Episode 35: Dr. Kenny Francis, How To Study The Bible, Part 1

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth In Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The Truth In Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Welcome back to the Truth In Love podcast. I have a very special guest with me today, Brother Kenny Francis, Doctor Kenny Francis, who has been a longtime minister of the gospel at Mission Boulevard Baptist Church and has also served as principal of the Fayetteville Christian School. Is it okay if I tell everybody that you were one of my teachers? Is that all right?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Certainly.

Kimberly Faith: I realize that’s ancient history, but you know, which may or may not make us both ancient. I don’t know. But excellent teacher, and Kenny has also been a longtime teacher of the basic Bible concepts. He’s married with four adult children, seven grandchildren, is that right?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Oh we have 11 now.

Kimberly Faith: Oh 11! You need to update your bio. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: Do you still sing with the singing men of Arkansas?

Dr. Kenny Francis: No. I’ve been out of that for a few years. It was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed it.

Kimberly Faith: Well, I really appreciate you joining us on the Truth In Love podcast today. You know, of all the Bible teachers I’ve known and ministers I’ve known, you go down in my history, my learning history as one of the people who is a succinct, direct, and wise teacher. So I really appreciate you joining us today and kind of having this discussion about how you study the Bible. So thank you for joining us.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, sure. I’m glad to be here. I guess my approach on learning and understanding the Bible is really sort of based on what J. Vernon McGee says. He says he likes to teach and put the cookies on the bottom shelf where the children can get to them. And I found I have to get the cookies on the bottom shelf so I can get to them and then just share the cookies with others. I think that may be an extended metaphor.

Kimberly Faith: I love that metaphor, actually, because, you know, we think about what God says about himself, and His thoughts are high above our thoughts and His mind is so much greater, and I’m paraphrasing of course, but He allows us to enter into His thoughts and His mind. Quick question, you teach high school still, right?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Since we’re talking about cookies on the bottom shelf I remember high school. I was a bottom shelf cookie dweller, still kind of am, but  what would you say to a high school student, or just because most of us remember high school to some degree, as to why it’s important to have some,  not just discipline, but also some sort of plan to and and strategy to study God’s word?

Dr. Kenny Francis: I think it’s important because they need to become lifelong learners. Lifelong learners. And that is lifelong learning about everything. About everything in life, but specifically, we need to become lifelong learners of God’s word because God is infinite, his thoughts are infinite, and his revelation to us reflects that infinite mind of God. And the sooner that we can start studying it, the better, And the sooner that we can learn how to effectively study God’s word, and the sooner that we can develop the hunger and the discipline to study God’s word, the better.

And I think it’s really important not just to view the study of God’s word as a discipline like other disciplines. You know? I’ve been doing a certain series of stretches every morning for the past thirty or forty years, And I don’t necessarily look forward to it, but I just say, well, I better do this. I need it. But on the other hand, there are certain disciplines that we do that we do enjoy, like having a cup of coffee or eating breakfast or lunch or whatever it is.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  And so some disciplines are more enjoyable than others. And it’s really important to have that sense that I really need God’s word, and I really enjoy the fulfillment that I get from studying it. Learning how to study God’s word and experiencing the fulfillment and studying it as soon as possible will be a great pattern throughout life.

Kimberly Faith: You mentioned hungering, and I remember, you know, we have this whole study we do on the attitudes of Christ based on the sermon on the mount and the beatitudes. And I think about what Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, you know, and conversely, are they who mourn sin. Right? And you know, the more that we desire God and hunger and thirst after his righteousness, which is represented, Jesus is the word, And he embodies the word. He created everything through the word. Right?

Jesus was the good word, and the more we hunger and thirst after Him, the more we desire to study God’s word because we see the ravages and the terror and the horror that sin creates in our life and has created in the world. And that’s one of the reasons I really wanted you to present just these basics on how to study God’s word. So thank you, and thanks for that explanation by the way.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, you brought up a good point there, and that is that Jesus is the word. He is the embodiment of the word, and the word being God’s message, God’s revelation to us. And God does have a message and a revelation to us, and it’s not just one little thing. The gospel is what opens it up and gets it started. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: But Jesus said that he, well, we know that the Lord came to give us eternal life. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. But in John chapter 17, the first few verses there in Jesus’ prayer, he said, and this is life eternal that they might know thee, the true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. The whole purpose of the experience of eternal life is that we might know God, that we might have a real relationship with him. And having a real relationship with somebody includes the give and take of conversation, the give and take of hearing one another, understanding one another. And that the scripture is what gives us that certainty that we’re receiving God’s message. And in fact, as we approach the Bible, that’s how we need to approach it. We need to approach it as God’s message.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Because it’s the unequivocable truth. You know? It’s not made up. It’s inspired by God. It is manifest.You know, what you said makes me think about something that, you know, in our concept study, we talk about, and it’s knowing God for who he is. When we study the law of sin and death, knowing God for who he is, not who, you know, the Book of Mormon says he is, not who, you know, Buddha says he is, not who the president says he is, not who, you know, my neighbor says he is, but knowing God for who he is, manifested in his word. And of course, in creation, we learn that Romans chapter one, it’s manifested. He put knowledge of himself in us, and I think most of us, including myself, tend to take our knowledge of God almost instinctively from the fallen world. And you know it’s like if you met my worst enemy and all you knew about me was from my worst enemy. That’s why I study the Bible because I want to know God for who He is, so I can, like you said, enjoy that relationship that is pure and unsullied by the enemy.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Right. And that’s what the scripture does for us because the scripture came from God, and no other book has that.

