Episode 37: Dr. Kenny Francis, How To Study The Bible, Part 3

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. We are back today for part three of our topic on how I study the Bible with Doctor Kenny Francis. Welcome back, Kenny.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, thank you. I’m glad to be with you.

Kimberly Faith: Why don’t we just pick right up where we left off in the last podcast?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Alright. Let’s do that. We’ll go back to the beginning and bring everybody on board. We’ve discussed our approach to studying the Bible and how we need to view the Bible as God’s word and that God has a message to the human race. But as we’re studying it, we need to look for God’s message to us personally in it.

And we know that His Holy Spirit is the one who grants understanding of the scripture. We need to come to the Bible with a reverent, yielded attitude. And if we’ll do that, we’ll find that the Lord will guide us and teach us in his word. We need to be ready to change our understanding and ready to change our life because the Lord wants us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. Then we’ve talked about the two major different kinds of studies.

One of those is the verse by verse study. Technically, it’s called the inductive study, and that includes a study of the books of the Bible and then getting down into the individual passages and down into the sentences and the verses. And we’ve discussed how to do that effectively. And I think the main thing that we have emphasized in our verse by verse study is the importance of the context, the importance of the context of the book and the context of the passage before we get down and try to determine just by looking up words what the verse is about. We need to keep things in their context. And, of course, that’s important in every facet of life.

Kimberly Faith: And I love what you did on the last podcast with Hebrews Chapter Five.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.  I’m going to go back and listen to that again just because I was like, wow. I need to know that better.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. And, well, it’s surprising how many of those difficult passages or controversial passages of the scripture actually open up if we just pay attention to the context of what’s going on.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: After we’ve discussed the different kinds of Bible studies, we talked about the tools that we need for study. We need a reliable translation of the Bible. We need a good conceptual foundation so that as we come to the scripture, we’ve got the guardrails up on the road of study here so we don’t go off thinking something that’s actually contrary to the faith. We need to stay in line with the basic truths that God has revealed to us in the scriptures, and we need to pay attention to the grammar,  just the English grammar of our good translation. One of the things that I found in my early days of of learning to study the Bible and having an opportunity to take a class in Hebrew and a class in Greek, one of the stumbling blocks for me was that I didn’t have a good enough understanding of English to even know what they were talking about when they’re talking about all the different tenses and cases and declensions and all of those things. I didn’t understand my English well enough to understand the terminology to even begin to unlock what the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek were about. 

Therefore, it’s important for a person to have a good basic understanding of how the English language works at least, and that will help them as they go into learning the Greek and Hebrew in different passages too. But we need a concordance. We need a concordance so we can see how a particular word is used in the Bible throughout the Bible. We need a Topical Bible because the topic will show us the different topics in the scripture even though that specific word may not be used.

And as an example of that, we talked about the word worship. And we saw an example in Second Chronicles 5:13  of people that were clearly worshiping, but the word worship was not there. And that’s the benefit of a Topical Bible. It can take us to places like that. But watch out. Watch out as it is with most tools for study, people’s interpretation can wind up in there. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  For instance, if you go to a Topical Bible and look under the word regeneration or new birth, you’ll find verses on baptism in there. And that’s because the person that compiled the Topical Bible assumed that baptism was a part of the new birth.

Kimberly Faith: That’s why those concepts are important.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. That’s right. We need a good bible dictionary so we can get the historical background of what we’re looking at and get an idea of the geography and the customs of the time, because understanding those will help us to understand what’s happening in some of the situations. And then our tools, if we’re going to get into the Greek and Hebrew, we need a Greek interlinear, a Greek lexicon, Hebrew interlinear, Hebrew lexicon. And in addition to all that, one of the priorities is to have a good English dictionary. Many times our difficulty with understanding the bible is not a matter of the Hebrew or the Greek. It’s just a matter of we don’t know what the English word means.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Sometimes people think, well, if you just use a more up to date translation, then you will know. But the truth is even with an up to date translation, people are going to run across words that they don’t understand.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So that’s why we all need a good English dictionary as well. Then we talked about a verse by verse study, learning that particular book as a whole, because God gave us books. Whenever we come to the scripture, we have a library or you could call it an anthology of the books that God inspired. So we should approach it book by book. And then as we get into the book, divide that into sections.

