Religion Question

1. New Testament I

(400 word Zoom Summary of Transcript) (Kate-Turabian format) (footnotes are a must in Kate Turabian) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence) (Template is attached below)

*Must address the professor during summaryexample: Dr. Wishart mentioned to the class that

Okay, we are looking at Greek verbs. We’ve, the good thing is we’ve seen some verbs already. We’ve learned, what are some verbs you’ve learned? Amy, we’ve learned Amy, which means I am.

And the third person version, he, she, or it is, is Esten. And first person plural would be Esmen, we are. We’ve learned Apen, Apen, which means he, she, or it said, he, she, or it said.

What else have we learned? Ein, ein means he, she, or it was. We’ve seen that one. I don’t know if we technically learned it, but we definitely saw it in some of the examples and practice we did.

Yeah, there’s probably others we’ve come across, but this week we’re going to be learning verbs officially. So, that’s kind of nice because up till now, everything we’ve learned has been nominals. So, we’re going to see that.

Let me just write this. Let’s go ahead. So, Greek verbs, they, they have five grammatical components.

Well, what does that mean? I’m just going to go ahead here for a second. You remember this chart I showed you before? I’m going to draw on this here. So, let’s see.

So, there’s all the Greek words. That’s kind of the big bucket. Of course, every Greek word goes in there.

We’re learning Greek words. That’s where they all go. Now, within that, there’s two different kinds.

Particles are forms that don’t inflect. They just don’t have any properties that inflect. So, there’s no singular, plural, you know, masculine, feminine, like none of that.

They’re just, you know, prepositions, for instance, conjunctions, conjunctions like chi. Chi just doesn’t change. It just is what it is.

The only, the only kind of change you would see is the accent is acute because accents are just acute by default, and when there’s an accented, an accent following it, it’ll tip and become a grave accent. So, that’s the only kind of change there is, and that’s purely phonological. Same thing with prepositions, you know, like the word, like, oops, epi, like this.

Epi, if it’s in front of a vowel, the iota will drop off, and you’ll just get a apostrophe, ep, and if it’s in front of a vowel that has a rough breathing mark, you will get f, like this, it’ll aspirate and become a rough breathing mark. Though, that’s, again, only a phonological change. It’s just a sound change, just like in English, a versus an, just a sound change.

That’s it. Now, there’s another bucket here, though, which is inflecting words, words that do have what are called morphosyntactic properties. Morphosyntactic.

Morphos means form in Greek. So, the shape changes based on the syntactic function, meaning the function in a sentence. So, in its context, how is it functioning? That will determine how it inflects.

So, we’ve talked about nominals. That’s what the entire course has been about so far, and we’ve covered every kind of nominal. So, we’ve talked about nouns, you know, like thanatos means death, and logos means word, and basileia means kingdom, and so on.

Those are nouns. They have a fixed gender value. Articles, well, that’s just the word ha, or he, or ta, and all the other forms that it could inflect as.

Pronouns, we’ve talked about lots of different kinds of pronouns, right? Relative pronouns. Last week, we talked about, you know, the indefinite relative pronoun, tis, like certain one, someone, anyone. We talked about personal pronouns, like su, for you, or in the plural, you know, who mays, you, plural.

We also talked about adjectives. Adjectives are nominals that will change gender. The gender, it’ll match whatever it is that it’s modifying.

So, adjectives are properties or attributes, and they will, the gender will change to match whatever it’s modifying. So, if you have a word like logos, and you want to say, you know, the good word, you could say logos, agathos, agathos, I think, and then if, though, you have a different word, like basileia, basileia, I guess, this is a feminine word. Notice it ends with an alpha, and so agathos is not going to be agathos, it’s going to be agathe because it’s feminine, so it has a feminine ending.

So, it will change to match whatever it is modifying. Okay, so all of these, what do they all have in common? They have three morphosyntactic properties, case, gender, number. Those are the properties, and that’s, that’s why all those fit in the same bucket.

That’s why they all use the same case endings that we see on, I think, I can never remember, it’s 421, page 421, I think, yeah, or 427, or something like that, whatever it is, the master case endings chart, and then there’s also an articles paradigm. Those endings are just your nominal endings, and they show how nominals will inflect for case, gender, and number, and that’s the reason why there’s rows and columns, and then there’s also two tables, because there’s singular, plural, and then there’s the gender values along the columns, and there’s the cases, yeah, 421, thank you, cases along the rows. So, if there was a fourth value, well, then we’d have to get like three-dimensional or something, but that would be a little bit complicated.

You just have a whole bunch of tables. Now, that’s what makes nominals. We’re start talking about verbals.

