How to Study the Bible Pt 3: What Does It Mean?

doing good today so far it's good that you're here because we're gonna worship listen to the word and we'll go ahead and get started with the word of prayer father thank you for one more opportunity to worship you express how we're feeling to you to strengthen us to fill us with your spirit anew thank you good lord you are amazing we love you and we worship you now amen i can sing with my whole heart jesus my savior my joy is complete trust in christ every step i take of your promise to guide me each day though some may oppose me i won't be ashamed whatever i face lord i will trust in christ every step i take yes god we praise you we are looking forward to that final day when we do get to meet you whether

it's tonight or i don't know 100 years from now whenever it is god we know you have perfect timing we know we can trust you we're so looking forward to it we love you yes father that's the uh that's the cry of our hearts tonight is that we need you we depend on you we admit we confess we love you yes father that's the cry of our hearts tonight is that we need you we depend on you we admit we love you confess utter incapability, loss before you so that you can come and be strong and be perfect and powerful in our weakness. God, thank you for your word. Thank you. It does what it does.

And I pray that as Ryan comes tonight and teaches us how to study your word, God, I just ask that you would help us retain what we hear tonight so we can carry it forward and apply it to our individual lives and teach others how to do the same. It's in your great and holy name, Jesus. Amen. We were alive. Okay, first of all, if you did not get one of the handouts, I missed a handful of you.

Could you please put your hand up real quick? It has the... Bryce is going to... Come by and hand them out. Should have enough, I hope, for everybody. It's basically just Psalm 1 and a couple of different Bible translations that we'll read through together. Okay. Tried to catch everybody, but I missed a handful here. A couple more up here. All right. Okay. So last week,

as we were looking at how to study your Bible, we went through Psalm 1 and we talked about breaking it down into two parts. One is the Bible, and the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the Bible. And the other is the

We said that there's going to be three aspects of studying the word. The first is, what does it say? The second is, what does it mean? And so before we get to, again, any kind of application, we need to determine what it means so that we can apply it properly. Because if we don't interpret it properly, we cannot apply it properly. So a handful of things before we get into this

that you need to pay attention to. So first of all, as I said last week, we're going to be talking about Last week, we broke it down into, I had actually brought mine, I don't know if anybody brought it back or not, but I brought the little outline back, and again, the most important thing is just to pray, read, and think through those things. And so, as we begin to determine what it means, there's a handful of steps that I take, and I think anybody should take, when you have broken it down and you understand some of the phrases that you want to pay attention to. Remember, we said that there were two main parts of Psalm 1.

There was the righteous man, or excuse me, the blessed man and the wicked man. We kind of broke it down that way. And so, after we broke it down, the next thing that I personally do, and I'm going to walk you through my steps, and then we'll start kind of talking about them one by one. The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to read it in lots of different translations, and I had some of these put up there.

Some of the main ones that I'm always going to read over, and if you're reading old or new, these are available for all. That first one is the English Standard. The English Standard version, a really good translation. The New Living Translation, which again, is going to be very conversational. The Amplified Bible, which is going to be incredibly wordy, but it defines a lot of

words. And then, of course, the New International Version, because it just says it a little bit different. And again, the reason why, and I'll show you in just a minute why I like to do that, that's why I gave you that handout, is because oftentimes, that will give you kind of what you need as you're studying when you read it in other translations. Now, if you're studying just the New Testament, there's two that I really recommend.

One is the Wiest, and actually, if I was going to make a purchase to study the New Testament, I would purchase the four-volume set of Kenneth Wiest. It not only has a New Testament Greek translation, but he has three volumes of word studies that are so rich. But it's only New Testament, because it's only Greek. And then the second one is the J.B. Phillips, which is an incredible New Testament translation.

It, again, is going to be a paraphrase, so it's very conversational. So sometimes you're reading in the New Testament, especially a book, maybe like the Galatians, where you're like, dude, that doesn't make sense to me whatsoever. And then you read it in J.B. Phillips, you're like, oh, because it kind of gives it a conversational flow, which Paul was not always good at, having a conversational flow.

