Religion Question

1. New Testament Greek I

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There we go. So did anyone have any questions about last week’s lesson about the word outtos, which means same or same again, something along those lines. And usually you translate it, he, she, or it, depending on the context.

Just a quick shout out. That, that was, that was one of the better, I guess for me at least, that was one of the better lessons. It was just very clear.

I don’t know. I just, it made more sense this time around. So I don’t know if there’s any like different way that you were approaching it, but it just made a lot of sense for me personally.

And I was able to clear up a lot of stuff. There were some things more so in the workbook that were confusing, which I got lost. Multiple times.

And I literally just quit. I got to a certain point. I was like, I’m not doing this right now.

And it had to do, I mean, there were just references to words and to endings I had not seen. And I don’t know if I missed something or if I did not, I don’t know what I was parsing stuff. And then all of a sudden I was realizing I have no idea what I’m parsing right now.

And so if you have any advice on like how to go back and review certain things or what to review right now, I’m kind of, I feel like I’m in the weeds right now and I’m not quite sure which way is north. That’s personally. So.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to go ahead and hazard a guess that you’re probably not the only one feeling that way.

But yeah, no, it’s good. In terms of the workbook, there’s going to be on, you’ll notice this on some lessons more than others, but there will be a bit of a discrepancy in how I’m teaching it versus what, like Bible Mesh, how that’s presented because that’s following the way Mounce explains things. And you’ve all probably noticed this in life, but there are, and I’m going to give away my hand here.

There are only two kinds of people, you know, lumpers and splitters. You know, do you lump things together? Do you split things apart? And I lump everyone into those two groups because I’m a lumper myself. And so, you know, when it comes to linguistics and meaning, I’m always my interest.

And the thing that sticks with me and helps me understand things is stepping up to a level at which things are the same. And so I think even with a word like out toss, you know, there’s like these different uses of it and mounts is probably more content to say, let’s just categorize those uses. Whereas I’m like, well, what’s the thing underlying all of that? Like, why is this word used in those ways? Like, you know, what does it always contribute to no matter what the context is and that kind of thing.

So that’s, yeah, I think you’re going to find that kind of discrepancy. It’ll show up in the more, what tend to be the more sort of specific and confusing lessons. This is the out toss lesson.

Now it’s good. I’m glad it was more clear. It actually is.

It’s interesting because it’s a single word that becomes the whole lesson. And that’s because it’s used in quite a lot of ways. And so in many ways, it’s an opportunity for making things overly complex.

So anyways, I just, yeah, I have my particular way of understanding it. And so in terms of how you go back and review, I mean, it depends what kind of person you are. And, you know, do you want to try to go across all of the lessons and say, okay, what are some of the patterns? And I mean, I’ve tried to surface some of those for you, like the case endings saying, hey, this is a pattern that shows up for all of the chapters on nominals with nouns, adjectives, pronouns, um, all the different case endings across all of them, that, that paradigm that’s, I think, page 421, page 421, 427, one of those two, that paradigm shows up in all those chapters.

So if you know that paradigm, you can see something that kind of pulls all of it together. Um, and then again, vocabulary is where you can’t let you, I do some lumping vocabulary, like, words that end in, uh, or that are combinations with the word host. Um, those ones, I just stick them all together and then I can kind of remember them as when I see them side by side.

Um, you know what it’s kind of like, it’s like, if you know someone who’s a twin, right? If you see the identical twins in different contexts and you don’t know them well, you probably can’t tell them apart at all. You’re like, I thought you were the same person. Um, but then as soon as you stick them side by side, you’re like, okay, I see some minor differences now.

And now suddenly I can remember what you look like. Um, yeah, yeah. Page 421.

Thanks. Um, so anyways, that’s to me, that’s the approach I take for vocabularies. I stick the things that are very similar together and then the differences stand out a bit more.

Um, but some people it’s, you know, that’s not going to be your, your, uh, path. And, um, you have to, I mean, really, I mean, this is what the nice thing about grad school is you kind of have to figure out, you know, what, what’s the way you need to do it, you know? And, um, you do get a lot of direction. I mean, especially in a course like this, right.

Where it’s not, it’s not, there’s not really much like, you know, original ideas you have to kind of surface in a class like this. You get to interpret the text and that kind of thing. But a lot of it’s just, you know, just learning something, learning the fundamentals of Greek.

Um, but, uh, yeah, you’re going to still have your own kind of path to optimal learning and, um, nobody else can really do it for you, which is interesting. I mean, learning, you know, they sometimes say like the best, the best learning or like the only learning, actually the only learning is self-learning. You really just, it’s like when you decide, okay, I’m going to learn this.