Sometimes the chapters are really helpful, but many times, one particular section of a book will be three or four chapters. So we need to get acquainted with the whole book and then go back and study the different portions of the book. And it’s good to have a good, helpful book to appreciate the chapters in the Bible is a book called Explore the Book, and we discussed that Explore the Book by Jay Sidlow Baxter is a very good book to help in outlining the books of the scripture and getting a good grasp on what the main message of of each of the books is. I highly recommend that.

Kimberly Faith: Is that a resource that basically does this dividing up of or clustering of chapters together, or even sections of chapters into ideas that make it easier to understand the context. Is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. He does what we’ve been talking about. In the book, it’s really sort of a self survey of the Bible, and his instruction is to read the book three or four times. Marking out the major divisions. And then the text of his book is to talk about those major divisions, set forth and discuss the main ideas in each of the major divisions. And one of the reasons I can recommend his book is that he’s very, very biblical. He’s focused on just the Bible itself

Kimberly Faith: Good to know.

Dr. Kenny Francis: without pushing a particular doctrine on it. Then we study each section and study the get down into the sentences and learn about the the topics that are in each sentence, and we discussed how to use our center column references. Or if you’re using the Blue Letter Bible, you don’t have center center column references in the Blue Letter Bible, but you do have one of the apps whenever you tap on a verse. One of the resources for the verse is, yeah, the TSK, which is the treasure of scriptural knowledge, which really is taking that particular verse and taking the topics of that verse and looking at other scriptures that are related to that topic.

Kimberly Faith: I love that. I started using that as soon as you mentioned it in the last podcast.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. It’s a very good alternative to a center column reference.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And then finally, after we’ve gained some insight into the passage, what it means and and some, then we need to look for how do I apply this? Is there a truth for me to know? Is there a promise for me to believe? Is there a command that I should obey? Is there an example for me to follow or an example to avoid?

And decide what actions should I take in light of this scripture. So that’s where we’ve been. What we would like to do in this particular session is discuss a topical study. How do I study a particular topic of the Bible?

Kimberly Faith: I love that.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So that’s where we go now. Of course, a topical study is talking about a topic rather than just going through verse by verse through the scripture. I come to the scripture wanting to know about a specific topic of the scripture. Maybe the issue of eternal security or a really big issue would be holiness. Be ye holy as I am holy that’s found in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus. It’s a command to the nation of Israel. But whenever we come to the New Testament, we find it’s a command to believers in Christ. So that’s a topic that could be studied. So those are some examples of some topics in contrast to a verse. And a topical study might be a shorter study or it might be a very long one.

The ones that I mentioned, eternal security, that would be a pretty long study. Or maybe another one might be the judgment of a Christian. Christians will be judged. We know the scripture teaches that we have eternal life. We cannot lose our salvation because Christ is the one who gave us salvation, and the salvation he gave us is not going to be revoked.

But how should I live as a Christian? What should the Christian life be like? And then what about the judgment of Christians? It seems like some people assume that those who believe that once you’re saved, you’re saved forever. Some people accuse those people of having the idea that, well, you can live however you want to, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You know, dad and I just did a podcast on the difference between the great white throne judgment and the judgment seat of Christ, which addresses this topic, you know, and it was so interesting. And the reason is because when I teach a lot I get questions like, well, why does it matter what I do if I’m born again and I can’t lose my salvation? Well, here’s one reason it really matters. But also, if you want to, we’re talking about topics and the topics that I typically get are, and sometimes I don’t know the answer to the question either, so I have to delve into my own topical study.