Notice I said verbals, because there’s a bunch of different kinds of verb things. There’s infinitives, there’s finite verbs, there are, well, those are the two main distinctions there, but verbs and verbals in general have a different set of value of morphosyntactic properties. They don’t have case and gender.

They do have number, like we’ve seen, you know, Amy is first person singular, I am. S-man is first person plural, we are, singular, plural. That’s one of the properties.

They also have person, as I just mentioned, first person, so that person, like I, you, or he, she, it, or in the plural, they. We don’t have a plural form of you, or you could say y’all, something like that. Honestly, hey, that’s actually a really good idea.

I should make that using AI. Hold on, I want to write that down. That’s a brilliant idea.

That would be hysterical. Actually, the funny thing is there, I don’t even know if I shared a link to this yet. That video actually exists, and I’m just going to get it for you here.

It is learning Greek verb endings. There it is. Copy the link.

Okay, I’m putting this in the chat. The learning Greek verb endings song. This is a fantastic song, so I’ll come back to it in a second.

That is the schoolhouse rock of Greek verbs. Verbals also have a couple other properties that are not going to be intuitive, just like case. The case property, you had no, like most, if you’re a normal person, you had no idea what that meant before this course.

You’re like, case? Like, what does that mean? Is that like something you put stuff in, like in a case? Not quite, so you didn’t know what that meant. Now, there’s a couple properties for verbals. We’ve got mood and aspect, or tense.

That’s a highly debated subject in Greek grammar, let me tell you. Mood, aspect, and voice. Mood, aspect, and voice.

So, we’ll cover all those, but voice is like, I hit versus I am hit. It’s active or passive, right? Or there’s also middle voice in Greek. Mood is, what are you doing? Like, what is the speech act? Like, what is the thing you’re doing with this process? Are you stating something? Like, you know, I am good.

Or like, you are good. Or are you directing someone? Be good. You know, if I’m saying be good, I’m not saying you are.

I’m not saying you aren’t. I’m telling you to be that, right? So, it’s a different kind of action, and that’s what mood tells us. And then, aspect or tense form.

You know, in English, we have tense. So, that’s what most people think about with Greek verbs as well. But tense is, in English, like present, past, future, and so on.

Greek has forms just like this. So, it has a present tense form. It has an aorist, which is your simple past tense, like it happened.

And then, there’s a future. It will happen, and so on. But we’ll cover those as well.

But we’re going to start simple, just like with nominals. We had, what did we have? Nominative, masculine, singular. That was our nice, simple starting place.

Let’s delete that again. There we go. Okay.

So, these are our values here. So, person, number, tense form. The term tense form is meant to say, we describe different Greek tenses, but we don’t want to get that confused with English tense.

They’re slightly different things. This has been, again, a hot topic in Greek grammar, and it’s because tense forms in Greek don’t strictly tell you the time when something happened. You guys probably are familiar with the place in Romans where Paul says, those whom he foreknew, these he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.

Well, it says all those things as if they’re in the past, but the events aren’t all in the past, are they? So, it’s a aorist tense form, but it’s not all past. So, it’s not telling you just time. That’s really not the core thing that it’s communicating.

Often, it communicates something like time, but usually it’s something else in the context that tells you. Like, if you said, you know, two weeks ago, I justified. Like, then you’re like, okay, two weeks.

Okay, that’s in the past. So, it’s easy to tell. So, there’s usually some other factor.

Anyways, so just so we know here, we got person, number. Person and number are properties of finite verbs, as opposed to an infinitive verb. You might be familiar with infinitives.

You know, if I say to be or not to be. To be is an infinitive form. I am is a finite form.

Why is it finite? What does that mean? Well, if I say to be, I’m just talking about the process of being, right? To be. Well, who? Who’s being here? Like, well, I’m not specifying it. If I say I am, well, that’s a finite process.

We’re talking about first person and singular, like me. So, that’s the difference between finite and infinitive. So, an infinitive will not have person.

So, it won’t have person. So, but anyways, but otherwise, all finite verbs have person. Okay, delete that.

Oh, actually, tense form. So, tense form, this is the technical explanation. It grammaticalizes the semantic feature of verbal aspect.

We’ll talk about this later, but tense form tells you what verbal aspect the form is. And the reason it gets confusing is because there’s a couple of different tense forms that all have the same aspect. So, there’ll be like, yeah, anyways, we’ll talk about that soon.

Voice grammaticalizes the semantic feature of causality. I hit versus I am hit. Well, in one of them, I’m the cause, right? In the other one, it’s happening to me, and I’m not specifying the cause.

I am hit, you know, and we use this all the time to say like, you know, it’s like, you know, what, you know, the, you know, somebody comes home, and then the kids are all standing around and something smashed on the floor. You’re like, what happened here? And they’re like, well, it broke. You know, it was broken.