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: No other book is that. You know, Paul said in Second Timothy three that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, that is for the truth, and for reproof and correction, and instruction in righteousness. Whenever he said that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, we know that the Greek word underlying that is all scripture is God breathed. And whenever we talk, our words are breathed. It’s impossible to talk without breathing.

Kimberly Faith: I love that.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So whenever we talk, the words that come forth from us are breathed. Whenever we’re looking at the and studying the scripture, we’re studying the words that God breathed.

Kimberly Faith: I never thought about that. I never thought about that corollary. That’s so, that’s yeah. That’s wonderful. Thank you.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. So we’re not just looking at a vision or thoughts that God gave someone, and then they breathe the words with their own wisdom, you know, or their own interpretation. The words that we have are the words that God intended to be there.

Kimberly Faith: Thank you for sharing that. I was just reading that the other day. I was listening to an apologist who’s from Canada, Wesley Huff, and he’s a biblical linguist, and he was talking about that, and I didn’t draw that analogy that we all, all of our words are breathed, And you know, that’s so, thank you. That makes so much sense that the Bible would say that and the original Greek would say that as opposed to what, you know, what our King James or New King James or whatever version we’re reading. So, yeah, thanks. 

Well, why don’t you kind of give us an overview of your approach to studying the Bible?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, what we’ve been talking about is a major part of my approach. My approach is that the Bible came from God, and our passage in Timothy says that all scriptures are given by inspiration of God. And then a corollary to that is Second Peter chapter one, the last verse or two of the chapter. He says that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And the men who wrote the scripture were speaking. Of course, whenever we write, we’re speaking in writing, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. That means that the words that they wrote down were the words that the Holy Spirit urged them to write. 

So one of the most important parts of an approach to God’s word is to realize that I’m reading God’s message. And the most important thing is to understand what God means here. Not how does this fit into my theology or how does this fit into my preferences or how can I use this verse as a proof text? But the important thing is what does God say and what does he mean and what does he want me to do?

Kimberly Faith: I love that. That’s a great reminder. Seriously, I think we do approach the scripture many times, myself. I mean, I’m very guilty of this as I’m trying to find a verse to back up my theology.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, sure. And there’s a place for that because we do get it, as Isaiah says, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little. So there is a place for that in a topical study, making sure that our understanding of this idea or this doctrine is correct. A second part of the approach is to realize that the Holy Spirit will give me understanding. God does want me to understand his word, and that understanding ultimately comes from God’s spirit.

Another part of the approach is the attitude, the attitude that I approach the scripture with. James 1: 21- 25  points out that we should lay aside all superfluity of naughtiness, all evil thoughts, and, of course, that’s root out all of it, and receive with meekness the engrafted word. So to come to the scriptures with a yielded meek attitude and be ready to change my understanding and be ready to change my life in light of what I see.

Kimberly Faith: You know, I think you talked about meekness. I can’t remember if this was before we started the recording or after, but I think again about the attitudes that Christ taught us. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. You know? 

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right.

Kimberly Faith: It’s just so important to these attitudes that Jesus taught us to put us in a right mind so we can do things like study God’s word. I also think when you said asking the Holy Spirit to give us understanding, you know, I really think that mindset of asking, it’s hard for me, it’s a hard habit to get into to read God’s word and say, show me what you want me, to reveal yourself to me. But it reminds me of the verse in Second Chronicles 16:9  where it says, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him. God wants to reveal Himself to us, and you know we have to have a right mind and a right heart and a yielded reverent attitude, like you said, because without that all we’re doing is some kind of didactic intellectual pursuit, which is pretty shallow.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Right. That’s the big issue is to realize we want to get in touch with God.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: We want to understand what the Lord’s message to us is on a personal level. And we need to remember that God does want to connect with us on a personal level. We need to maintain the same attitude that the apostle Paul expressed in Galatians 2:20. He said, the son of God loved me and gave himself for me. And if we can maintain that perspective and approach the scripture with that in mind, then we can set aside the mere intellectual pursuit and get connected to God.