That’s when it happens. Yeah. So anyways, I don’t really have any more specific directions than that for reviewing other than, you know, find the things that are common across all of them.

Let those be kind of your, your North star, if you will. And then, um, vocabulary, go over your vocabulary, you know, make again, go like you really, you, if you’re having any trouble with any vocabulary at all, you ought to go to chat GPT and just get it to make you rhymes and then make like zany pictures to match the rhymes, like Dr. Seuss style, like just do whatever you got to do to make it memorable for yourself. Um, yeah.

Anyways. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. Any other, uh, any other questions go ahead and, uh, raise your hand or, or interrupt if you need to. Um, and in the meantime, let’s, uh, let’s take a look at this here.

Something in the pan, make sure it’s working. Okay, good. All right.

So now this there’s a big word at the front of this title, which is demonstrative, but skip over that one for a second. And notice we’re talking about two things that you already know, pronouns and adjectives, you know, those two things, pronouns like he, she, it, you, I, those are, you got those adjectives. These are our, you know, simple things like properties, like red, green, fast, slow.

If you recall nouns have a fixed gender in Greek fixed gender value. Um, and so they follow a fixed declension pattern, whether, you know, second declension, first declension, or third declension adjectives will be a, there’ll be a, what would you call it? I don’t want to say fluid gender. It feels too loaded.

I’m going to say, I’m going to say, uh, dynamic. You know what? I’m going to say the, uh, I’m going to say no fixed gender. Everything’s political.

Um, okay. So adjectives will agree with the, if they’re modifying a noun, they’ll agree with it. If they’re standing on their own, they’re being used substantively, if you recall that term, then, um, they will be the gender of whatever the thing, you know, whatever is most congruent with the thing they’re referring to.

So, um, okay. So, but these are the two forms we learn here, hutos and ekenos. Hutos and ekenos.

And they mean this and that. This and that. And this and that is what we call, are both, sorry, what we call demonstrative pronouns.

And you can think about demonstrating, like pointing to something. A demo is like, you create something that you can point to, like, look at this, you demonstrate it. So demonstrative is a pronoun that is used to point to something.

It’s a pointing thing, if you will. So if an adjective is a simple thing and a noun is a complex thing, a pronoun or demonstratives being some of those are pointing things. They point at some kind of entity.

All right. Well, let’s go over our vocabulary. First of all, here, we’ve got, um, this word, gune, which, of course, everybody knows the word gynecology.

Um, gune means woman. And notice though, the genitive form, guneikos, that is a third declension form. So the actual, this form here is shorter than the stem.

The stem is right here, guneik, like this. And that’s why it’s, um, gynecology. Okay.

So anyways, that’s woman. And again, as we’ve talked about in the past, wife, you can, it’s, there’s no, there’s not a different word for wife in Greek. It’s just, that’s the word.

That’s also why it’s to point out a interpretive debate. That is why people cannot agree about whether there can be women deacons or not in Paul’s letters, because they say, well, it says the elders are, have these qualifications and the deacons likewise have these qualifications and their wives have these qualifications or the women have these qualifications. So it, the word’s ambiguous.

So you’ve got to rely on context and say, what do, what do I think? What about this category? At the very least, you have to admit that someone could take it either direction. They could take it because it, because the word’s ambiguous. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s not so hard to admit, right? I mean, it’s one of those things that people can look at the passage and say, yeah, you could take this either direction. But then unfortunately, when you’re making policies for an organization, you’re kind of like, I guess we got to make a decision and it’s really hard to be, you know, ambivalent with policies.

So then it gets, then it gets real, which thankfully we don’t have to do right now. Um, all right. Dikaiosune.

Dikaiosune means righteous. Now we’ve previously seen the word dikaios, which means righteous. So that would be the adjective form.

And this is a nominal, a nominalization of that. So dikaiosune. And we do the same thing in English, righteous.

And then we say righteousness. And that makes it into a noun. So we add that suffix ness.

It’s a derivational ending, they call it. So there we have, we’ve been learning inflectional morphology, right? Morphology being the form or shape of the words and inflection is when the form of the word changes based on its function, its morphosyntactic function. But derivational morphology is when it changes parts of speech.

So it goes from being an adjective to becoming a noun, or you also have verbs, right? Um, if there’s a verb dikaio, which is, I act righteously, or I, or I justify, or, you know, so that, that word is a verbal form of the same stem. So that’s another derivational change between those. Anyways, okay.

Dodeca. Dodeca means 12. I actually have right up here.

Oh, I have a dodecahedron. This is a dodecahedron. It is 12 sided because each side is five edges.