A ball was caused to fly through the air. You know, it’s like, you don’t want to say it in such a way that you define who caused it, right? So, you’re not attributing causality. So, you can talk in such a way that you don’t attribute causality.

There’s reasons that you do that, interpersonal reasons, especially. Okay, and then mood. Mood grammaticalizes the semantic feature of attitude.

Now, I just explained that a minute ago about, you know, directive or discursive or descriptive, you know, those kind of speech arcs. Are you directing somebody, or are you just describing something? So, that’s the fundamental distinction, and then there’s a few more in there. Okay, okay.

Any questions so far? You don’t have to understand everything I just said. Yeah, crystal clear, right? Okay, let’s go like this here. All right, and by the way, just as a bit of a teaser for next semester, you see this one last category at the bottom here, participles.

They will be insanely confusing for you, unless you recognize this, that nominals have case, gender, number, verbals have mood, aspect, and voice, and participles have both. They like participate in both. It’s when you take a process and talk about it like a noun.

Like, I say, going to the store is a good thing. Well, going is a process, not a thing, but I talked, I put ing on the end, so I made it into a thing. Anyways, you don’t have to know that now.

I’m just telling you in advance that when you get there, you can say, ah, yes, I remember hearing about this. Nominal and verbal put together. Okay, but the nice thing is you know all the nominal things, you know all the verbal things.

It’s really not, it’s not, you’re not adding anything new. You’re sticking them together. Okay, when you parse a verb, this is, you know, we’ve been parsing nouns, so you know, oh, I have to tell the case, the gender, and the number.

When you parse a verb, there are seven things that you want to, that you have to mention. You don’t have to, you don’t have to sweat it, because really there’s only a few things that are new here. When one of the things you need to do is specify the lexical form, or the form that’s in your vocabulary, what word did this come from? You know, if I say logo with a iota subscript and an omega, well, that comes from logos, right? So I’m like, okay, the lexical form is logos.

That’s the kind I memorize in my vocabulary. That’s what this means. And then what is the gloss, or a translation? You know, you have to know the meaning of it as best as we can approximate it in English.

So those are, those are not new. The lexical form and the gloss. Now, with verbs, though, as I just mentioned, you have person, number, tense form, voice, and mood.

The nice thing is this here, present, active, indicative, that’s not going to change at all for a few lessons here. We’re not going to cover, yeah, we’re just, I think we might do present, middle, passive. Actually, but anyways, only one of those will change at a time for a little bit.

So, but it’s that this week, we’re worrying about what person and what number. First, second, third person, singular, plural. Not too crazy.

All right, delete that. If a question comes up, just interrupt me. Okay.

So what are the sort of structural pieces or components of a Greek verb? Well, this is actually really similar to nominals, right? You’ve got the stem. So this is called a tense stem because the stem is what tells you what tense form it is, what aspect it is. So the stem, there will be different stems.

There’s only one you need to know right now, which is the present, active, indicative stem, the present stem. And then there’s a connecting vowel that makes it easier to say. There’s also historical reasons for it.

And then a personal ending. Again, infinitives don’t have personal endings. They have just endings, non-personal ones.

Okay. So we got stem right here, connecting vowel, an ending, luomen, luomen. So the root, again, root versus stem, if you remember this from nominals, the root is sort of the thing that every instance of this word has in common.

And that’s where the meaning comes from. That’s where there’s a consistent meaning, even when you change forms. Thank you.

Very considerate of you. But a stem, there can be, the stem is what you’re actually looking at when you have a particular form. So lu, that’s the stem.

It happens to be identical to the root. The root looks just like that. But there are other cases where the stem can look a little different.

So the stem can change a little bit from time to time. But as long as you recognize, it’s sort of like, there’s a word, agap. So if I go like this, agapa, like this, agapa.

That is the root of the verb to, I love, right? Loving is the root of the verb for love as a process. It looks just like the noun, right? Agape. But it’s agapa.

And then in, so that is the root. Is there a different stem? No, there’s no stem change. So it’s not really good.

But basically this root here actually shows up in the nominal. It shows up in the process. And you kind of get the idea when you’re like, oh, this has something to do with love.

So indeed, that is what the meaning of the root is. So the stem is sort of the structural component that you see when you actually look at a word here. Connecting vowel.

So often Greek adds a connecting vowel. And like I said, it makes it easier to say. And there’s other reasons for that.

But personal endings. Personal endings indicate person and number. So that’s where we get our other two properties.

So from the stem, we get the tense form or the aspect. Excuse me, Professor, for the vowel. Can it be any of the vowels or will it be like just specific ones that we will have to know? Yeah, it will almost always be an omicron or an epsilon.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, no worries. Yeah.