And then in our conversations with people, not only do we understand the truth and are able to express it, but our life will be affected by our relationship with the Lord. Then we’ll be like the apostle Paul. He said in First Thessalonians that the people in Thessalonica received the word because they knew what kind of men Paul and Silas were. When they saw the life of these men, their life gave power to what they said so that Paul and his team were not merely going around intellectually trying to convince people of something. They were men that had a unique life based on their relationship to God and based on their understanding of God’s truth. And that connection of their life and truth as it was expressed to others is what persuaded people, what the Holy Spirit could use to persuade people of the truth of what they were saying.

Kimberly Faith: Don’t you think that part of that, not just the message of truth, but when you talk about the power of the spirit to reach people through the word, that our credibility is also greatly affected by the degree to which the fruit of the spirit flows from us?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Absolutely. Yep. And that’s really what it’s all about. It’s all about knowing God, and then being able to effectively persuade others to come to know him.

Kimberly Faith: Well,  I mean, there’s just so much credibility when there’s genuine love, and there’s genuine joy, when there’s genuine peace, there’s genuine compassion, and you know, it’s hard I think for us sometimes to, at least,  you know, when somebody says I want your peace, if they’re saying that to me, it’s easy for me to say, well, that is not my peace. It’s God’s peace, you know, and then that opens that door for the truth. But I think the study of God’s word and approaching it in this, which I think is so critical to approach God’s word with an attitude of being ready to change and to become more like Jesus is so critical. It’s, I think, more critical than even just the intellectual part of learning the truth. Because without the change, we don’t have the credibility you’re talking about that Paul had.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. It’s the Christ likeness that attracts people.

Kimberly Faith: Right. So how do you, what are the different kinds of well, what do you want to talk about next? I’m just, you know, interjecting and interrupting.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, well, if we’re talking about how to study the Bible, I think it’s important to understand the different kinds of study.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis: As we approach the Bible, what we’re holding in our hands is really a library or an anthology of documents that God inspired men to write. So as we come to it, we look at the Bible, and we open it up, and the first thing that we find is the history books, Genesis through Esther, all the stories, the stories about how God created, all the way up through the history of the Jewish people. 

And then beginning in the book of Job, Job through the Song of Solomon, we’re looking at books of poetry. That’s a different kind of literature, and we approach different kinds of literature differently. It’s one thing to teach someone to read and help someone understand a story, and it’s a different thing to read and help someone understand a poem. Poems have a different emphasis. They’re more of an emphasis on the experiences of the heart, and the stories are more an emphasis on what happened.

So we have those different kinds of writings in the Old Testament. And also after the Song of Solomon, we come to the prophecies. And prophecies are different from history and poetry because prophecies are public proclamations. Public proclamations, I guess we might say speeches of messages that God was giving to the people of Israel or giving to others. So there’s a little bit of a different way to approach and understand those.

And then when we come to the New Testament, we have the authorized biographies of Jesus, first of all, in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then we have the history book, the book of Acts. And the book of acts is so essential to our understanding of what God is doing today. Christ came to Israel according to his promise. The people of Israel had to make a real decision that really mattered for them personally and for their nation and for history, and they just decided to say no to the messiah. That he came. They rejected him. And on the basis of their rejection, Christ established a different institution, the church.

And the book of Acts tells us about beginnings of the church, and it lays out for us certain patterns and principles by which the church in those days operated so that the churches of today can look back and see those patterns and principles and stay true to those practices that the early church did. 

And then we come into the letters, Paul’s instructions and the other apostles’ instructions to believers. And these letters, particularly the letters of the apostle Paul, which were written to the Gentile churches, it’s so essential for us to learn those because that’s the part of the Bible that is written specifically to people like us. We are Gentiles, for the vast majority today of believers are Gentiles, and Paul wrote those letters, Romans through Second Thessalonians. Those were written to Gentile churches, to people who had believed in Christ as their savior. They had come out of the secular worldly culture of their day and trusted Christ as their savior. And Paul wrote those letters to instruct those people that came out of the secular gentile world of their day in what they were supposed to believe and how they were supposed to live.

Kimberly Faith: So does that mean that the letters were not also written to the Jewish people who became born again believers based on their trust in Jesus as the Messiah?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. They are. Those letters are over in the beginning in the book of Hebrews.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  But what’s in those letters and this is such an important thing that we’re hitting on in light of something we were talking about earlier. Those letters do not contradict each other. For instance, there’s nothing in the book of Hebrews that contradicts anything that Paul said to the Gentiles. So it’s not like we’ve got two competing institutions. There’s one institution of the Lord today, and that’s the church that Christ established.

