, we many will try to, you know,say that that's not a literal thing.
It's, you know, it's, it's something different.
(19:19):
I think it is scripturally,that is a literal,
a tool used to discipline a child.
We could talk a lot about discipline.
That'll come at some point here.
But, you know, the, the Bible,we read it with a of a literal sense.
Unless we know it's a differentgenre and we should.
(20:07):
The second principle
is use scripture to interpret scripture.
So, so Scripture is always it'sbest interpreter.
So we, we use clear passages
of Scripture to interpretthe more obscure passages.
And and it helps us read, you know, ithelps if we're reading something
(20:28):
and we say, wow, does it mean this?
We can go to other portions of Scripture
to make sure that we're understanding itcorrectly,
because the Bible will never contradictitself.
It all fits together.
It all says the same thing.
So for example, in first Peter 321,
it tells us that,we get saved through baptism.
(20:49):
I'll just read it to you.
So it says, okay,maybe I didn't pull it up.
You know, I didn't actuallyI didn't pull that up, but in, in, first
Peter three there,it talks about being saved by baptism.
And you could read that and think,oh man, I need if I'm not baptized,
I'm not saved.
There's salvationplus baptism equals, you know, repentance
(21:09):
plus salvation or baptism equalssalvation.
Well,we can go through the rest of Scripture
and look atwhat does the Bible teach about salvation.
And the Bible, of course, teachesthat salvation is by grace alone,
by faith alone, through Christ alone,that no man may boast.
We can go throughout Scriptureand look at
(21:29):
the other principles of baptism and,
and what baptism entails, Romans sixand many of the other passages that talk
about baptism as a, a professionof faith, but not a saving act itself.
And, and so then we can get clarityon, on that.
I'll do another one with baptism as well,since around that, that topic
(21:51):
in first Corinthians 1529,there's a practice in there
that actually the Mormon churchhas built some application around.
I'm going to read it says otherwise.
What do people meanby baptizing on behalf of the dead?
If the dead are not raised at all,why are people baptized on their behalf?
What I just read fromused from first Corinthians 1529.
(22:14):
Maybe you've never,maybe never jumped out to before,
but people look at that and you go,oh my goodness,
are we supposed to go to our churchesand baptize people for the debt?
For debt?
Like baptized for the dead? Yeah.
No. You're not.
And the reason you're not, because you canlook at what the Bible teaches on
salvation and on baptism and realizethat's not what that passage is teaching.
(22:38):
And we can know thatbecause of the rest of Scripture.
Now, Mormons do believe that,
we had some Mormon friendsthat we lived close to and we specifically
said to them, yeah, you are not allowedto baptize on behalf of us.
You know, sothey'll do what's called baptism by proxy,
where they will put on robes, go into,you know,
you know, they'll essentiallyI'm going to be John Mulvihill.
(23:01):
I'm Bapt being baptizedon behalf of John Mulvihill.
Their perspective is in doing that,that will provide salvation
for a non-Mormon personlike Jen or myself.
And that's not what the Bible is teachingof course.
And so we can know that by the restof what what God's Word teaches.
And the last principle is context is king.
(23:23):
So in order to properly understanda verse, we have to understand
the chapter.
We have to understandthe rest of the book.
We want to understand, the rest of thethemes and the doctrines of Scripture.
And so, they, theyof course, fit together.
We want to be aware.
You mentioned a little bit of this, Jen,the historical,
cultural, grammatical kinds of principles,that the Bible was written
(23:45):
in a specific cultureat a specific time to a specific people.
And when we start to understandsome of those details around the text,
sometimes it brings things to lightthat you're like, wow, that's
really, really helpful to know.
Yeah, really helpful to know.
And so we want to, you know,we want to interpret them correctly.
I'll give you an example hereon interpreting in context
(24:09):
with verse and chapter.
So all of us have heardfirst Corinthians 13, the chapter,
you know, the portion on love.
You know, love is patient, love is kind,love is, you know, all those things.
You hear that readat almost every wedding?
I don't think that's a horribleapplication of it being read there,
but it's not the primary purposefor which that was written.