So there you go. Dodecahedron 12, 12. Okay, then we got this one.

This is notice the rough breathing mark. He autu. He autu.

Now, remember autos means same or self. So self. And then he autu means himself.

He aute, he aute, like the feminine form will be herself. And he auta will be, or he auta will be the neuter. And then in the plural, it’s themselves, themselves, which in English, we don’t differentiate the gender of the plural pronoun.

Okay. Ekanos. Ekanos.

That’s one of our words for this week. So that. Now notice it’s saying that man, woman, thing, those men, women, things.

It’s because you can use it substantively. You can just say that one, like that, like that is really good. Well, that, you know, it’s being used substantively.

So you’re like, that thing is really good. That person is really good. That food is really good.

So there’s an implied noun or not an implied noun, really, but just an implied entity that’s being pointed at. But you can just say that all on its own. So ekanos.

So, but really just the word means that, and the plural is those, that or those. And then we’ve got, we already learned hutas and the feminine is haute and the neuter is tuta. So we’ll see those in a minute.

But again, the only difference between hutas and ekanos is proximity. So hutas is close to this. Ekanos is that far.

It doesn’t have to actually be far away. It’s just the way you’re talking about it makes it far away. So we do this rhetorically all the time.

Like if you’re like, this, this is a great idea. Then you’re making it feel close. Like this is a great idea.

This is really, this is really gonna be fun. Or you could say that is a terrible idea. Like that, you’re pushing it away, you know, verbally rhetorically.

And so you, the way you construe it doesn’t necessarily have to mean something is physically close or far. It’s just the way you’re talking about it. So there’s not a, yeah, there’s a social function to that and a sort of linguistic function.

Okay. The word a means or, or then. We may have seen it before, but notice smooth breathing mark and accent.

A, or, or then. Now remember if, if this word shows up with an accented word after it, then it will be a smooth breathing mark and a groth accent. Because remember the accent always tips down if there’s an accented word after it.

So if it’s at the end of a sentence, it’ll still be up. But if there’s another word after it, it tips down. That has an accent, another accented word after it.

Okay. Cago means and I, or but I. This is a really interesting one. Notice, I wish I could, can I zoom in? Yeah.

Look at this for a second. What is wrong with this word? Anybody? It’s a vowel following the gamma. There’s a vowel following the gamma.

That’s okay. What about, what about if there’s something with the vowels, with the punctuation, I should say, or accentuation. It’s kind of funny.

So notice this, you can’t see my cursor probably. It’s going to zoom back out. That’s okay.

It’s okay. This accent here is an acute accent. What is this one over here? Smooth.

Yep. Smooth breathing mark. Now, when does a smooth breathing, when does a breathing mark go on a word? It goes on a vowel at the beginning of a word.

Has to be the first sound. Have you ever seen, in all the Greek words you’ve seen, a word where the accent, the breathing mark is not the first letter? Like, no, it doesn’t. You don’t need a breathing mark because it’s not the first letter.

So why is there a breathing mark here? Well, because it is a, well, in Greek, they call, in Greek grammar, they call it krasis, but we could almost call it a contraction, right? Like we have the word in English, we have can, not, and you can put them together, cannot, but you can also say can’t with a apostrophe. Well, in this here, we’ve got kai and ego, and ego has a, um, go, go? I can’t even think of it right now. But anyways, ego has a breathing mark on it, and when you smush these two things together, you get kago with a breathing mark.

So when you see a breathing mark that’s not at the beginning, it’s krasis. So there’s a couple other words that will show up like that. Like, ekanos is actually one of the ones that can do that.

You can see kakanos, and there’ll be a breathing mark on the second letter, and you’re like, what the heck? But it’s because it’s one of those, it’s like a contraction. So it’s very kind of interesting thing. So I just want to draw attention to that so you don’t get confused by it later.

Otherwise, it looks like a typo. All right, makarios means blessed or happy. Now, I’m going to say happy is a good word, because what does blessed even mean? Blessed means like, in Greek, it means like lucky or happy.

I mean, that’s what it means. And it’s like, well, good, you got something good happening. And you could be makarios in Greek, not necessarily from God.

You can also be makarios because of God. So that’s good. It just means, yeah, happy.

It is kind of interesting if you look at the beatitudes. It makes it a little more punchy if you’re like, if Jesus is saying, happy are those who cry, you’re like, huh, interesting claim, Jesus. This is well, because they will be comforted.

So anyways, okay, megas, or that’s masculine, feminine, megale, or mega means large or great. I mean, that’s, that’s, should be should be easy to remember. Mega, we use that all the time.