And there are people in that church that have a Jewish background and people that have a Gentile background. For those of us that have that Gentile background, it’s really essential to get that perspective. But those that have a Jewish background, what really happens in those letters that are specifically to the Jews, and those are the book of Hebrews. James was written to the 12 tribes scattered abroad. And Peter’s letters were also written to the strangers scattered abroad.  Those were the Jews that were scattered from Jerusalem. Those letters particularly were written to the Jews that were scattered. And it’s in the book of Hebrews where we have the scripture that says, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. You know, that’s

Kimberly Faith: Interesting. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: What was the assembly that they were supposed to be involved in? He wasn’t telling them to go assemble in the synagogue or go to the temple. That was an exhortation to assemble in the church. So what’s in those letters is all of those are focused on how we should live the Christian life. And then, of course, we come finally to the book of Revelation, which is God’s announcement for how everything’s going to be consummated, culminated, and tied up there in the end.

So as we approach the different kinds of books, it’s important for us to keep in mind that, okay, we’re looking at different books here. I think one of the things that people talk about doing that’s ultimately going to be counterproductive is just to say, well, God, speak to me today and then drop the Bible open and plop a finger in. You know? And you can come up with some interesting things like that, and the Lord could use that. And he has from time to time. But to make that our method of Bible study is ultimately to ignore the fact that God gave us a book, and he gave us a collection of books.

Kimberly Faith: That’s just to say, and, you know, we kind of cheat ourselves by doing that. You know, you think about the things that we dedicate our life to because we have a desire to learn. Like if someone wanted to learn welding, they’re not going to take that approach to learning welding because they may be motivated to learn welding so they can go work offshore and make a lot of money.

I went to law school three years past undergraduate school. It was not a drop the finger in the book approach. It was the grind and the thing about God’s word that makes it different is, yes, it is a grind to get in there and make yourself do it, but the benefit is eternal. The benefit is the relationship. It’s like a good marriage,  you know. If you had that effect, that approach to a relationship with your wife, you know, it would be a pretty bad approach because you’re spending a bucket, dropping the bucket dime trying to develop a relationship that’s supposed to last a lifetime.

I also want to say one more thing too, because I feel like we’re just scratching the surface of your outline. First of all, I appreciate that overview of and simple but direct overview of how we should approach the various portions of the scripture. That’s super helpful. To me, actually, I learned something I didn’t know by just your very short version of that and in taking the approach of how you read that, which is ironic because when I teach the concepts, the second concept that I teach is what is the Bible and why is it important. I’ve inserted that between the poles of influence and the law of sin and death just because I think it’s relevant. It’s interesting that what you’ve taught me is, to add to my own outline really, that these different types of approaches based on the type of book goes deeper than just a story or an instruction. You need to look at what God is saying through the story, you know, what God is saying through the instruction and not just individually, but globally. Does that make sense?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: So, all right. Well, was there anything else about the kinds of books or the anthology, as you call it, which I like that word, that’s kind of a cool word, that you want to say about that?

Dr. Kenny Francis: No, I think that’s enough to kind of get started on that. 

Kimberly Faith: Okay. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: There are some different ways to study the Bible. One way to study the Bible is to study it book by book, just to take the the book of Genesis and study the book of Genesis or take the the book of first Thessalonians and and study that in particular or study a series of books. I think it’s really worthwhile. Of course, this is a big study, is to study the life of Jesus as revealed in the four gospels. You know, that’s a lifetime right there.

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: To study that. But it’s important to study the Bible a book at a time because that’s really how the Lord gave it to us. He gave it to us a book at a time. And then to study verse by verse. Verse by verse is taking a passage of scripture, a paragraph, maybe a chapter. Sometimes the chapters are right on, and sometimes it’s more a chapter and a half that actually goes together, but to study a passage and to study it verse by verse. And really, the verse by verse study is the basis of everything else because if we don’t understand the individual verses, then we’re not going to understand the passage. And if we don’t understand the passages, then we’re not going to understand the section of the book or the book that we’re studying.  So learning how to study verse by verse is very important. 

And then in addition to the studies of verse by verse, we need to study the doctrines. Okay. What are the basic beliefs that we need to know? The doctrine of how to be saved. That is the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of the church. What does the Bible say the church is? The doctrine, as we were mentioning earlier, the doctrine of predestination, that’s a major teaching of the scripture, and we need to study those things as well. In addition to doctrines, we might study, you know, topics. You know, maybe a topic might be oh, you know what?