If you look at the contextof First Corinthians,
(24:32):
if you read in first Corinthians 12,I'll actually read it to you,
says this now you are the body of Christand individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church,first of all
apostles, prophets, teachers,
then miracles, gifts of healing, helping,administration, various kinds of tongues.
(24:52):
And it keeps going onwith all kinds of spiritual gifts.
That's the end of chapter 12 infirst Corinthians.
Then we get to the beginningof first Corinthians 13, and it starts
this way love is patient, kind, does notenvy, boast, arrogant, rude?
You know that. Okay, so what's it in
context talking about how we operatein our spiritual gifts?
(25:14):
That's whatFirst Corinthians 13 is actually about.
In the context
now, sometimes we separate thoseand we make it about something different.
And and so within that, when we,you know, when we read that in context,
it's like, okay,that makes a lot more sense.
So those are three.
There's a lot more, of course, but thosethose ones will get you pretty far
(25:35):
if we can even do those three thingsand teach those to your kids.
Man, that will be super, super helpfulin a correct interpretation of scripture.
Yeah. All right.
That's great.
We're going to shiftto a different segment,
that we call Favorite Things. Yes.
(25:56):
Special Bible study edition.
Yeah, a special Bible survivalstudy edition of Favorite Things.
Right? Yes.
So these are the toolswith this favorite thing
that you can use to help your kids learn
to have the habit of reading God'sWord, studying God's Word.
So walk us throughsome of those tools, Jen.
(26:16):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, these are all things that we havein our home that we have purchased to
either be on our family library shelfor a lot of these
we've given our children, as individual gifts.
So they each have their own copies.
So we know it's Christmas
time, pick them up for Christmas,put them under the tree.
(26:37):
These are resources that your family,not only your family,
but your kids will usetheir whole entire lives.
I still have some of these resourcesthat I, you know,
my parents picked up when I was younger.
But we'll go from there.
Okay. Well, I'll start with this one,since it's written.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Okay.
(26:57):
So this one that I have in front of meis, a journaling Bible.
These just came out.I'm going to hold it up.
This one is called poetry.
It's the size of just like, a standard,spiral notebook.
But the inside of it is the Bible.
This was put out by Crossway.
It's actually called the Spiral BoundJournaling Bible.
(27:17):
And, we picked this whole set upfor our daughter, who's 13,
and she brings it to church, and I'll justkind of show you what this looks like.
Here it is in Psalms.
So the formatis this on one side of the page
and it folds around, itfolds flat. Is the Bible on one side.
And then onthis side is a journaling compound.
(27:39):
So you can actually go throughand you can with your kids.
Or they can do this on their own. Right.
What are their observations.
Right. Their applications.
If you're studying,
certain passages in Bible studyor at church, they can bring these along.
It is beautiful.
This is just such a very,very beautiful set.
It's kind of an investment.
(28:01):
But we've just seen these used injust really wonderful ways.
So I would recommend this from Crossway.
It just actually maybe came out last year.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Of course we have concordance here.
Let's grab the concordance. These.All right.
So what's a concordance.What do you do with the concordance.
Oh my goodness that sounds so.
That looks intimidating right.
(28:24):
So the concordance I'll hold it
up is intimidatingI love working towards this is so fun.
So a concordance.
But there isif there is a word in the Bible
that you are looking to figure out,what does this word mean?
And how is this wordused throughout the Bible?
The concordance is your best friend.
(28:45):
So if you talk about Scriptureinterpreting scripture,
the concordance is going to helpyou get there.
So, I just opened it up,and the word that I turn to
is the word greatness, greatness.
And so it will give you insidethe concordance,
every, every single place
in the Bible,the word greatness is used in
(29:09):
the same like original formin the original text in the Old Testament.
It will be in Hebrew.
Yes. Is going to help you understandthe Hebrew language of that word.
And in the New Testament.
Yep, it'll be Greek. Yep.
So like this.
The example of greatness is like Exodus15 seven.
In the greatness of your majesty,you overthrow.
(29:30):
And the the root word forthat would be abundance.