Polis means city or town. Polis, you know, metropolis or is there an actual proper noun with polis in it? Minneapolis. There it is.

I was like, what am I trying to think of here? Minneapolis. Polis means city or town. And that’s where we get politics from.

And notice, this is a, this is a word sort of like pistis, where this iota here at the end is one of those consonantal iotas that come from an older form of Greek. So the genitive is poleos. So that’ll be a little confusing, but it’s still an O sound and an S sound.

So poleos would be the genitive of a city. Okay, polus, polei, or polu means much in the singular or many in the plural. It can be used adverbially, like modifying a verb to say, you know, often, like many times or whatever.

So it just is a word that means much, many, often. And that’s, the transliteration of that would be poly, poly, like a polyglot is someone who knows many languages. A polygon is a shape with many sides.

So polus. And those two words, they look pretty similar. So you might as well learn them together.

And actually, in modern Greek, you pronounce both of them polis. Well, this won’t be polis, and this won’t be polis. So they sound quite similar.

Okay, pos means how. And note again, this is a pos contraction. So pos means how.

Semeion means a sign or a miracle in the sense of a sign, like he did signs and wonders. So semeion, that’s where we get a word like semiotics, which is the study of meaning, study of meaning, or really signs, sign systems. So language is a semiotic system.

It’s a meaningful, meaning making system where you use signs to signify things. All right, that’s our vocabulary. Any questions about that? No? Good.

Okay. I try to spend lots of time on the vocabulary, because it makes such a big difference, if you can remember it, like such a big difference. So even if you’re like grammar, you’re like, okay, I’m kind of fuzzy on the grammar, but it’s like, I know the words, that makes a huge, huge difference.

Okay, demonstrative. So we talked about this a little bit already, but a demonstrative word indicates or points out a person or thing. So this book, that student, you can also have it independently as a pronoun.

I mean, this is again, like, like so many, like outtos, right? We’re like, oh, it could be used as a pronoun, it could be used as an adjective as a, and really, it’s more about, well, it’s a nominal, you can stack nominals together into a nominal phrase. And then whatever you call them, they all just kind of have their meaning and they all interact together. So in the same way, if you have a demonstrative pronoun, if it’s by itself, you’re like, well, it’s, it’s the thing in the nominal phrase.

And if there’s like a, an actual noun in there, you’re like, well, it’s modifying the thing. So yeah, I, yeah, so don’t, the categories are more, I think they’re more functional categories than sort of like inherent essential categories, but, so in Greek, yeah, like we just said that, so these are the demonstratives. There’s a third one here, but hutos, notice rough breathing mark and accent, so hutos, ekenos, and then hade, hade, that one’s, that we’ll talk about later.

Cause it’s like, that one is very similar to a relative pronoun, like who, what, which, which we’ll learn later. So hutos and ekenos means that they indicate nearness and remoteness. And like I talked about a minute ago, it’s semantic nearness and semantic remoteness.

You’re construing it that way. It doesn’t, it could be like, what does close or far mean? I mean, it could be like, you know, like I’m going to say like, this is close and that is far. It’s like, well, they’re both right in front of me, of course.

And then one of these could also be, I could be like, this is close, but Singapore is far. It’s like, yeah, that’s really far. So it doesn’t, it really doesn’t, there’s no inherent connection with a specific distance in reality.

And that is, that’s not just true of these words. That is true of language in general. It’s a way of construing reality a particular way.

And generally there is, that doesn’t mean you can’t say true things about reality. It just means that you could say all kinds of things that are true about the same reality. You can talk about things in all kinds of different ways while still being true.

So just because the world is this way, it doesn’t mean there’s only one way to talk about it. There’s lots of true ways you can talk about it. As we know, if you ask two people, you know, what happened in a movie or something, it’s like, they both are going to have a sort of different account, but they’re both true.

It’s just, they’re construing it in different ways. Okay. So when a demonstrative functions as a pronoun, the case is determined by its function in the sentence.

I think we know all nominals are like that. The case tells you how they function in the sentence. So there’s nothing new there.

Gender and number are determined by its referent. You know, that’s again, like adjectives. If you have an adjective, you’re like, well, actually let’s take even these pronouns.

For instance, if I say, you know, that is really important. That is really important. If I’m talking about the kingdom of God, Basileia, Basileia is a feminine word.

So the word that is going to be feminine. I’ll say that is important. Basileia is important.

So it’s feminine because I’m talking about a feminine thing. And if it’s, you know, that one is really important. Like I’m talking about, you know, Jesus and John actually does this in first John.