Kimberly Faith:  Baptism.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. Baptism or yeah.  Some of these, you know, kind of bleed over between a doctrine and a topic. A topic is more a shorter direct

Kimberly Faith: Like what is love or something like that?Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. Very good. Yeah. What is love?

Kimberly Faith:  Okay. That makes sense, sorry. I was not tracking with you there.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Oh, that’s good. Thank you. And then to study the stories and people of the Bible. One of the things that I did that I enjoyed and the Lord blessed was doing a series study about lesser known people of the Bible, and that study of individual people.

For instance, Ahithophel. Ahithophel was one of David’s best friends, one of his allies. But then whenever David’s son Absalom rebelled against David and tried to take over the kingdom, actually led a rebellion that caused a civil war, Ahithophel, one of David’s top friends and advisers, actually helped David’s son, Absalom, in the rebellion.  And to learn about this man, Ahithophel. Why did he do that? What’s behind all? Who was he, and why did he do that? What was the result of that? So there are lots of rich studies like that, just learning about the different people of the scripture.  So I found studies on 50 of lesser known people in the Bible, and I keep coming across more, at this point that I’m interested in learning about two.

Kimberly Faith: So with these ways to study the Bible, like if you’re talking to a new Christian, what are you recommending to them as to where to start? Because every one of these is a deep dive, really.

Dr. Kenny Francis: I think the first thing well, there’s really two main things. One of which is just to get oriented to the truth. Just to get oriented to the truth of who God is and my relationship with God. And, of course, that’s the conceptual foundation. What are the big ideas of the Bible as to who God is? Why are people separated from God? How do we come to God through Christ? And why is it only through Christ? And then what’s my responsibility as a believer in Christ,  of the idea that God wants me to grow and be a good ambassador of Christ? And then the fact that we are serving him in the midst of a great spiritual war and that God has given us the church as our fortress, or our embassy. But just to get the overview of what God’s truth and how it applies to me.

Kimberly Faith: I totally agree with that, and and I, you know, of course, the Lord lit my fire pretty strongly about ten years ago, and you know, it has just been bringing me back to the roots that I learned back when I was in high school, and when I, before I really walked away from the Lord for a great period of time, but the more that I try to help, there’s such ignorance about the general concepts in most Christian circles. You know, people don’t know how to answer questions like, why am I here? What’s my purpose? Who is God? You know, why do I have to be born again? What’s the principle behind the law of sin and death? You know, why does God require, you know, Jesus as a payment? You know, all these things. What is spiritual warfare? Who is the enemy?  You know, all these basic things that if we don’t have this overview, it’s like going into a physics book and trying to understand it without understanding basic multiplication or being able to read. I mean, that’s the way I look at it.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. Yes. Exactly. So we and I think a good word for that is just to get oriented just to get oriented to 

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  What’s going on here? Where did I come from? What’s happened? What’s going to happen? I don’t want to get too far afield on this, but in a sense, I see it like a person awakening in a strange room. You know? Maybe you’ve gone to visit someone or maybe out of town at a motel or something and wake up from a sound sleep and realize we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. What’s going on? Where are we? 

Kimberly Faith: That’s a great example.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. Maybe it’s just a second or two or three seconds to stop and think through, Okay, where am I? What am I doing here?

Kimberly Faith: Right. I think that’s a really great example, Brother Kenny, because we think about when you’re born again and your soul and your spirit have been made alive in Christ. It’s like you’re waking up in Kansas, like, where am I and why am I here? And you have a lot of questions about you know, just to orient yourself. You need answers to orient yourself.

And you know what’s interesting? I also find that teaching the concepts, these basic concepts, these basic topics, answering the big questions for people who are not saved is a really great tool for bringing them to Christ. You know, there are people that if they see the fruit of the spirit in you, to know where you get it. And so when you usher them in by the basic topics that answer, you know, because we learn in the first concept, you know, that the poles of influence, now, I call it what is your source of truth, that the reason that people are drawn into God’s truth is because they see the love, the joy, the peace, the goodness, the things you can’t argue about, you know, the things that are irrefutably true. People know what peace looks like, and they know when somebody has it and when somebody doesn’t.

And so I think that, and again, I’m not saying there’s not, there’s definitely value to doing these other ways of study, but I just can’t. I’ve seen in my own personal ministry that the basic concepts, which we call them basic bible concepts, the basic truths for life, we call them a lot of different things, is just such a great tool. I know that the Lord has me in this place for such a time as this because, you know, having been in the ministry of Mission Boulevard for so many years and now being connected back to it, but living 200 miles away, I see that connection as so critical for the churches I get to minister to here and even in different states because of technology. 