I just want to just say that when you dive into a topic that whether you’re interested in it or somebody you’re trying to, you know, you’re trying to bring them to the knowledge of Christ, trying to bring them into the path of salvation and accepting Jesus as our savior. When you can answer the questions about things they’re interested in, like what is my purpose, you know? Like today, I spoke in front of some middle schoolers at a public school. They asked me to come speak and one of the girls asked me, she goes, during the course of being an attorney, did you ever think you might fail? And it was like that topic was so and I was able to actually put Jesus into the topic because I’ve just recently studied with a person who is in a concept study, this topic of what is my purpose?

And it’s to glorify God, even when you seem like your life is a failure. So I just wanted to say that because there’s so much value in continuing to pursue these different topics in the context of helping people answer the hard questions. So I didn’t mean to derail the process there.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Oh, no. No. That was very much what the process is all about, making the personal applications.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. And like you pointed out just now, you had the opportunity to share your understanding of that in talking to a group of children at a school. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  Not all teaching is done in a Sunday school class at church or even in a quote, Bible study, unquote. The scripture says in Peter to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that’s in us.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And that I think you mentioned that in  the very first podcast, but that’s just one example of how on the fly, God was, hey, here’s an opportunity to really hammer home that to all these seventh and eighth graders who probably most of them are lost and don’t know Jesus. You have a purpose that is an eternal purpose because it’s something that we’ve studied.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So what’s our procedure? What’s our procedure for doing a topical study? We want to find out about a major concept or find out about one subject as we have mentioned or maybe learn about a person in the scripture, maybe about a group of people. So the list of possible topics can go on. But if we’re going to do a topical study, one of the first things that we need to do is to define what it is that we want to learn about.

Limit the subject. Limit the subject. Ask ourselves some specific questions. What is it that I want to know about? The Bible is such a well just a large book with with so many issues in it, so many people, so many topics, so many subjects in it that that it’s what should what could, I guess, we’ll just say it’s real easy to to get off track or as we say, to chase a rabbit.

Kimberly Faith: I like to say it’s hard to pick a color out of the kaleidoscope sometimes.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Right. But that’s right. So we need to decide what is the question that I want to answer? What is the issue that I need to know about? And answer that. And along the way, oftentimes, we’ll find many other questions that have come up, and we’ll want to go back and answer those also. But it is possible to get an answer to things. 

And then we need to list the places in the Bible that address that issue, and this is where we use our concordance and or our topical bible. And then after we’ve made our list, we need to categorize that information. So what I would like to do is just give a couple of examples of this, actually three, if that’s okay.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. That’s wonderful.

Dr. Kenny Francis: One of the issues that I have encountered in my personal life and in the lives of other people is running into attitudes and perspectives that are contrary to God, contrary to God’s truth. And these attitudes and perspectives aren’t just a vague impulse to do something wrong. Sometimes these attitudes and perspectives are a propensity,  are a disposition. It’s a predisposition or a particular perspective on things that is just always there. And I’ll just give an example.

A person might be a controller. Everybody else looks at them and recognizes this person is a controller. As soon as they come into the room, they want to control the conversation. They want to control whatever decisions are made. And in fact, they want to take control of the environment of the room. You know, they might even, you know, take control of the arrangement of the furniture and everything. No matter no matter where they go, this person wants to be in control. And, of course, that sets a person at odds with Christ teaching that he set an example for us whenever he washed the disciples’ feet to be a servant. He said, if I, your servant and Lord, do these things, then you should, he said, if I, your master and Lord, do these things, and he was being the servant there. So sometimes I’m just picking that one thing, but there are lots of lots of different predispositions that a person might have. You know, there’s such a thing as the person who lies all the time, a pathological liar. You know, a person can be saved and still have that propensity to just lie.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And a pathological liar, of course, will lie even when there’s no purpose in lying. That’s just what they do.

Kimberly Faith: Well, the worst lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. And then we pass them on to others.