And I actually, when I’ll show you in a minute, when I memorize, we don’t want you to memorize the personal endings for the verbs because, you know, we had a paradigm for the nominals, right? Our master paradigm with paradigms for verbs. But that’s where the song comes in, the Schoolhouse Rock song. So don’t worry, that’s going to help a lot, a lot.

Like it’s going to help immensely if you learn this song. So but anyways, when I, when you learn the song, I learn it with the endings. Amen.

So the endings are oh, is, a, amen, ete, and usin. Amen, ete, usin. The new is movable.

So when you learn amen, you’re like amen. That’s the ending. It has the connecting vowel attached to it.

You don’t have to memorize it separately. So okay. Primary and secondary endings.

So verbs have, there’s, there’s two sets of endings we’ll learn. This is why we have the song. We’re only learning primary endings right now.

And then the lexical form and actually primary versus secondary is probably where you get the present and past time distinction from. But again, it’s highly debated. And there are Greek grammarians out there who would throw things at me if I said that.

And there are others would throw things at me if I didn’t say that. So, so I’m caught in between. It’s best if I say nothing more than I’ve just said.

All right. And then the lexical form. This is critical.

The form, when you learn the lexical form of a noun, you learn the nominative singular. And then if it’s a masculine noun, the masculine form, it’s a feminine noun, like Basileia, you learn the nominative singular feminine form. So it’s just that sort of like the top left most cell in the paradigm.

That’s the one that’s in the vocabulary. For verbs, you learn the first person singular present active indicative form. First person singular, present active indicative.

And indicative, by the way, that is it says indicate, should be indicative, indicative. That’s our mood value that tells us it’s a statement. Indicative, you’re indicating something, you’re making a statement that’s as opposed to imperative, you’re directing somebody with an imperative, like do this.

All right. Okay, let’s move on. If there’s any questions again, interrupt me.

All right. Here is the paradigm. So we’ve got luo, lues, lue, luamen, luete, lulusin.

I lose, you lose, he, she, it is losing, we lose, you lose, they lose. Lose or is losing. Either way is fine.

I’m gonna, there we go. David is taking a nap. I understand the feeling.

So it’s like this actually happens when you’re preaching. I don’t know if you’ve done lots of preaching or not, but there was the first time when I learned to preach, there was this guy who sat in the back who snored so loud. It was hysterical.

It was really hard to keep a straight face. That was awesome. I had a quick question.

What do you prefer? The I lose or I am losing because the only way in the workbook it goes in is the I am or the you are. It always shows that it’s not what you put it. I was just doing it like I lose, you lose, or the same with all the translations that we’re asking us to do in the workbook.

Yeah. So the present tense form is a, you could say continuous aspect. So the aspect is it’s some action that is sort of unfolding is how it’s being construed.

And so if you say I am losing or I lose, I mean, either one is fine. I don’t have a preference because it’s not a, there’s no correct answer to the question, if that makes sense. But if you say I am losing, well, then you’re kind of communicating a continuous process.

So it’s kind of making it explicit that this is a continuous thing. I’m just, I get a little worried when the test comes along being that they can be very specific once you pick. And it just seems that he’s always asking for the, I am or the you are never just.

Yeah. So in the test, you won’t have a question where one option is I lose. And the other is I am losing.

Like you won’t have that. You won’t have to make that choice. You’ll just see, you’ll just see that.

Yeah. Because, because there’s no, you might have like, I lose, I am losing, but then there’s something else. It’s like, I lose, you are losing.

And it’s like, oh, it’s, is it I or you? I mean, that’s a different, different property. I just wanted to be sure. Thank you.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Exams.

Um, yeah. Okay. So, uh, you notice here, by the way, the connecting vowel is an O vowel.

So like luo, you can’t see a connecting vowel, but it’s an O class vowel that’s there. It just kind of gets combined into an omega, but in the indicative mood, if the personal ending begins with a mu or a nu, then the connecting vowel is Omicron. Every other case it’s an epsilon.

So that answers your question, Pamela, I think. So if there’s no personal ending, the connecting vowel can be either Omicron or epsilon. We’ll come up with that later, but that those are basically your, your options, Omicron or epsilon.

Okay. So let me go on. So here is the paradigm.

O, ace, a, amen, ete, usine. The nu is in brackets on the last one, because it’s just like a, an in English. If there’s a vowel after it, then you have the nu.

If there’s a consonant after it, you won’t. So it just shows up or disappears or drops off depending on what comes after it. So if you saw it in isolation, a word in isolation, it would probably have a nu on it.

Well, actually, no, it just depends. It depends on someone’s writing it. Yeah.

It’s like the word a. Do we say an or a? Purely, you know, whatever comes after. Okay. So personal pronouns in the nominative So this is just an interesting thing.