So then it gives you like abundance,great greatness.
And so that was like the soand then you got in the back.
Yep, yep. Keep going you say. Yeah.
Then you look it up, they give youa number and you go look up the.
Yeah the original word in the back.
And it'll tell you the, the originalHebrew or Greek meaning of that word.
(29:53):
So you can if you're reading the Bibleand you read greatness and whatever.
What was that verse? Exodus.
I say you're reading through Exodusand you whatever past, you know,
chapter and verse that wasyou come across.
Well, I wonder what that word greatnessmeans in the original language.
You can go look, look it up byalphabetical, not, you know, word in here.
And then look, find the number in the backand then look it at you,
(30:16):
see if you don't know the original,you know,
let's say you didn't take Hebrewand Greek in college, didn't you?
This is the this is the shortcut to learn
all the, you know, all the,the original language and meaning of it.
And it's really fun.
And there, you know, and we lose a lotof the meaning of Hebrew.
In Greek, it doesn'ttranslate over into English very well.
(30:40):
There's so many nuances,you know, like just the word love,
you know, there's 3 or 4 different.
Yeah, meanings of the word of lovein, in the original languages,
we just have one, and you won't know that.
So sometimes you look up the word love
and you'll see a folio, or you'lllook it up and you'll see Eros.
Yeah.
You know, we get Philadelphiafrom that philia brotherly love.
(31:03):
Yeah.
And so it's helpful just to, to seethat, like, there's like six.
No, there's like 12 or 15 pagesdevoted to the word.
Have you have you have.
So this is our this is our fun.
This is our son John's this.
We just pulled it off his shelf. He's 13.
He got it for his birthday this year.
When he turned 13,that was one of the gifts we gave him.
(31:26):
It's wonderful.
And I will sometimes find our kids just,like, looking through this, for fun,
because it is so interestingjust to look at,
but this one is the ESV Exhaustive concordance, and we'll link it.
But it's and I'm glad you saidthat there are different
depending on the translation of the Bibleyou like to use.
Get the concordance that corresponds.
So the NIV concordance.
(31:47):
Yeah.
ESV concordance have other,you know, King James.
So if you're reading out of the NIV,then if you get the ESV, you're
the words,they're going to be a little different
sometimes they're translated,you know, the meanings the same, but
the translation, how they do thatsometimes is a little different.
Yeah. So get them matching.
(32:08):
The matching matching one.
So our kids all have ESV Bibles.
You have an ESV BibleI like you church uses.
It's a more it'snot it's a more wooden translation.
Yeah. Like NIV is more paraphrased. Yeah.
So I like the more literal translation.
I haven't NIV Bible,
but I've had it for like 100 yearsand so I don't want to switch Bibles.
(32:29):
Yeah.
Old school don't want to switch.
Yeah. Lived in. All right.Tell us the next one.
Oh, sure I can. Yes.
So I'll hold up this one.
I'll do commentaries. Okay.
So I think it's helpful to starta library of commentaries with your kids.
There's, you know, there's a million outthere, and there's 66 books of the Bible.
So generally, the best thing to do with commentaries
(32:52):
is not to buy a full set
of commentarieson every book of the Bible.
You usually are.
You know, you can search.
What are the best commentaries on Exodus?
What's the best ones on Matthew?
And there will be individualauthors and individual series.
You know,they have a whole bunch of authors
that contribute to the different ones,and some are better than others.
(33:15):
And some series are better than others.
So commentaries are simply explaining themeaning and the application of Scripture.
So scholars spend a ton of time studyingwhat the Bible says.
They write about their discoveriesand understandings in commentary.
And so sometimes, you know,
we read Scripture and we look at itand go, man, this is hard to understand.
(33:36):
Or am I understanding this correctly?
We can go look at a reputable,
helpful commentariesto help us understand what the Bible says.
You get a little bit of thiswith Study Bible.
Some of them now have kind of builtin little commentaries.
This year. Does. Yeah.
I prefer my, my, reference materialsand my Bible separate.
(33:57):
That's just a personal thing.
I and here's the here's my reason why.