Kimberly Faith: And then we believe them. You know?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. So and for some people, the issue is lust. For other people, it’s that they’ve always have to be getting something. I have to get something.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Preoccupation with stuff. And those kinds of things can be an undercurrent in a person’s life to pull them away from the Lord and to be and to really stand in the way of being a fruitful Christian. Well, as I was thinking about that for myself and for other situations that I’m aware of, it just reminded me of Jesus’ parable of the sower, and he talked about how some of the seed fell among thorns, and the seed was choked by the thorns. Those people were not able to bring forth fruit unto perfection because they were choked by the thorns. 

Okay. Now a little damage control here. I know that there are different people that look at the parable of the sower and say, well, only the good ground were the saved people. Well okay. Be that as it may, there is an application to the idea that a believer’s fruitfulness can be hindered by things that are sapping and sucking the energy out of them

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Away from Christ. So I just thought, okay. Well, as a person that’s done some yard work, I know that when you get weeds in your yard or in your garden, the best thing to do is just go in there and just pull it out by the roots. Just get it completely out of there. And so what I did was went to the Bible and just looked up the roots. 

Pulling things out by pulling things out by the roots. And so I looked, and there aren’t that many verses that talk about root. Some of some of the verses actually just talk about physical roots, but there are a few passages that do talk about roots. There are two in particular in addition to the parable of the sower. And what I found is that going back to the parable of the sower for just a minute, he talked about how the thorns represent the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. That’s what Jesus said that the thorns were whenever he explained it to his disciples there in the book of Matthew 13:20-21 when he was explaining it. So the cares of this life. Well, that brings up another topic. So but looking up the word cares, you know, it brings you to a couple of places. One is Philippians Chapter Four where Paul says, be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, that care there is the same ideas. It’s anxiety. And also in the word care is again there in first Peter 5:7 where Peter said, casting all your care upon him for he careth for you. So that just confirms the idea that the cares of this life are the anxieties. The anxieties.

And that’s noteworthy because those roots, those roots or those thorns were representations of anxieties in this life. And going back to the idea of the person that’s the inveterate controller. Many times that desire to be in control is the result of having been betrayed by someone that was trustworthy. And that betrayal could have happened early on in a person’s life. And that person has had to develop just for the sake of self preservation, has had to develop the perspective that they have to be on guard for themselves. They don’t trust anybody to be on guard for them anymore because they were betrayed, let down, left vulnerable at some time in their life, whether through neglect or through some sort of abuse. And the result of that is that fear of being hurt again causes this behavior of control and being obnoxious and domineering. But that thorn, that weed can really hinder a person’s fruitfulness in the Lord, and that has to be taken out by the root. Also, the deceitfulness of riches that Jesus mentioned there.

You know, first Timothy  6:10 says that the love of money is the root of all evil. And, of course, all evil there, not in the sense of every single evil thing that somebody does, but it’s the root of all kinds of evil. Many many different kinds of evil are the result of materialism, this love of money. So this is just an example of going to the root. The root that Jesus said, the root of the cares of this life, and then going and seeing what cares are anxieties, and the cares of this life and the preoccupation with the deceitfulness of riches. And the other place that I found the word root in the New Testament was Hebrews 12:14-16 that talks about the root of bitterness. If any of you seem to fail the grace of God and have a root of bitterness that troubles you. So there’s you know, just looking at this idea of of roots and specifically to this is a very application oriented

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Study to take a look at myself. Do I have roots of bitterness? Are there and, of course, bitterness is unresolved anger.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Been offended about something, somebody did something that caused me to respond in anger, and rather than forgive that person or resolve it in some way, now I’ve got this undertow of anger in me. So that if I stub my toe or if somebody bumps into me in the hallway, I turn around and I’m just ready to punch their lights out.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: You know, to respond disproportionately to things because there’s a root of bitterness.