So because if I, if I say Luo, so let me get my pen here. So if I say Luo, what does that mean? Anybody? I’ll give you a hint. Loose? Yeah, but not just loose.

It means I loose or I am loosing. I loose or I am loosing. Exactly.

So if I say, instead of I say Luace, then what does that mean? He, she, it is loosing. Not with the sigma. You’re close.

Luace would be he, she, or it. Luace is you. You are loosing.

Yeah, you are loosing. So what’s interesting is just from this word, I know if it’s I or you, just from the one word, I already know, is it I or you? And so I don’t need to say ego Luo. I can just say Luo.

I loose. I don’t need to put a pronoun there. In English you do.

But in older English you don’t. Actually, this is, so some of you have read Moby Dick before. So in the book Moby Dick, there’s Captain Ahab, and he’s on his boat, and he’s sailing the seven seas, right? Looking for this white whale.

And when he comes across another boat, he tries to figure out if they’ve seen the white whale. And what he yells out is, has seen the, oops, oh boy, traveling. Come on, come back to my pen.

Here we go. And I clicked a button, apparently. Has seen the white whale, question mark.

So that’s what he says. Has seen the white whale? Now, you know, in, you might ask, well, who? Who’s seen the white whale? Like, are you talking about, has he seen it? Or somebody else he’s talking about? Or is he talking to somebody? Does anybody know the answer? Hast is an inflected form of the English word have. You would say, I have thou hast.

Oh, and he, she, it has. In today’s English, we don’t say thou anymore. That’s our singular second person.

We don’t say that anymore. But that’s why in older, like in hymns and that kind of thing, it’s thou hast. And interestingly, Captain Ahab can just say hast, because if he says hast, of course he’s saying thou.

2. Prep of Biblical Messages

(400 word Zoom Summary of Transcript) (Kate-Turabian format) (footnotes are a must in Kate Turabian) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence) (Template is attached below)

*Must address the professor during summaryexample: Dr. Jumper mentioned to the class that

And here we go. Let’s open with a prayer tonight. Thank you, Father, that in this privilege of preaching, you have given us ways that we can approach this sacred task, this fearsome task, this unbelievable task.

We can’t believe you’ve called little old ussums to do this task. We’re not worthy. But you didn’t call us because of our worthiness.

You called us because we would say yes, as did Mary to the angel. You called us because we would say yes, Lord, here I am, send me. And so humbly, unworthily, we ask you to send us tonight to the things we discuss.

Let your spirit move freely among us as we meet. We give you praise that you are in charge and not us, and that you will work all things according to your perfect will, including this meeting. We pray in Jesus name, amen.

Welcome, everyone. Good to see you. And a reminder that if you want credit for attending, you got to have your camera on, please.

And we need you to make two substantive chat comments. And I think that word has gotten around now. I apologize.

Last time the word was not in the syllabus. It was not in the assignment. And that was our bad.

It turned out to be due to a structural situation at Regent. So this time, though, the word is out. Two substantive chat comments, and that will confirm to me your attendance and give you the grade, the full grade, without having to write a 500 word paper.

So let me invite you to do that in the chat. And as I normally do, I will have my chat display on. Becky is wondering why her video isn’t working.

That’s the first thing I see. The elite eight. Thank you, Maurice.

You answered me. The elite eight. Becky, I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for you.

So just keep playing around with it. Maybe something will happen. Okay.

Is the assignment this week based on Second Timothy, Leslie says. No, not necessarily. It could be.

It could be. There’s a lot of great stuff in Second Timothy for the minister and the preacher. But tonight I would like to start a little bit where we left off with my initial scripture last week.

Remember last week I started with Genesis chapter one, verse one. I’m going to move all the way to verse three tonight. How’s that for progress in this class? And by the way, thank you for your work.

Now, in this class, you have two assignments per week. This is a heavy duty class. More normally, it’s one assignment a week.

Fortunately, this is one of your two assignments this week. So I pray it’s a easier for you. But you just turned in your discussion posts and your PowerPoints.

So I’ll be grading those this week, Lord willing. And I hope you got good remarks on the zoom reports you gave last week. So on we go.

Before we go back to Genesis one, chapter three. Is there anyone who wants to ask a question about the class or any anything you want to? Yeah, Brian, go ahead. For the outline that we’re doing, do we have to use, do you want us to use footnotes and bibliography? No, because well, if well, not in the outline itself, but if you’re in the text, yeah, you can use footnotes for what you’re going to put in the sermon.

But you don’t have to use it for like background on why you’re doing this outline this way. Does that make sense? Okay. No.

Kimberly says no. Ask is Kimberly. No.