So I didn’t mean to go off on that rabbit, but I just don’t think there’s a more, we’re talking about studying God’s word. I think that it cannot be overemphasized that you have to have some sense of orientation. Otherwise, you get lost in the weeds and led astray pretty quickly. And I see that all, I’m sure you see that all the time too.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. And as you pointed out, understanding these basic truths of the Bible is beneficial for an unsaved person.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Because everyone, one of the greatest needs of human beings, in mental needs, is that we have  to be oriented. What’s going on around us, whether we’re lost or saved, whatever situation we’re in. We need to be oriented. And to be oriented to life in general is the most important need. So I think that for a new Christian, to get that orientation to what the Christian life is all about is absolutely essential. I think the biblical word for it is the faith. It’s the faith. The apostle Paul talks about it in the book of Colossians. He said that they need to be true to the faith as they have been taught.

Kimberly Faith: Well, the reason I ask you to explain that is because like when I talk to my atheist friends, they talk about my faith, what they call my blind faith. A lot of times we’ll have very civilized discussions about how we all have faith. I was talking to a friend who had just flown in from another state, and I said, you know, they call me the Jesus lawyer, whatever. That’s to me, a compliment. But I like to just, you know, kindly say, well, how well did you know that pilot, you know, that just flew you 800 miles? And, you know, how well did you know the airline stewardess? And, you know, and how well did you know that TSA had made sure there was nobody with a bomb on the plane? You know, and it’s just taking people back to what we need to recognize that we all have a very strong degree of faith that gives us some kind of hope or we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. So, go ahead. I just wanted to interject that because I think it’s important to understand that everybody has faith.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. And there is faith in the sense that we live by and that is what we live. We get out of bed and go about the day and live our lives trusting so many things. Faith in the sense of just relying on

Kimberly Faith: Our five senses.

Dr. Kenny Francis: People on the plane or or getting out and driving down the road, relying on people that are coming at me from the other side that they’re not asleep or drunk or something.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well and we put our faith in our five senses, and God’s word gives us the ability to put our faith in him. So I call it supernatural faith just because I think that people understand that term.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. It is supernatural. But what we’re talking about here, this is from Colossians 2:6 and 7. He says, as you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit. So what he’s telling the folks here is that he says established in the faith as ye have been taught. So the faith, as he’s using the word faith here, the faith is the set of truths that they were instructed in, that they have received, and that they rely on as their understanding of life, their understanding of God, their understanding of how they are connected to God through Christ, everything associated with that. And then right after that, he has a contrast here. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit. So he’s comparing here the faith on the one hand and philosophy and vain deceit on the other. So the faith is really, we could say, the biblical philosophy of life. And then there’s human philosophy, which is vain deceit.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, faith is a noun, right?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Faith is something that we receive and that’s interesting. I have never read that particular scripture and thought about it that way because we know faith is a gift of God and that belief is the exercise of that faith. Am I saying this right? 

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith:  And so when we talk about the truth, you know, the Bible’s, you know, and I don’t remember now the quote, talks about how the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God, but the spirit reveals it to us. So when we’re born again and receive Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, we receive the ability to, I like to compare it to like we’ve plugged into the electric, the source of electricity, and the light comes on, and we are enlightened in the ability to receive the things of God. So, I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud a little bit about this idea that faith and truth are the same thing. Is that what you’re saying, or am I saying it wrong?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, I’m saying that faith that God gives us has the instrument, the ability to believe. The ability to understand, the ability to well, moving on into Hebrews 11 there, the ability to build an ark. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: The ability to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, the ability to go through the Red Sea. That is the faith that God gives us so that we can respond to him and do the things that are pleasing to him.

Kimberly Faith: So would you say that the truth builds our faith or the truth of God’s word gives us our faith. I mean, and again, I’m not trying to be over semantic, but I’m just trying to wrap my mind around what you’re saying.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. What I’m saying is there’s a difference between faith and the faith.

Kimberly Faith: Okay, okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis: The faith is the basic beliefs that the people in Colossae had been taught. And Paul was telling them, says, rooted and established in the faith as ye have been taught. So the faith was the curriculum, the body of information that they had been taught that they had received. 

Kimberly Faith: Okay. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: And that’s what gave them their orientation to life. So there’s the faith, the body of truth that we believe in, and then there’s faith that God imparts to people so that they can trust him and serve him.

Kimberly Faith: Did I just muddle that up? I apologize if I did that.  I was just kind of thinking outside the box for a minute.

Dr. Kenny Francis: No, I don’t think you muddled it up.  I think you said what needed to be said because there needed to be clarification.