So if you're a study Bible person,find great.
What I found for meis that I would read a passage,
and then I would quickly go downto read the
the study notes without meditating onor thinking about the Bible
and letting God's Spiritdo his work with me.
(34:20):
And so I decided I can, youknow, commentaries are really helpful.
I just want them to be secondary.
And second,not like read, boom, go right down.
So that was that was why I did that.
But, I'm good with my study Bible.You like to study Bible?
I'm good with it. Okay. Well, good.Good for you. Yeah.
We're just we don't haveto have the same. Yeah. Okay.
I'm okay with that.
Yeah. All right.A couple good commentaries.
(34:41):
This one, our kids get these, andsometimes you can find these on, on sale.
These are. Yep.
This is by JC Ryle.
He's an old school preacher from England,
and he,he writes in more of a devotional style.
I think it's a little easierto understand.
A lot of commentarieswill be kind of academic.
(35:02):
And you read themand you're like, boring, like,
you know, I, I can get about a paragraphand just get bogged down.
His is more devotional style,but it's still very, very meaty.
And so he has forthis comes in a set of four
that's called ExpositoryThoughts on the Gospels.
And, you know, all for,Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
(35:26):
These are really great on the Gospels.
I'll hold up this heresince these are other commentaries.
Okay. We got a morning. I just wanted to show you this.
Just the power of giving your kids tools.
My parents gave me these commentaries.
I'm.
I don't know my exact age.I was a teenager.
I think it was a Christmas present.
(35:47):
47 now. So let's just say I'm 17.
I don't remember that was exact age,but I so 27, 30, some 40.
I've had these for 30 years.
These ones right here, this is calledthe Bible Knowledge Commentary.
And this is one is on the Old Testamentand one's on the New Testament.
So this was a great starterset commentary for me
that I got,you know, doesn't go into great depth,
(36:10):
but at high level we'll go throughall of the Bible in two books.
That's great.
That was wonderful for me as a teenager.
And now if you come to our house,we have a library
and there's an entire bookshelfwith commentaries on books of the Bible.
There's so many good ones out there.
So we're studying through, Psalmswith our kids right now.
(36:30):
And so we went and boughta commentary on Psalms to give them.
And Psalms is a big book.
So oftentimes it's a multiple,
you know, it'smultiple books for the book of Psalm,
but start building their librarieswith, with commentaries.
And this is just the evidenceof the power of tools.
I've had these.
I just literally walked overand grabbed them off my shelf for,
(36:53):
for this right now.
And, so there's.
Yeah, tons of good ones out there.
Good ones.
No, we didn't bring in was a Bible atlas.
I know,I thought that's a bring in an atlas.
Talk about an atlassince you just brought it up.
So BibleAtlas is kind of like what it sounds like.
It's an atlas,and it has, like, illustrations
of what the the terrain wasand where things happened.
(37:17):
And so it's a really great tactile toolto be able to look through and be like,
where were things happening and what didthe culture look like in real time?
And so yes,we have one that we pull out. Yeah.
So it's helpful to knowlike Bethlehem is only.
Yeah.
A short distance from all this Jerusalemclose to God when you
(37:38):
when you hear about Herodsending the troops to kill the babies and,
you know, trying to killJesus after Jesus was born. Yep.
You think, oh, wow,this is actually really close.
It wouldn't have taken very longto get there.
It's helpful to know
that there's an Old Testament Jerichoand a New Testament Jericho.
You learn this from an atlas.They're not the same place.
When Jesus walked up two places.
(38:00):
That's a that's a geographical reference.
He literally was rising in elevation.
And so just these things,are just helpful.
Helpfulto know we were like, looking at a donkey.
We're like,looking at this like actual donkey.
And I said to the kids, I was like,do you think that
that donkeycould have carried Mary all the way?
(38:20):
You know, Mary and the baby Jesusall the way to Bethlehem?
And they were like,no way. Let's look at how far it was.
Bible Atlas Bible out.
There you go. Okay. Last one.Oh, no. You know.
Yeah, you do that one.
Tomorrow,the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary.