Do you mean like the exegesis part to do footnotes or what? Yeah. The exegesis is good to have some notes. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Commentaries.

If we use commentaries or what have you. Yes. Yes.

Okay. And someone had asked what commentaries may we use because some professors have preferences. And so my answer is probably a one volume commentary like Matthew Henry, which is one volume.

Matthew Henry has a lot of great stuff, but it’s really not what we want to see here. Typically, you want to get a commentary based on the book you’re preaching for. And I recommend getting something say in the last 50 or 60 years that has the benefit of the textual discoveries that have been made recently.

And of course, that goes back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which basically authenticated the text that we already had of the books in the Old Testament that are in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But anyway, there’s been a lot of good textual discoveries since then, and all of them basically confirmed the Bible that we have. But it’s good to use something.

Now, some of the more modern ones don’t partake of the inspiration of scripture, the infallible scripture, the inherent scripture. They don’t take that into account. Use them with care.

They have certain presuppositions. We have certain presuppositions. But you will do best if you use works that accept the full authority of scripture and the authors sit under the scripture and not over it.

And so you have to use your own research skills and perhaps finding out, examine the foreword and some of the things to try and find out what do the writers of this commentary believe about the authority of scripture. So that would be my main thing. They can come out with some good insights sometimes, but be careful is all I can say.

I don’t know if that helps, but yeah, you’re welcome to find the commentaries you think will be useful. Personally, I use an expositors commentary based on, well it’s by Zondervan, and it’s really good in that it has exegetical part and then an applicational part. And some, there’s one famous commentary set, it was put out by the Methodist church, and the exegetical part was sort of based on liberal theology and liberal assumptions.

Today we’d call it progressive, I guess. But the applicational part was more evangelical. The two parts sort of differed in the same commentary.

So you just have to get familiar with what’s out there. Take it with a grain of salt. It’s like I like to have a grain of salt with my french fries and my popcorn.

All right, any other questions? Well, I guess my question really has to do about the assignment. Last week we had assignment one on the structure that was based on 2 Timothy 3 and 4. This week it says it’s assignment two, but it doesn’t specify a text. So I don’t know if we’re supposed to use any text or the one we use assignment one.

Oh yeah, you’re on the same text. So the 2 Timothy 3, 10 through 4, 5? Yeah, you’re proceeding to the next step. Okay, that was my assumption, but assumptions don’t always work out very well.

Amen to that, bro. Yeah, thank you. Good question.

Okay. Well, this week’s topic in the syllabus is studying and organizing sermons. So why did I go to Genesis chapter 1 verse 3? Well, let me show you.

God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

And you remember the Jewish day starts at sundown. That’s a bit different from us. As you go through Holy Week this week, remember the Jewish day starts at sundown.

So Maundy Thursday, as we count it, was actually, what day was that in Judaism? What we call Maundy Thursday evening was actually morning of Friday for the Jews. And of course they had put Jesus to death by around three o’clock the next day. So here we are in Holy Week.

Today is Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday tomorrow. Anyone know what Wednesday is classically called in the scripture? I’m diverting a little, I know. We are in Holy Week.

What’s Wednesday called? All right, I got you. Spy Wednesday because Judas acted as a spy to turn over Jesus to the Pharisees. That’s what happened on Wednesday.

So that’s a little bit of church history for you. So I just read verse three, four and five. Let’s just do another couple of verses.

And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse, separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And so it was so.

And God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning the second day. And it goes on in that vein, as you know, the seven days of creation. What I want to point out to you is the organization of God’s creation.

Here is the model for God’s communication to human beings that he has organized creation itself in certain ways. And that’s a beautiful thing. And I just think we should ponder it, that God, if you look at creation, the beauty and the intricacy of creation all put together in ways that fit, that are sustainable, that are helpful.

And someone asked last time, did the fall of human beings actually, did that fall also affect creation? We know it did. Did that sort of turn some of the flies and mosquitoes and other snakes into more poisonous varieties? And I think it’s possible. I don’t know.

Fabinho, what do you think? I say, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

As he said, everything he meditated was good. A biting snake is not good. You know? Well, I have to ask, what is the creation purpose of a rattlesnake and of mosquitoes? And is God’s creation of those things still working? Logan, what do you think? Listen, after living around mosquitoes with malaria, I really don’t see how they’re good.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. God bless those who have malaria.

That’s a tough one for life. I’ve encountered that in my military chaplaincy. Not myself, but ministering to those at it.

But you see that there’s organization in creation itself, and that the communication of how creation came about is also according to that organizational analysis. And so I want to ask ourselves as creatures, is this a model for me that I have carefully put forth the organization of what I am doing? And I think we need to say, yes. We need to have thought about, planned, prayed, written down, outlined.