He’ll say, I can’t remember the wording right now. He’ll say that one. Oh, come on.

I’ll move on. Sorry. Wait for it.

First John, that one. Yeah. That’s not what I’m looking for.

That was just from the beginning. That’s like that, you know, whatever. Next time or another time.

I forget. Okay. All right.

Whatever. Anyways, you can use it all on its own, but it’s gender and number will be determined by the reference. And if it’s used as an adjective, well, it’s going to agree with whatever it’s modifying.

Pretty straightforward. And pretty straightforward by that, I mean, it’s the same as other adjectives or modifying words that we’ve seen before. So it’s a new kind of word in a sense, but actually it’s just yet another of the more of the same.

Okay. So here’s some forms of hutas. This is really critical.

The gender, the columns here look different from one another, but hopefully what you can see is that except for the first, like this, this one here, and I think just that one. I think all the other ones you have, what do you see in the second half of the word? I can’t remember the name of what it’s called, but I see it. Yeah.

My brain is totally farting right now. It’s all good. It’s all good.

I’ve already done that several times in this. Is all I remember. The article.

The article. There we go. Yeah.

So it’s the article and notice. So again, like this one’s a little different and this one’s a little different, but otherwise you’ve got to, to, to, to, to, to in the masculine and the neuter to, to, to, to. And except for this one, tau, tau, tau, which in Tauta for both of these, but otherwise to, to, and the feminine mostly are how tau, tau, tau, tau, tau, tau.

That one, the gender one is all the same, which is we’ve got, hopefully gotten used to by now, but then tau. So, tautes means, so right here, let’s just look at this one here for instance, tautes. Well, we know that it’s the word, it’s a near demonstrative, so it means this.

Down here, when we’re in the bottom part, we’re in the plural, so we’re going to say these, these, those would be far away, these close, so these. And then, what else? It’s feminine, well, in English we just say these anyway, so it’s still these. And it’s dative, so we can say to these, to these, that’s how we would gloss that.

And again, you know, if it’s genitive over here, then the neuter genitive, so to tone, to tone, we would say of these. And if it’s a tuto in the masculine, we would say to this, to this, and the accusative would be this, and the nominative would be this. So, pretty simple, it’s just the word this, or these, and you put it in the case that it’s in, so you add your little kind of case modifier where it’s

2. Biblical Messages

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Must address the professor during summaryexample: Dr. Jumper mention to the class during the meeting that

Welcome to Preparing Biblical Messages. And it is going to be our joy to explore together this topic, this activity, this action of the Spirit of God. And it will be a huge privilege to go through this together.

I’m looking forward to seeing what God will do among us. Let’s have a prayer to start with today. Father, I thank you for these students.

And I’m a student too. We all need to be students of your word. It’s a lifetime calling.

I pray that we can use this time to really become familiar with using training in methods as well as heart and soul and mind and body in order to present your word in ways that people will hear and respond. Learning of your Holy Spirit to prepare for this and to use this preparation. It may be the only class like this they ever have in their lives from here on out.

So I pray that you give each of us something to hold on to, something that lasts, something that bears fruit. Oh Lord, let these things come upon each member of this class, I pray, so that we will be fruitful in this world as we prepare from the Bible with a message that your Spirit empowers. And we look forward to that in Jesus’ name, amen.

Well, it is so good to have you all here tonight. This is a wonderful turnout. And let me remind you, if you haven’t had me before, what I need you to do is to provide at least two substantive chats, chat posts sometime during this Zoom session.

Now, emoji, you’re welcome to do emojis, but they don’t count as substantive chat posts. No matter how much imagination and intellect you use to choose that particular emoji, I’m sorry, you don’t get credit. But maybe you’ll use an emoji in your sermon with the PowerPoint, who knows? Maybe it’ll be fruitful.

Is it okay? Has anyone used emojis yet in your sermon PowerPoints? Not yet, maybe one day. But something substantive having to do with what we’re talking about at the moment. So it doesn’t matter what or just a thought that you have and just something you think that God is showing you or that you want to reaffirm of something that’s being said or another student said something.

I do like you to talk during the session, not only on chat, but I mean, in person with your voice. And so, you know, I’ll invite you at different times or if you want to raise a hand, if you want to interrupt me and have a question, please raise your electronic hand and I’ll get to you as soon as I can. So that’s where we are.

And if you’re here and you have your video camera on, it must be on, you’ll get full credit. I’ll give you full credit. Two chat posts, video on, and that’s good.

And as I mentioned in the announcement this afternoon, I’d like, after hearing me lead and talk for an hour, you’ve had enough of me. So I invite someone to feel led by the spirit to give us a closing prayer. So that’s sort of the way Dr. Jumper does things.