Kimberly Faith: I’m still on the bottom shelf of those cookies.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. Me too. Me too. So but that’s one thing. Because what does a new Christian need? Well, a new Christian needs that orientation. They need to be taught that orientation of what is God’s truth, and how does God want me to live? But the other thing that new Christians need is that new Christians need to be instructed in some practicality. What do you need to do? What do you need to do? You need to read your Bible consistently. You need to pray consistently. You need to attend church consistently. You need to develop the habit of yielding to what you sense God wants you to do. So those are two things.

One thing is to get oriented mentally to the Christian life, and then the other thing is to get started practicing the behaviors and disciplines of the Christian life. And new Christians need both of those because they need to be, a new Christian does need to be actively engaged in developing those practices that are going to make them healthy spiritually, but we also need that orientation to help us to stay motivated and to correctly understand what’s happening in our lives.

Kimberly Faith: Right. I think old Christians need it too. I mean, it’s so easy. Our flesh is never any better than the day we are born again. And you know, the enemy is I mean, I tell people,  I said, we have three enemies, and one of them you sleep with, you know. The other one is our culture, and the other one is of course Satan, and they never are any less rabid about derailing us than the day we were born again. So, you know, for myself as a Christian, a person has been saved, you know, since I was 24, 23 or 24, I forget. You know, I just look at all the periods of derailment in my life, you know, where and what it began with, I mean, really did begin with, I failed to continually be transforming myself by the renewing of my mind, and that may sound over simplistic, but when we quit renewing our mind, we quit cutting those grooves from God’s Word in our mind, in relationship with God, then our mind, our lord is going to be something else, and it’s typically our flesh, know, some fleshly pursuit.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Having that conceptual foundation is an important transition from our approach to the Bible to the tools for study. The next portion that we would discuss is what are the things that I need in order to study the Bible? And a solid conceptual foundation is essential. It’s an essential tool to study the Bible correctly. Those concepts, those basic truths of the scripture are like guardrails on the highway.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely.

Dr. Kenny Francis: They keep you from going off down the mountainside or over into the ditch.

Kimberly Faith: Or into the rabbit hole.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  Right.

Kimberly Faith:  So as we wind up today, can you maybe in just a couple minutes give us an overview of these beautiful concepts, this concept study that we’ve been taught over fifty years in our church? Is that, you think, doable in next two minutes, just to give us kind of an overview of those concepts, and then we’ll pick up with that next time?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Sure.

Kimberly Faith: Put you on the spot.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Sure. No. That’s okay. We need to get oriented to life. We need to get oriented to the Bible. And it all starts with God. Everything started with God. God is the only thing that existed in eternity past. And then God created, and he created everything. He created, of course, he created the angels, and he created the universe. And so it all starts with him. And God created everything for  his own purpose, or as it says in the book of Revelation, for his own pleasure to to accomplish his will. 

So an understanding of God is the basis of reality. There’s no truth or understanding apart from God. So we need to start with God and with God’s attributes, what God is like, the fact that he is a spirit, he’s always existed, he has all power, all knowledge, and is everywhere. And then what motivates God? God is this infinite wonderful being, but what is it that motivates him? 

And then we get into his nature, his righteousness, justice, and love. These are things that motivate God. But God, because of his nature, his righteousness, justice, and love, if he’s going to have a relationship with other beings, they have to conform to his nature. They have to conform to his righteousness.

If they don’t conform to his righteousness, then they have to be removed from his presence, and his justice requires punishment for that. And the scripture calls that  the law of sin and death. That an unwavering, unchanging principle that governs God’s relationship with all beings of a will. So we need to understand that about God. And then we need to understand about humanity, mankind, that  God made us a body, soul, and spirit, which means with a body, we have the ability to be aware of the physical universe around us, and with the spirit, we can connect with God.

We have physical needs that affect our sense of well-being. And if those needs aren’t met, then we experience anxiety, and anxiety motivates us to fulfill our needs. But not only do we have physical needs, we have spiritual needs, And our spiritual needs are fulfilled in our relationship with God himself. Our problem is that when we sin, we become disconnected from God, and that’s death. That’s spiritual death in the same way that physical death is being disconnected from the physical universe. And that’s our problem. The law of sin and death. We’ve sinned. We’re disconnected from God.

But people do have, according to the scripture, people do have a sense that God is there and that they have rebelled against him, and they’re under his judgment. And the human response to that is to try to fix the problem. And that’s where human religions come in, man’s attempt to resolve his guilt and to be acceptable to God. And the problem is that human religions don’t work because they don’t resolve the problem. They don’t make us righteous and acceptable to God, and human religions do not provide an acceptable payment for our sin. God’s justice requires a penalty, a payment for sin, and human religions don’t have an adequate substitute to pay for our sins in our place. So the result of all of that is that man is hopelessly, helplessly, eternally condemned before God. Understanding that helps us to appreciate why God’s message to us is called the good news.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly.