And so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to read it in lots of different translations. There's a couple of reasons why I'm going to read it in a lot of different translations. This is my philosophy on Bible study. You ready for this? Runners, run. Golfers, golf. Shooters, shoot. Football players, play football. If you want to be good at something, you need to do it.

There's no magic to it. And I think that's the biggest thing that we have to understand about Bible study is we want to make it this like magical, overly spiritual thing. And don't get me wrong, it's incredibly spiritual, but it also is just, you just have to do it. You have to get into God's word. If you want to know what this says, then you need to handle it as much as you possibly

can. Just like if an athlete's going to play a sport, they have to play their sport. They have to get to know it as well as they possibly can. And so you should read lots of different translations in lots of different ways and then read it over and over again, because you have to be in it if you're going to know what it says. The second thing that I want to point out to you about reading different translations

and being in the word, and sort of a little caveat on some things that I said last week, is I need to correct one thing that I said. So I always, any study, it doesn't matter what I do, if my wife's there, the first thing I say when we get in the car is, hey, did all that make sense? Was it okay? Did you? It doesn't matter what anybody else has to say to me.

Her opinion matters to me the most because she's my wife and I love her. And I know she's going to be honest with me. She is going to tell me the truth. And if there was something I needed to change, she's going to tell me. It's going to be very loving and gentle the way she does, but she's going to tell me because she's a faithful friend. And so I asked her last week, afterwards, I said, hey, how did that go?

Did it, did everything make sense? And she said, everything was great except for one thing. And I know she doesn't say these things easily. And she said it very gently. She said, you said some things that indicated how you do it as a pastor. Your job is to study the word. Not everybody has an hour and a half to two hours a day to study God's word. People have families.

People have jobs. And they can't always do what you do. She said, that would be the only correction that I would make. And so I want to say, I want to correct that. I don't want to put a legalistic feeling on anybody. Use your time wisely. That's all that I would say. If you have 15 minutes, use that 15 minutes as wisely as you possibly can. And do as much reading and praying and thinking in that 15 to 20 minutes as you possibly can.

If you have more than that, use that time. But I don't want to put on anybody. The feeling that if I'm not spending an hour and a half or two a day in this, that I'm that I'm somehow failing. I would never, ever want to put that off on anybody. And I was glad that she told me that because I don't want to do that to anybody. So just use your time wisely. But that's why if the only thing that you can get done is to read it in one other translation, then you know what?

That's a pretty good Bible study. And we'll point that out in just a minute. So, again, the first thing I do is read it in a lot of different translations. The second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look up words of interest. Look up words of interest. OK, because this is a really important thing. Now, sometimes the Holy Spirit will zero you in on a word.

And this is where it's spiritual, right? It's because the Holy Spirit will somehow draw you to to a word or a phrase and it'll just stick out to you. As a matter of fact, sometimes I will just underline or circle one word in my devotional time because it's like, man, I don't know why, but that stuck out to me. I was actually listening to Patty teach on Friday morning.

And she read a parable and she pointed out a word. And I hadn't really thought about this word. And it was the parable of of the the the lost sheep. Right. A shepherd has 100 sheep. And if he loses one, he will leave the ninety nine and search. And she said, I want you to circle the word until. And, you know, I'd never paid attention to that word until she pointed it out because he will search until he finds it.

So every now and then the Holy Spirit. It'll sort of zero you in on a word or a phrase. And you should just look that up. And I'll show you kind of how to do that in just a minute. So you're going to look for some words of interest and you're going to look those up and see what they mean and see if there's anything extra that you can learn from it. Sometimes it's like the word all in the Greek, which simply means all like sometimes there's no magic to it.