As I mentioned in the announcement, I’d like to give something of an overview, a biblical overview of giving biblical messages. And so I’ll talk about that for a little while. And then we will talk about anything else you want to talk about on the topic of preaching.

I want to bring up the idea that messages has a lot of definitions here, but preaching is one of them. Now, not all of you are intending or feeling called to be preachers, but God may put it on you. And if people come to say, oh, that person is ordained, we want her to preach.

By the way, we had an amazing sermon today by Dr. Dentu. Do any of y’all know Dr. Dentu, Leticia Dentu? She gave the sermon at chapel today. So, I mean, she was fired up and wow, wow, wow.

So I encourage you, if you have some time, just go to chapel at regent.edu, chapel live, and you can find it. They usually don’t post it for a few days, but you will be able to find it. And if you want to see a rip roaring sermon from Dr. Dentu, go for it.

And we had an amazing time of moving in the spirit before that. And it was just remarkable. You could, the spirit was very heavy, very present, very palpable in the room today in an unusually strong way.

So I praise God for that. Now, I will say something because I have, this is personal, Dr. Jumper. I believe that the entire service is worship.

I stand against calling the music portion worship. And now that we’re done with worship, we’ll have prayers and a sermon and announcements. No, no, no, no, no.

The whole service is worship, okay? Now, in my tradition, I come from the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, the pastor or the preacher is in charge of the entire worship service that includes all the elements of scripture and statements and preaching and prayer and all that goes into it. So when I hear someone say, we just had a great worship, didn’t we? Now let’s have a sermon. That just, I just don’t get that.

The whole thing is a worship service, but we’ve limited it to the people leading the music. And so I just want to bring that up. I think we’re mistaken as a church in that, and we need to get back to understanding that the whole service, including the message that you, if you are ever in that place, including your message is still worship.

It’s not a separate thing. It is worship. But some of you don’t see yourself getting up and preaching somewhere.

And that’s why we use the title messages in the course title, because we don’t want to scare you off. Although realistically, this may be the only preaching course. I’m going to dare say preaching course that you have in your master divinity or one of the MA programs that we have.

And that’s why we have a sermonette that you give as an assignment at the end of the class. Because we, this may be the only opportunity we have and you have in your region degree to actually provide a message. And so that’s why it’s in this class.

It’s like, wait a minute, Dr. Jumper, it’s the preparing biblical messages. Well, I have made that argument to the school and they refuse to listen to me because they said, this may be the only chance in their whole degree. And we will not have someone go out from Regent School of Divinity and not having ever preached or given a, presented a teaching in the class.

So that’s why we have it here in the class. All right, any questions so far? I sort of got into class mechanics there, but I will do more of that later on. Conrad, glad to have you, got your note.

I want to talk about- Dr. Jumper, I had a question. Go ahead. I didn’t mean to cut you off there.

Excuse me. I didn’t know if you had a preference on commentaries when we’re doing our research for the, preparing the messages. I saw something about using commentaries.

I know some instructors have had preferences about what to use in the past, what not to use. Do you have any preference? I’ll get to that question later on. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we’ll get into more class mechanics later on, but that’s a great question. Thank you. All right, and what’s your name there? I just have Daffy Kerr or something.

It’s David Kerr. I just created a Zoom account tonight. Yeah, you may want to put your name there in the, you can just change the name.

Oh, well, thank you. Okay, wonderful, David. So let’s start with Genesis 1.1. That’s a great place to start for biblical, don’t you think? Because it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

So this is an overview. It’s nice when you give a message, a sermon, to start with a little bit of overview and let your people know to whom you’re speaking, let them know, in general, what are you going to be talking about? And that’s what this first one does. It says, okay, here’s the topic.

God created the heavens and the earth, and we’re going to get into that. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And so here we have the Holy Spirit present right from the second verse of Genesis.

Now, I praise God that during the 20th century and beyond, the church has had an outpouring, first through the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic movement, now for the third wave movement, if you will, of the Holy Spirit. And the presence and theology, that is pneumatology, has grown greatly in the church. I praise God that the Holy Spirit, who used to be considered theologically, that was the dark side of the moon.

That’s before we had any satellites going around the moon. No one had ever seen the backside of the moon. And so we called the doctrine of the Holy Spirit the backside of the moon, because no one had ever… People had some nice things in their creeds or their statements of belief about the Holy Spirit, but they weren’t actively experiencing and walking in the spirit.

Thank you, Leroy. Great thing. And Leslie challenges some of our guys.