Dr. Kenny Francis: We’ve heard the, we’ve understood the bad news. The good news, that is the gospel, is that God took the initiative to solve the problem because we couldn’t. And God’s plan to resolve the problem is that God himself would pay the penalty for our sin in our place. And because God is the father, son, and holy spirit, and as it says, these three are one, the Son of God came and he paid the penalty of our sin in our place, and he could satisfy God’s judgment against our sin because he was an infinite being and could satisfy that infinite penalty. 

Therefore, since God himself did the work to resolve our problem, what’s left for us to do is to accept or reject God’s provision in our place. And we have to respond to the message of the gospel. We have to know what the issues are. We have to have a right heart, a right desire there, and God gives us that understanding. He makes us know these things are true. He gives us the ability to respond to him. That’s faith. We receive the message, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God.  So God enables us to respond. We don’t generate our response. We don’t generate repentance. We don’t generate belief. God grants those to us, and we either say yes or no.

For those who accept the gift of God, God regenerates them and gives them a new birth. And when someone is born again, that is they’re born of the spirit, they are born into the race of the last Adam. When we’re born the first time, we’re born into the race of the first Adam, and we have all the characteristics of the first Adam. And when we’re born again, born of the spirit, we have the characteristics of the last Adam and the characteristics of the last Adam, Jesus Christ. Having those characteristics within ourself as one that’s been born again, born of the spirit, then we are now, we’re now truly made acceptable to God, not because of anything we’ve done, but because we’ve been born again, a new creature in Christ Jesus with the qualities of Christ.  And then how do we live the Christian life? Here we are. We are saved. We are secure. We’ll never be condemned. We’re ready to go to heaven. What are we left here for? Why are we here on the earth?

Well, we’re here on the earth to represent Christ, and being a good representative of Christ requires that we grow. Because as we talked about earlier, this flesh, this sinful body that has the genetics of the first Adam in it, is not Christ like. Those characteristics are not Christ like, and they don’t bring others to Christ. And yet here we are in the flesh, and we’re here in the flesh so that we can connect with unsaved people that are living in the flesh in this world. So what God wants us to do is to grow to become Christ like and to practice the disciplines and gain the knowledge and the motivation to keep going and growing and to to be a steadfast witness. But we’re doing all this in the midst of a spiritual war. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: The great conflict between God and Satan. And Satan has a plan, and that is that everybody worship him. And God has a plan, and that is that everybody would be reconciled to him through Christ and and spend eternity with him on the new Earth where there’s going to be joy and peace, and God will live with man. It tells us in Revelation,  and we are going to have a rejoicing relationship with him throughout eternity. 

So that’s God’s plan. But all of this truth about who God is and how to come to God through Christ is under attack. All of this message of the gospel of Christ and how Christ is the solution to our problem and Christ will qualify us to be with God for eternity, that whole truth is under attack from Satan. He doesn’t want anybody to be saved. Lost people don’t understand this truth. And so whenever they’re talking about God and how to be right with God and what life is all about, they’re a force against this truth. And even Christians who are not dedicated to the Lord, not living for him, or who don’t really know the truth, can be a force against the truth. But God has preserved the truth in his house of witness. God established an institution, and that institution would continue from generation to generation until Jesus comes.

And that would be the repository. That would be the place where the truth is found. And that’s why it’s important for Christians to understand what the church is and to serve God in the context of the church. That’s where the truth is going to be propagated throughout the generations until Jesus comes. Now what is the truth that the church is supposed to propagate?

Well, that brings us back to who God is. The church needs to know who God is, what the human problem is, and how people can be reconciled to God, and propagate and spread that truth until Christ comes.

Kimberly Faith: Well, that was the most succinct explanation of what is otherwise a ten week to one year study that I think I’ve ever heard, and thank you for that. I really put you on the spot, I know, but that was wonderful, and I know you need to go and just to give people a preview for the next podcast and this very important topic about how to study God’s word, we’ll pick up with the tools. You’re going to unpack your toolbox for us.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes, we’ll do that.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis: We’ll unpack the tools and then offer some suggestions for how to use them effectively.

Kimberly Faith: Okay, great. Unpack the toolbox and figure out how to use them. We’ll look forward to that. And thank you so much for joining us on the Truth in Love podcast. I appreciate that, Brother Kenny, and you have a wonderful Easter weekend.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, thank you. Thank you. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to visit with you and look forward to getting together again to complete our study. 

Jacob Paul:  You’ve been listening to the Truth In Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.