But every now and then you look it up and you're like, well, that there's a wealth of knowledge in that. Number three, I'm going to check out cross references. Now, again, we pointed out different Bibles. That you can have last week, both the Thompson chain and any of the other study Bibles. They're going to have cross references. And what you'll notice is as you're studying in a verse, there might be like a little letter, like an A or a B or a one or something next to a word that usually will draw your attention to either the middle section or the edges.

And then there will be some other verses there. Those other verses are going to either contain the same word or the same subject. Now, the reason why it's good to look up those cross references is because. It usually is going to talk about the same subject. For instance, maybe we're talking about the blessed man. And it's going to show you other places in scripture where that word blessed is used.

And you can it can shed a little bit of light on it. That this is a Bible study technique called using the word to interpret the word. And that's a big thing within Calvary chapels is we want to use the word of God to interpret the word of God, because it's amazing how it it all really works together. So I'm going to look up some cross references. And then the last thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to read some commentaries.

Now, before we get to some of the different types of commentaries, I want to point a couple of things out to you about the reading of commentaries. When I was in Bible college, there was this really big movement to not use commentaries. They're just like, oh, we just don't need them. And I'm like, well, I mean, we don't want that to be our one source of reliance, like the Holy Spirit's who we need to rely upon.

But there's also nothing wrong with reading a commentary. Because what I give you on a Sunday morning is simply commentary. I'm making comments on what God's word has to say based upon what I've studied and what the Holy Spirit has shown me. So there's nothing wrong with reading them. You just want to make sure that that's not your first source, that you're first of all seeking to hear from the Holy Spirit.

The second thing about commentaries is that you don't want that to be your only source. You want that to be what points you to the right track. Like, OK, yes, I'm on the right track. Because this guy who studies scripture for a living, it is a theologian or whatever. He's seeing the same thing. I know that I'm on the right track. Does that kind of make sense?

That's what the use of commentaries is good for. And every now and then it's just good to hear what somebody else has to say about it. So here's a handful of commentaries that I think that are good. If you're looking for just a basic overview commentary, these are a handful that you can look at. OK, go to the next one there. OK, so first of all, Haley's. Bible handbook, which I pointed out.

I don't know that you can get this digitally. We'll talk about some digital resources in just a minute. I don't know that you can get this digitally, but you should be able to get it on either Amazon or Christian book dot com. And I think everybody should have this in their library because, for instance, this is the Psalms. And so there's going to be one little paragraph about each song.

It's going to be a basic overview to give you a little bit of an idea about what the theme of each chapter of the Bible is. This will take you. All the way through the Bible, because it'll give you a few paragraphs, a few sentences on every chapter of the Bible. So Haley's Bible handbook is a good one to have another one for just kind of some basic understandings called the Bible knowledge commentary.

Again, that's a two volume commentary. So it's not real huge. It's going to be going to give you a basic overview of what the book has to say. The next one, which I'm really become a huge fan of, is the Believer's Bible commentary and the Believer's Bible. Commentary, again, is a is a one volume book. You can get both of those two in a digital form as well.

But it's a one volume book that I find to be a wealth of knowledge. So but it would be good that if you have your Bible, you could easily just go and you could read over that chapter's worth of commentary in about 15 minutes. So and so that's pretty good. So those are some basic ones that if you are just going to. Man, I need a quick overview. So I have a decent idea about what's going on.

Those are some ones that you can use. If you want to go still kind of basic, but a little bit more in depth. These are some that I like to use a lot. First of all, Chuck Smith. And I'll show you in just a minute a digital way to get to him. Chuck is going to take two or three chapters at a time. And if you listen to it, it'll take you about an hour. If you read it, I can usually get through in about 45 minutes, maybe a half hour, because Chuck takes really long pauses.

But but that's going to give you a basic overview. David Guzik is a really good. When again, he's going to give you a real basic kind of overview of of scripture. Both of those are found on Blue Letter Bible, which we'll talk about in just a minute. I huge J. Vernon McGee fan. And quite frankly, if you want to get up at six o'clock in the morning, I think it's six o'clock in the morning.