So we have, Bible dictionaries.
And again,
like you would use a dictionarywith your kids
(38:42):
if you're looking upthe meanings of things.
But this is just so greatbecause you can look up the,
the biblical meaningsof, of everything from there.
This is a picture of a skull.
You know, like the names of people, the names of the books of the Bible
concepts, any anything
(39:03):
you would want to look up in the Bible,it will give you just a nice overview.
So just like you would look upthe meaning of a word, you can look up
the meanings of things in the Bibles.
And a good Bibledictionary will have some maps in it.
It'll have some,you know, good illustrations.
It'll give you some, like, springboardsto moving through other things.
(39:23):
But we like this one, the HolmanIllustrated Bible and then illustrated.
But I think you can get themfor like 2025.
But they're notthey're not expensive and they're great.
They're in hardcover and they'll last up.
They'll keep them forever.
Yeah okay. Last one, last one.
I'll mention, for your kidswhen they get into like the early teen
or teen years, get them a really goodsystematic theology book.
(39:46):
There's a number of good ones out there.
Wayne Groom highly recommend.
Erickson's a good one.
The one I grabbed here.
We've got a bunch of them on our shelves.
This is oneI grabbed because this is our oldest son.
Jay has this one. This one is called.
He loves this biblical doctrine,a systematic summary of Bible truth.
(40:06):
This one is by John MacArthur.
And it's a I mean, it's a beast.
If you look on here, it's it's heavy.You'll be strong.
You're not going to probably startat the beginning and read through this.
It's a reference material.
So as you're as you're coming acrosscertain things, this you know,
they're learning.
What does the Bible teach about.
Pick the topic. Really good.
This is an investment.
(40:27):
You know, this this one by MacArthur.
I, I can't remember the exact price.
I think it was maybe 60, 80 bucks,something like that.
But these are great.
I mean, you get, you can give,we can give our kids, like, a Lego bar,
a box of Legos for 80 bucks,you know, set that
they'll they'll have funwith for a short time, and then it's gone.
But, like, something like this.
(40:47):
This will last.
This will, this will, you know, thesethings will, will help them immensely.
And, you know,at first they might, you know,
I don't knowhow excited your kids are to get books.
Ours get pretty excited.
We help them become lovers of of booksand reading.
But, you know, at firstyour kids might be like, oh, man,
(41:08):
I was kind of wanting something differentthan these things for gifts
or for, to have in my room.
But here's the thing.
When they're around,
as their interest is piqued,if they're not, like, super
excited about this kind of stuff,my guess is they will walk over,
they will start to peruse, they'll use it.
(41:30):
If you start to integrate thisinto even your study of the Bible
with your kids, like we specifically
utilize the Bible dictionary,
we utilize the concordance,we utilize commentaries in our study.
When we're going throughbooks in the Bible with our kids,
they start to learn how to usethese reference materials and begin
to incorporate them into their own studyof the Bible, to observe correctly,
(41:55):
to interpret correctly,to apply Scripture, to their life.
And we, of coursewant our kids to be like the Bereans
who are mighty in the scriptures.I'll read this.
This is, you know, one of the desireswe have for our kids is now these Jews
or more noble than those in Thessalonica.
(42:15):
They received the word with all eagerness,examining the scriptures daily
to see if these things were so,examining it
like I love that examining the scripturesdaily and
and the eagerness, just that, you know,that that excitement to be in God's Word.
This isn't a duty.
This isn't like a, this is like.
(42:35):
Yes, I's the wondrous things.
Oh, yeah.
The wondrous things in God's Word.
It's it's a delight.
It's honey, it's wonderful.
And it's, you know,we start to come into contact
with the living,the true, the wonderful God.
Starts to transform our lives.
And, it's a great. It's a great blessing.
Yeah. It is.
All right. That's.
(42:55):
I think that's all we have for today.
Information. Hopefully
you guys will pick up on a couple thingsand start studying the Bible.
Yeah, yeah.All right, well, thanks for tuning in.
And we'll see younext time, you guys. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to the GospelSheep Family podcast.
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