Yeah, Leslie, and Leslie is a musician type of guy too. And we could have a wonderful bit. Leslie, we could have a wonderful conversation on your topic.

So I’m glad to say, I think that the pneumatology has grown significantly since Azusa Street. By the way, I personally believe Azusa Street was an extremely important historical event, not just in Christendom, but in the world, okay? But that’s my belief. I like to use Azusa, it was 1906.

I like to use Azusa as a handy dandy marker for an era of the church becoming more open and experiencing the Holy Spirit. So that’s my personal view. That’s in the book that Lord willing will be coming out soon.

I have the opening address in the book. Oh yes, Rebecca, thank you. Great words.

You all are giving fantastic chats here. David, that’s a great one. But let’s go to verse three.

God said, let there be light and there was light. And then this is repeated throughout the sequence of creation and God said, and there was. And so it’s interesting that God used the word methodology of speech, that is the word.

And we’re going to find out more about the identity of that word in a minute. Of course, I think you already know the identity of that word, it’s Jesus. But this is an example where words do things.

Words cause results. And when you share messages with words, you can expect results. If you’re, especially if you’re preparing a biblical message.

Now it may not be evident at the time, that particular day. It may bear fruit years later. But I believe every time you and I present God’s word, something is done, something is accomplished, something is achieved.

It may not be everyone, it might just be one person there. By the way, if you think of Jesus’ parable of the sowing, the parable of sowing, the sower. And the sower seeds, some on the path, some on the rock, some on the thorny ground, and some on the good soil.

There are four different things here. How many of those are ultimately successful out of the four? One. Now, isn’t that wasteful of God? Well, he desires that all people come to God, to Christ.

And that, oh, thank you, Tim. Many modern pastors appear to quench the spirit and rely on a gimmick, how true. Only one of the four methods of scattering worked, I mean, quote unquote, worked.

I wanna say that all the methods worked, but they revealed different responses. And Jesus himself talked about, in interpreting the parable, it was very much like an analogy. But I want us to realize, you may be preaching or giving a message, and only a fourth of the people will be receptive, fruitfully speaking.

But is anything happening? Yes, just like in Genesis, something, action is occurring. The action may be initial, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But later on, the cares of the world choke them out.

The response may be people walking all over you, the seed on the path. You, people may hear your sermon and they wanna walk all over you. They tried to kill Jeremiah several times.

They didn’t like what he said. Yeah, you may have opposition when you preach or share, and you have to be aware of that. Nonetheless, that seed on the path that’s crushed, something has happened.

We have learned something about the person walking all over the world. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people in pulpits these days. Well, I don’t know how many people use pulpits anymore.

They just stand on a stage. It’s okay. But we have a lot of people preaching today who really aren’t focused on the word, are they? They have a fun topic.

They have a gimmick, as one of you just pointed out. They wanna preach their word and not God’s word. And one of the things of us here at Regent is we believe what we say must be based on scripture.

We do not wanna play with scripture. We want to use scripture as our foundation while many theologians today sit above scripture to cast judgment on it. And some of your, by the way, some of your people will sit above scripture and say, well, God hates gays.

Why don’t you accept gays for you? All I could say is all I’ve got is the word of God and I don’t have anything better than that. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but that’s the best I have. But the word of God cuts through the marrow of joints and spirit.

So if you’re sowing the word, actions will take place. It may be opposition. It may be distraction.

It may be anything, but action is taking place. That’s the lesson from Genesis. So let’s go to John chapter one.

I love the book of John and I love these first five verses of the book of John are just some of my favorite, beautiful words, not just in the Bible, but in life. I think these are some of the most beautiful words ever written. And I also like the closing to John.

Maybe I’ll read that to you also, because it’s very whimsical in a way. It’s in a beautiful way. I love the last couple of verses of John.

It begins and ends with our inspired artistry in my opinion. Here it is. In the beginning was the word.

We already knew that because God said it happened. God said it happened. And the word was with God and the word was God.

He, here’s where we assign human consciousness, personhood to this thing called the word. It’s not just a thing, it’s a person. He was in the beginning with God.

Now as Trinitarians, we know that we’re speaking of God, the father. We’re not saying that Jesus was a subordinate being as some religions do. We know that it’s attributing divinity to Jesus.

All things were made through him. He’s the word. And remember back in Genesis, the word took action and that’s what Jesus was doing.

And the spirit was there enabling all of this. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. That includes the strange creatures like platypuses.

That includes mosquitoes, horseflies, fire ants that we try to work with in Texas where I was born and raised. Everything that was made had meaning because of the word of Jesus. Jesus has a design for every creature in existence.