He's on every six or six thirty. Is it six o'clock? I knew he'd know six because he gave me my love for J. Vernon McGee. He's on at six o'clock in the morning on radio. And then again, that may be noon or twelve thirty. He's somewhere in that range. He's on radio. But you can also get his five volume commentary series, which I highly recommend. And you can get him in digital form.

And then the next one is Warren Wiersbe. Warren Wiersbe is a little bit different. It's still a decent overview, but he's more. How do you want to put it? It's more sermon form, but it's still really good. And he has some real good little nuggets of truth. Again, you can purchase it in print or in digital form. So those are some good. Commentaries. And again, if you're going to look up words, I meant to show you these earlier.

These are a couple of dictionaries that you can use. And I'm going to talk to you why digital resources are super handy in just a minute. So this is the Vines Complete Expository Dictionary. And you can just look up words and it'll tell you what it means. But that's one thing that I would recommend that you own in your library. And this is called the Strongs.

As a matter of fact, this one's called. The Strongest Strongs. Did you see that? If there was a Stronger than Strongest Strongs, I would probably try to own it too. And maybe the digital stuff that I have. But this is, again, is something I would recommend that everybody have in their library. Because it's really good. And even if you own it in digital format, I would still recommend that you own it in print format.

Because what happens if the world goes nuts? I mean, I hate to be like a doomsdayer. But if something went crazy and all of a sudden we didn't have electricity, look, I've watched the book of Eli, okay? If something crazy happened, I want any print Bible source that I have, or Bible study source that I have. I just think it's a good idea. But again, pretty hard to lug this dude around, right?

So those are some print resources. And I highly recommend print resources. I think you should have a library full of print resources. But if I'm being completely honest, it is not practical to just carry those things around all the time. Even this guy. I mean, that's a serious. Look, right? Like I go mobile a lot with my studying. As a matter of fact, I was able to take an entire library full of books with me to Kansas City

because I had to do a little extra studying for something while I was up at the conference. And so I was able to take my library full of books by having this and my phone, right? And so I had all of that on there, plus every commentary that I could ever use. And it was all in digital resources. So what I want to do is spend just a few minutes talking to you

about some digital resources. Now, Matt and I tried our darndest to mirror my computer to the computer here, but it didn't want to do it. So what I did today is I put together a screen recording. Will that get bigger? Yeah, probably not. That's probably as big as it gets. A screen recording of some digital resources. So there's two main resources. Don't hit play just yet.

So there's two main platforms that I use. There's others out there. These are the ones that for a guy who doesn't really like technology very much and is not very smart with technology, these are pretty user-friendly. If they're not user-friendly, I can't use them because I'm not that friendly. And so the two that I use are, number one is Blue Letter Bible,

and I'll show you that in just a second. And then the other is Olive Tree Bible. Everything on Blue Letter Bible is free, which is nice. Olive Tree Bible has a basic package. It's free. And then you can purchase things within the Bible study app itself. Now, here's the thing. Olive Tree runs sales all the time. And so as a matter of fact, right now they're having like a customer appreciation sale.

They just finished having Christmas in July where you can get a commentary series that would normally cost you $600 to own the whole series for about $100. And then they've got some things that normally would have been like $75 for like $20. So you can find. They've got some really good deals on Olive Tree. But, okay, so this is how you do it. All right, go ahead and play it.

I know there's two TV screens, but that's the closest one. I hope this is going to work. Please, Jesus, let it work. Everybody begin praying.

One more time with feeling. It's okay. We'll look at the sweet flower for just a second. Oh, oh, wait. Wait for it. Okay, so this is Blue Letter Bible. So you go, you type your whatever you're going to study in. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I went way too fast on that. All the different Bible translations within Blue Letter Bible just for that one verse. That's the one thing I don't like about Blue Letter Bible. Okay. And then the next thing that I show you is there's all the commentaries. So there's Chuck. And there's my wife.