Some people prefer to write in a narrative kind of outline of what we’re going to do with this piece of work that we call a sermon. Now, the course title says messages, which that’s fine too. I’m used to saying sermon.

I like what Paul talks about. Paul talks about preaching and how will they hear without a preacher. And we talked about that last time.

So this is an interesting model of organization. I think another model of scripture can be found in the history of Israel. And you may have plowed through the books of 1st and 2nd Kings before.

Really, they’re just one book that was just couldn’t all fit on one scroll. It’s the only reason it’s 1st and 2nd. And the same with the book of Chronicles.

By the way, in Genesis, you’ll note that there’s a tremendous amount of genealogy in the early, Genesis 1 to 11, that’s supposed to explain a great deal. And of course, the purpose of genealogy is to show God’s redemptive plan, culminating in Abraham, who was the one really, really called to begin this faith journey that all of us are on, because he believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, there were noteworthy people before that.

There was Noah, who basically saved humanity from the flood, who was the fellow that ascended directly into heaven, Enoch. And so there were some noteworthy positive people in the early genealogies, but really, it’s leading toward Abraham. And then we get to Kings and Chronicles.

Now, any of you have ever thought, why do we have a double record of Israel’s history in the Old Testament? It’s hard enough getting through one of these books, Kings or Chronicles, let alone both. And you start to see that they have different points of view. Leslie says, the star that appeared in Christ’s birth started well in advance.

Yeah, that’s right. That God had providentially placed everything, including you and me, folks, in the redemptive plan of his purposes. Yeah, Maurice says, lack of organization equals chaos.

And that’s true, that you could say that Genesis takes all of the universe and begins to bring order to it. Now, there is a point of view, I’m not going to say I’m for or against it, that says that there was chaos in the universe because of the rebellion of Satan and his angels. And you can read Milton Paradise Lost for that.

But I’ll say that’s possible. I’m not going to give a yay or nay on that right now. But God’s plan has always been in operation from the Garden of Eden.

Well, would anyone venture a guess, what’s the main difference between Kings and then Chronicles? Okay, Conrad has something here. Yeah, Logan. To my understanding, First and Second Chronicles was later on in the history of Israel to remind them of what those books contain.

Maybe I’ve got that wrong in my head. Yeah. Well, they’re for abuse.

Is it the genealogy of what once was? Conrad, did you have something? Is it the genealogies? Is there a lot more genealogies in Chronicles? There is a lot more genealogy in Chronicles. In fact, you have to get to all the way through chapter eight of First Chronicles to even get the chapter nine, where it starts talking about the return to exiles. And actually, that’s a… So this tells you explicitly that this is taking place after Jerusalem was destroyed, after the exiles returned and began to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.

And of course, Nahum and Habakkuk, who is at the Minor Prophets, Ezra and Nahum began to build the temple again. And so it’s really chapter 10 until you get to the kings of Israel and Judah. So yeah, there’s a lot of genealogy.

Why is there this genealogy? Why was there genealogy in scripture? I’m going to say it was leading toward God’s redemptive plan. And I’m going to say the main difference conceptually is that Kings is basically a history, a lineal history, if you will, of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Chronicles does that somewhat, but Chronicles is not interested in a lot of the things that Kings is interested in.

What is the main interest of Chronicles, would you venture to think? Now, Kings came during the exile. Yeah, Chronicles written after it. That’s good, Tim.

Kings is more prophetic. Chronicles… Now, Justin, you’re onto something that’s more theological. I think that’s right.

Would it have to be worse to focus on worship? Yes, you’ve got it, Justin. You’ve got it. It’s more about worship.

Obed, go ahead. Yes, Professor, thank you. I was going to say that Chronicles focuses more on the priestly and theological life of the people of Israel.

That’s right. You got it. And that life includes first the ark, the recovery of the ark from the wilderness, if you will.

In a way, the ark itself has to undergo an exodus from the countryside around Jerusalem, and it has to progress into Jerusalem. You remember that David danced with all his might when the ark arrived in Jerusalem, and that’s the predecessor of the temple. And then David wanted to build the temple, but he wasn’t able to.

God said, you’re not the one to do it. He said, you’re a man of blood. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but maybe he had done some of that bloodshed, not as it should have been done.

And it lists a lot about King David and all that he did. Of course, the big thing he did is he got a lot of the materials for the ark in advance. He stored it all up so his son Solomon could build the ark.

I’m sorry, the temple. So you move from King Saul, who really, there’s very little on King Saul because he was a bad king, and that happened all too often in the history of Israel. In fact, the history of Judah and Israel, all the kings of Israel were bad.

Only the kingdom of Judah had some good kings, actually maybe five or six out of the 20. What does that tell us about the number who will be saved? What does that tell us about the remnant? Jesus talked about that when he was in Jerusalem before being crucified. He said that only those called by God could hear the stories he was telling.