I just learned today. Okay, there is a serum made from a certain source that is good for snake, poisonous snake bite. Anyone know what it is? Okay, a lot of shaking heads.

Lamb’s blood, lamb’s blood. Now I’m told they can use that and because the antigens or whatever are in it, that can be an effective antidote to poisonous snake bite. Now I can’t confirm that.

I haven’t looked at the literature and the medical and all that, but that’s what I heard today. But it really makes sense. Go ahead, Justin.

All right, really quickly, Dr. Jumper. What translation are you reading from? I like the English standard version. English standard version, okay.

Yes, sir. Yeah. Okay, cool, cool.

Thank you. Thank you for that question. I’ll tell you what, the King James, of course, is a very important cultural artifact as well as still being the word of God in its entirety.

We’ve had some academic discoveries since then, not academic, textual records of papyri and so forth. We’ve had a lot more source material found since 1611. So I liked the New King James a lot, by the way.

I’ve used that for many years. The ESV is intentionally seeking to be in the same stream as the King James and the New King James. They’ve sought to retain the majesty of the language, the beauty of it.

It doesn’t have the these and those and so forth, but they’ve sought to remain in the King James tradition, which I like a lot. The NIV, I’m not real happy with because of what they’ve done with human references to people instead of man. They use they and them for one person and so forth like we do in our society.

And I’m against that in terms of precision, but that’s another thing I can talk about to you sometime. So NIV, I’m not real happy with. Now, the New American Standard Version has sort of a literal word for word translation that can be helpful for study sometime.

I take it, have you all had your Greek or Hebrew already? Yeah, you should have. Okay, some have it, Kimberly has it. So that’s a prerequisite, I think, for this course, normally, I don’t know.

I don’t think it’s a prerequisite. I think hermeneutics was, though. Oh, okay, gotcha, thank you.

So what else is out there? Any other favorite? Oh, no, the Good News Bible and the Living Bible, which is a paraphrase. I like both of them for what they are, okay? They’re not strict translations, but they have a certain purpose and a certain audience in mind. So I think, you know, I’m with those.

They’re not good for preparing a biblical message, necessarily, but they might give you insight. Okay, who had your hand up? Was that Festus? Oh, I was just about to call on you. The reason I asked was because the change in the beginning of verse two, in the version you read was he, and in the King James version is the, and I thought that was a very, very- The was in the beginning with God? In verse two, it says the same was in the beginning with God.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and see, I felt like that was a very distinct, you know, point that you made where it attaches humanity to the word. Yes, yes, great point.

I think the meaning is the same, the same, you know, Jesus is being identified with God right there, you’re right. Right, yes, sir, yes, sir. Thank you.

By the way, we had the 500th anniversary, or was it the 400th anniversary of the King James version back in 2011. I was a pastor at the time in Chicagoland. And so that year I had all of our worship service scriptures and sermon scriptures.

We did it in King James version, just so people would just pay tribute to what God had done through it. All right, in him was life. Jesus is life.

If you are not in Jesus, you are not in real life. I like to say that Christianity is ultimate reality. Now you can have human reality and that’s wonderful.

God gives the rain to the just and the unjust so forth. He wants to give everyone a chance because it says God desires in Romans, it says God desires that everyone come, but we know they won’t. So it’s fake life.

I mean, it’s real, it’s a gift from God, the gift of life. But unless they’re aligned with Jesus, it’s life that isn’t what it can be. It falls short, falls short.

And they may have riches, they may have drug trips or sex anywhere and everywhere with anyone. They may have all kinds of experiences that are wonderful, trips around the world, whatever it is they like, food up, food out the Yazoo. But if they’re not in Jesus, it’s not the ultimate reality of life.

In him was life. And the life was the light of men, life in light. So anyone that doesn’t have Jesus is in darkness.

You need to think of that pastorally when you’re preaching to people that are not Christians or giving a message and just understand that they are in a veil of darkness if they don’t have Jesus. They’re not living life to the full and they’re in a veil of darkness. They can see some things in the dark, but they don’t have the full view that God made us to have.

The light shines in the darkness. That means when you preach the word who is Jesus, there is a light shining from you and through you. And I want you to know that, that when you preach your message, there is a light shining out of you and people cannot help but see it because you know in the darkness, for instance, out in the country when there’s no city light, the stars stand out.

I mean, you just can’t stop them. And likewise, you can’t stop Jesus from shining in the dark because when something shines in the dark, it just shows itself big time. It attracts your attention.

And look at this, and the darkness has not overcome it. The darkness is never going to overcome Jesus, never, ever, ever. They may win some battles.

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