Okay. there's uh both text on the right hand side and audio on the left hand side and then let's see how slow oh look yeah oh there they are you can click on them there it is oh okay i use that a lot and again uh so that's everything that's just for psalm one one um and then of course interlinear if you want to look up the strong's word uh you can do that there oh look and then there's that so it gives you the definition i've just looked up the word oh blessed that's what blessed means blessed means happy or prosperous so so that's what's available on blue letter bible i think i click out of this in just one quick second commentaries again i don't know what i'm

doing i don't know why i did that and i click out of that oh okay now down here this is olive tree that i'm going to click on and show you here all right so again operates just a little bit differently but as you can see the first thing that you're going to do i went what should i do here oh oh i should find my spot first okay so i'm going to figure out where i'm going so i go i was already there but i'm going to show you anyway you go to the psalms you go to psalm one okay now the nice thing about this is they have what's called strong's tagged bibles so i have an esv strong's uh an nasb strong's a new king james strong's and then but since we're using nas i clicked on that and then i'm going to show you how to use the strong's tags

in just a minute over on the right is all of the things that you can use there's all of the bibles that that are available to me some of those i've purchased some were free um i can just click on that and look oh they're right next to each other parallel bible i love this thing okay i don't know why i did that went painted oh that's a bad idea let's go back okay let's look at the amplified i've watched this a couple of times i know how it ends okay so there's the amplified and i just literally printed off both of those for you okay and then um i don't know why i clicked on that i don't know what i'm doing there and then there's my strong's tagged bible again i think i take you to commentaries here in just

a minute but i'm moving really slow not paying attention maybe i'm almost done here the guy making the video didn't know what he was doing let's put it that way okay now go to the next one so that's kind of what's available you got to find your spot but i want to show you how the strong's tags work because this is fascinating to me and it has been a life changer for me as far as bible study is concerned so again there's a sweet flower i love that pull this guy up okay same thing i was like hey i should show you how to use the strong's tags so we hit play hopefully it's going to work this time i wonder what the people online are thinking right now okay here we go so to do this oh you

click on it look there it is now okay there's the basic definition within strong's but i want to see where else it's used in scripture which i think i did first yeah i want to see where else it's used in scripture that shows me everywhere that that hebrew word is used in scripture pretty cool right and then okay now i want to look it up in other dictionaries there's all the dictionaries that i have available on olive tree again some i've purchased some were free um anytime it says hey you want this for free i'm like yes okay so there's vines which is one of my favorites gives me everything that i need to know and um can operate like that and then i think i'll show you commentaries there in just a second and then over on the right maybe i stopped

it there i remember i must have stopped it there i was like that's good enough you don't need to know anything else yep i did okay now that's on my other translation i just pulled my phone out doing word searches and stuff and and it's just it's easy it's a great way to figure out what it means so um any questions on that i don't mind there being questions right now this can be interactive you may have any questions on any of those apps i know there's lots of other apps out there those are the two that are easy for me yeah doc that has never happened to me nope uh as a matter of fact if you go to purchase something they ask you about three times are you sure you

want to purchase this so uh so yeah no it's really good to make sure that to start purchasing stuff you uh on olive tree you have to specifically go to a store select it click buy it asks you are you sure and all that kind of stuff so no i've never had any surprises like that anybody else any other questions okay now now we've only got about 15 minutes left let's talk through this just a little bit so again the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to read it in translation i'm going to show you why this is important so pull out your little handout that i made for you i just got off of olive tree uh these two translations i printed them off in the opposite direction of

the way that i want to read them so i'm going to read through these actually let's read through the nas first and then i'll show you how these come in really really handy okay so this is what it says psalm one how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the path of sinners nor sit in the seat of the scoffers but his delight is in the law of the lord and in his law he meditates day and night he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and in whatever he does he prospers the wicked are not so but they are like chaff which the wind drives away therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the