And he wanted them to hear it, but the ones who had turned their hearts against God and against Jesus, they couldn’t hear that. And of course, that was quoting Isaiah and Jesus. So that’s what we’re looking at is worship and theology.

How is worship to be done? How is theology to be done? How is it to be organized? Theology can’t just be in chaos. It has to do with the mighty works of God and the revelation of God. And so Chronicles is primarily occupied with prophecy, with revelation, with worship, with the temple.

That’s its main topic. And I submit that the organization of these two collections, Kings and Chronicles, gives you an idea that when you’re writing a sermon, you want to make sure that you know your purpose in advance. What is my purpose? Is it to give some history? For instance, a lot of people want to say America was founded as a Christian nation.

I think we had a very strong Christian influence. I would not say we were a Christian nation. But if we want to go the historical route, now let’s say you’re in a congregation that’s very old, a couple hundred years old, which in God’s timing isn’t a lot, but some congregations are that old.

Some denominations are that old or more. It’s worth looking at the history sometimes. I was second pastor of a new church development.

It was about six years old when I came to be a pastor in Chicago. That was Libertyville, then Grayslake. We were able to move from an office building.

We were able to buy 10 acres and take an existing building and make it into a beautiful church. About that time, about a year or so after we were in the building, it was our 10-year anniversary as a congregation. I preached a series of sermons on the 10th anniversary.

What does it mean? Where have we been? Where are we going? By the way, that will tip you off that I like to do sermon series. I like sermons that connect with each other and do a little series that covers them. I’ve done quite a number of series.

I’ll get the list and show you sometime. Yeah, Justin. Oh, well, I don’t want to cut you off.

I wanted you to finish your thought, but you said two things that I wanted to ask you a question about. Yeah. The first, you said that whenever you are preparing a sermon, you’re supposed to have a purpose ahead of time before you start.

Then you were mentioning that you like to do a sermon series. Now, to my question, I’m not a senior pastor in a pastoral role or anything like that, but I have experienced pastors that say or they kind of lean to the notion that their sermons are directly from God for the flock in that moment. How do you prepare properly to deliver a sermon if you’re like waiting to hear from God the night before? That’s why you need to do it before the night before.

Because, for instance, when Jerusalem was conquered and there were a few people left and they fell to infighting and one group killed the guy that the king of Babylon had left, Getaliah. They killed him that Getaliah had left to lead them. They were afraid that the Babylonians would come back and put them to death because some of them had killed Getaliah, the king’s chosen representative.

I went to Jeremiah and they said, what’s the word of the Lord? Should we stay here and let the Babylonians come down on us or should we maybe flee to Egypt and get out of the Babylonians way? Jeremiah said, I don’t have an answer for you right now. I have to go to the Lord and wait for the Lord to speak. And it took 10 days of Jeremiah seeking the Lord.

And finally, he got the word of the Lord. And I don’t know what his prayer life was like. It was pretty desperate prayer life, I should think, during those 10 days.

But he knew the voice of the Lord and he knew the voice of the Lord would show up and God does show up for us. So in that case, I guess the point I’m making, Justin, is that there was a period of time when God worked on Jeremiah and prepared him for that message. Now, when he gave the message, the people ignored it.

In fact, they opposed it. And Wesley mentioned he had a change at the last minute. Yeah.

And that can be moving in the spirit, by the way, totally moving in the spirit. Because once you have something God has given you, he’s given you that for a purpose. It may come another time if something happens then.

Our associate pastor, he and his whole family with four little kids, including a fairly newborn, they all got a stomach virus two Sundays ago and he couldn’t preach. So another associate pastor in our church had to preach at the last moment. He just had Saturday afternoon to prepare.

But God had given him the message he had. And so yesterday he preached it and it was good. So it was in his pocket, if you will.

So God’s sovereign providence is always in operation. And I always want to leave room if the spirit should move at the moment. But just to finish the story with Jeremiah, they all said, no, no, that’s not the word of the Lord.

I don’t know how they could say that after years and years and years of all his prophecies being fulfilled exactly. And now they said, well, this one won’t be fulfilled. God always gets, not the last laugh, the last sad end.

3. Prep of Biblical Messages

(700 words) (Kate-Turabian format) (footnotes are a must in Kate Turabian) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence) (Template is attached below)

Sermon Structure Assignment I

The first step in the sermon structure assignment is to determine the text’s various background questions, themes, phrases, and setting(s). For this assignment, you will focus on 2 Timothy 3:10-4:5.

Please use the worksheet as the template for this and the following assignments. This first assignment should come out to 700 words.

WRITE MY PAPER