righteous and the righteous will not stand in the judgment of the righteous and the righteous nor sinners in the assembly of the righteousness of the righteous and the righteousness of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Now, again, I've already put my outline together. I have a general idea of what's going to stick out to me, but now I'm going to read in these other translations and see if they can interpret it all for me. So let's look at the New Living Translation. Oh, the joys. Well, that's already

different, right? Because in the New American Standard, it says blessed. Therefore, we know that the word blessed somehow indicates joy or happiness, right? Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners or join in with mockers. Now, those were kind of our first three things that we talked about, right? Now, did you notice that's

worded just a little bit different? I already have a little bit of illumination on what that means. I know that to walk in the counsel of the wicked means to follow the advice of the wicked. I know that to stand in the path of sinners means that I'm going to be standing around with sinners. And I know that to sit in the seat of the scoffers means I'm going to join in with the mockers.

See how reading a different translation can really illuminate that? So we go on from there. And what I would do is I would either write down what those differences are. Like I keep a translation comparison. Or I might just underline it. Or if something really stuck out, I might write at the margin of my Bible, right? Like what's a scoffer? Well, it's a mocker. What's the counsel? Well,

it's the advice, right? Okay. So you go on from there. It says, but they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all that they do, but not the wicked. They are like worthless chaff scattered by the wind. They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Audrey knows that's a little

bit different. Instead of saying they won't stand in the judgment, it says that they will be condemned in the day of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly for the Lord watches over the path of the God. Again, that word's just a little bit different. But the path of the wicked leads to destruction. So I've read my first translation. I've taken note of some differences. Plus it's a pretty

conversational way to put that. Added a little bit of illumination. Then you read the Amplified Bible, which doesn't go faster because it's amplified and it's like a strong Bible. So Psalm 1. Blessed, fortunate, prosperous, and favored by God is the man. So we know that the word blessed means the man. So we know that the word blessed means the man. So we know that the word blessed

means that. And literally, if you look it up, that's exactly what it means, which is why the Amplified is kind of good. Is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, bracket, following their advice and example, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit down to rest in the seat of the scoffers or ridiculers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, precepts or teachings, he habitually meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted

and fed by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither. And in whatever he does, he prospers on. It adds a little note here and comes to maturity. The wicked, those who live in disobedience to God's law, are not so, but they are like the chaff, worthless and without substance, which by the way, is exactly what the word chaff means, which the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not

stand unpunished in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows and fully approves the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish. Now, if all you had, had time to do was just read those two Bible translations, would you say that you had gained a great deal of illumination about what God has to say in that song? I would. You kind of go,

man, that really adds a lot too. You don't need three hours. You just need to take the time. Now, for the most part, I would say that the Amplified just defined a lot of those words for me. Would you agree with that? A lot of words that would have stuck out to me, it defined. So as I'm looking, I look at the words that I wanted to, I know what blessed means because it told us what blessed means. It means to be happy or joyful

or prosperous, right? We learned that. So blessed is the man who does not walk. Now the word walk stuck out to me. I'm sorry. I didn't have time to get all these put up here. So you just have to listen close. The word walk stuck out to me. And so I looked up the word walk and the word walk literally means your behavior. Ah, so blessed is the man who, whose behavior is not like this. His behavior does not follow the advice because that's what

counsel means. We know that from the Amplified of the wicked. Now I thought it was kind of interesting in the Amplified Bible because it refers to the wicked as those who are disobedient to God's law. Do you know what the word wicked, if you look it up in the Strong's dictionary means? It means guilty. Those who are guilty of disobeying God's law. So those are the words that stuck out to me. Now in the next verse,

the words that stuck out, first of all, the word stand means to take your stand or to abide in. The word path means way. Didn't mean a whole lot to me. And again, sinners are those who are guilty or sinful. Another one of those words that didn't really need a lot of illumination. So those are some words that stuck out to me. So blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of

sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. Now the word seat stuck out to me. And I looked that up. The word seat means assembly or dwelling place. Now I found that to be kind of interesting because we're not to sit in the dwelling place, again, of those who are mockers or scoffers or ridiculers. So blessed means those who are mocking not only the law of God, but even those who mock other

people. You ever sat around with a group of people that constantly make fun of everybody? Well, the blessed man does not sit around with people like that, right? You don't live in the assembly of those people. So that's what it means. That's the things that the blessed man does not do. But then it tells us what he does do. And there was one word that I didn't know.

There was one word that I didn't know. And that was the word that I didn't know. There was one word that really stuck out to me that was not defined in either of the translations. The word that really stuck out to me, because he goes on to say, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in the law, he meditates day and night. So those two words, delight and meditate, stuck out to me. The word delight, I looked up because

neither of the translations defined it. The word delight means a desire or a longing or a pleasure. In other words, he longs for the law of God, and he finds pleasure in the law of God. He delights in the law of the Lord. What's the law? Well, it's God's teachings and precepts. We saw that in the Amplified Bible. And in his law, he meditates. That's the second word that stuck

out to me in that verse. Now, when you think of the word meditate, what do you think of? A lot of times we think of something bad, right? We think of somebody doing yoga or somebody going home, right? Trying to reach some sort of a silence. You know what the word meditate here means? The word meditate is kind of an interesting word, because the word meditate means to moan or to muse or to growl. Well,

that's kind of wild, right? Like, if you just look at the Strongs, that's what it means. And so, I don't know about you, but I was like, that's an odd usage of that word. So you know what I did? I went to the Vines Dictionary, and I looked up to see if they gave me any more nation. And they did. What it said in the Vines Dictionary is that it carries with it the idea

of the noise that someone makes when they're deep in thought, right? Have you ever been around somebody that kind of goes, hmm, right? Because they kind of make that noise when they're thinking. That's the idea of to meditate. It means you're so deep in thought that you can find yourself going, hmm. And you kind of make that moaning sort of a noise as you're thinking, because you're so deep

in thought. That's the idea of someone making that noise. And you're so deep in thought that you're someone who meditates on the word of God. Now, when I read that in the Vines Dictionary, I was like, okay, that I see. I can see where that's coming from because the older that I get, the more that I sort of moan or growl. I growl sometimes and I'm angry, but that's not the kind

of growl that we're talking about here. But when I get really deep in thought, my wife will just look at me and go, what are you doing? I'm just thinking, why? She goes, why are you making so much noise while you do it? Because I'm really deep in thought, right? And I'll also do the same thing when I lay down in bed at night because my whole body hurts. But that's a different story in

and of itself. But I'll kind of sit there deep in thought and I'll just start making that noise. And she's like, what are you doing? Like, well, I'm deep in thought. So as soon as it said that in the Vines, I'm like, yep, that's me. I do that. I long for the Word of God, but I also dig deep and really think about the Word of God. Now, to me, I don't want to get into application

challenges. I don't want to get into application challenges. I don't want to get into application challenges. I don't want to get into application challenges. I don't want to get into application just yet, but I can't help it here. To me, that's kind of what we're supposed to do, right? That's what I mean when I say read, pray, think. Muse on it so much that there's almost a

moan that you kind of, yeah, what does that mean? That's the idea behind that word meditate. I thought those were kind of fascinating things. Again, it doesn't take rocket science to do that. I'm not that smart of a guy. I just looked it up and that's what it said. And I was like, yep, I can bear witness with that. Other times I've read this and other words have stuck out to me.

Those are what stuck out to me this time. Of course, he goes on to say that the wicked are not so, and I thought it was fascinating that the Amplified Bible pointed out because it says that they are like chaff. So I looked it up in the Strongs and it literally, it said chaff, also chaff, that which the wind drives away. That literally was the definition. And so I was like,

okay, that doesn't make sense to me. So again, I went to the vines. And they looked it up to see if they had any illumination. And they said the chaff, which the wind drives away, is that in the wheat stalk, which is useless and worthless. Kind of interesting because that's how it was translated in the Amplified, right? The ungodly are not so, but they are like the chaff, which the wind drives away. Why? Because

all of the things of the world are worthless and useless. And if all of the things that your life the things of the world, then it's worthless and useless. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff, which the wind drives away. They will not stand in the judgment. And I can't remember which translation it said, but I really liked it a lot. I think it was the New Living. Yeah,

the New Living says they will be condemned at the time of judgment. And that should indicate to us that that's not who we should be. We should not be like the wicked so that we will not be condemned at the time of judgment. Nor will they stand in the assembly of the righteous. Now that word assembly is the same that's used up here in the about what where it says seat assembly or dwelling place. They won't

stand in the assembly of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous. Now I found this to be kind of interesting because I want to take note and where I gathered this was from the two translations. I want to read this to you. First of all, in the New Living for the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but notice what it says in the Amplified for the Lord knows and fully approves of the way of the righteous. Now when you see it translated three different

ways like that, you should ask yourself, why? Why is it translated those three different ways? We should look that up and make sure we really understand what that means. Well, when you look it up in the Strong's and then again in the Vines Dictionary, you find that there are multiple uses for the word knows. One way that it's indicated is the idea of to know by viewing

and observing. And so the Lord knows the way of the righteous. Another way that it's used is by saying that the Lord knows experientially the way of the righteous. But another way that the word knows there is used is to indicate approval. Why? It's translated those different ways. Now this is kind of interesting to look at because what this just told us is the way of the righteous the Lord knows experientially because the Lord is

righteous. He knows because he sees because he observes the things that go on with the righteous. But also the Lord approves because when we live according to God's righteous standards, then he approves of the way of the righteous. Isn't that cool? All of that in that one word. This is why I tell you, that the English language is a little bit inept sometimes. The Hebrew is much more colorful

in the way that it's stated. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish or lead to destruction. And so we've just done some interpreting of what God's word says. We knew what it said because we just simply took time to look at it, ask ourselves questions, and break it down the best that we could based on what it says. But once you know what it says, now you've got to determine, so what does it mean?

Well, if you follow those steps, read it in lots of translations, look up the words that stick out, check out your cross-references, which we didn't do any of tonight, and then look at a little commentary, which we also didn't do tonight, then you can determine what it means. And once you know what it says, and then you know what it means, you can then begin to properly apply it to your life so that you can live as God. God wants you to live. So next week, because we're out of time for tonight, next week, we'll look at how we apply God's word to our life. Any other questions before we wrap up here? Yeah,

Doc? Programming, meaning the app? Yeah. So the biggest thing that you can do with the app is you can just get to the meat of it when you hit the different words. Once you've got your outline down and those words stick out to you, you can just click on those words. That's about the most to kind of streamline it. Yeah. The only way that you can streamline the outline is if you make the

outline and then look up those words. So to that end, there's not as much streamlining that you can do. That's where some time kind of comes into play. So any other questions? Okay. Let's close in prayer. Father, we come before you and just thank you. Thank you for your word. And Lord, as a Western culture, we don't thank you enough that you have provided so many resources

for us to be able to really do this. And we thank you for that. And we thank you for that. And we again and study your word, Lord. May we never take for granted all of the tools that are at our disposal, at our literal fingertips on a consistent basis, Lord. May we take full advantage of everything that you've given to us to know you and your word as well as we possibly can.

Father, thank you that you're patient with us. I thank you for your grace. And Lord, would you lead us and guide us in you and be with the people here and the ones watching online as they hopefully take in these things. And throw out the stuff that doesn't work. And Lord, hold on to what your spirit's telling them they can do in order to know you better. Father, we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Be blessed.