Kimberly Faith: Right. You’ve got the thorns growing and they’re scratching everything around you instead of the fruit.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. And another thing about thorns is that if you’ve got a patch of thorns, you don’t really look forward to going in there and getting rid of them but it has to be done.

Kimberly Faith: That was a topical study where you looking at the word root and coming up with, if I’m understanding what you did, did you go to a concordance and find the verses for root? Or tell us how you did that.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes. Went to the concordance and looked up the word root. And the word root appears in the Old Testament, but it’s always in reference to plants. So I was looking for roots that are specifically in regards to people.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And then found those. Just to resolve that quickly, the prescription for getting those roots out is in Colossians Chapter Three. So I’ll just leave it there. Take some verses from Colossians Chapter Three and call me in the morning.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and honestly, the different topics you’ve covered with the word root, the last one being unresolved anger, which typically stems from lack of forgiveness. You know, it’s to me, I tell people because I only told this because it’s my own experience that sometimes getting those roots out, pulling those roots out is a process because there’s so many little side roots in there that keep growing and you have to keep pulling them out. And sometimes you can’t pull them out yourself, you have to ask God to do it for you and really want him to, you know.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  Exactly. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s more on the topic, but since we’re talking about a topical study, don’t want anybody to think that we’re talking about this as a one off. This is something you learn and you apply kind of like you learn to brush your teeth. You do it every morning. Sorry.

Dr. Kenny Francis: No. Exactly. Exactly. And this is what a topical study does. A topical study gives you some insight into what the Bible teaches about something. And then the more you think about it and think about how it applies to your life, the more you realize this is something that I’m going to need to apply from here on in.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: We may have a crisis point of actually coming to grips with this issue. And I guess having the realization that I have this problem.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And I need to resolve this problem between God and myself  in order to grow.

Kimberly Faith:  God’s word is the light and it shines on the problem and reveals it to us. And then we have to decide if we’re going to address it or ignore it or bury it or put it back, know, or feed it.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. And we’ve been talking about a personal application for a doctrinal application. Talking about the issue of, say, eternal security. Is a person once he’s saved, is he saved forever? Is it possible for him to lose his salvation? Well, if I come and my personal background when I was a little kid growing up was in a church that taught you can lose your salvation. So for me, after trusting Christ as my savior, to accept the idea that once you’re saved, you’re saved forever was a major struggle because it went against everything I’d ever been taught. And so that was one of the first topical studies that I had to do as a young Christian. But then after seeing what the Bible actually teaches, I had to learn to put these other things, this unscriptural perspective, put it to rest. But another benefit to it was for me personally, it caused me to go back and look at all those passages that are used to teach that a person can lose his salvation and find out mostly from the context, what is he really talking about here?

Kimberly Faith: Right. Like Hebrews Five.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. I love that because I think that a lot of times we stop our study once we find the answer, but then we don’t prepare ourselves to help other people find the answer by doing the hard work that is required in order to give a satisfactory explanation. And I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on this podcast to show why this is relevant. You know, one of the things that like we’re talking about eternal security.

One of the things that I teach and to make this subject in particular very relevant to people because most people, most religions, man made religions have some version of you’ve got to do something to keep your salvation or earn it. And I always like to tie it into the anxiety mechanism, which we learn in the concepts, because if you are not able to let Jesus save you completely, then you will always have a higher level of anxiety than is completely necessary. And that to me is a very good way to take the concepts and tie it into a topical study that is very relevant and people want to know the answer from God’s word. And especially to the hard verses like Hebrews chapter five we’ve talked about in the last podcast.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Right. So the couple of points that you brought up there, one, is that an understanding of the basic truths of the scripture, basic concepts of the Bible can keep us from going off the deep end, but also give us a framework to be able to give people a good answer. Another kind of a topical study can be in the midst of a verse by verse study. For instance, in the book of Second Kings, we have an account of Elisha.

Elisha was the well, the scripture says that he poured water on the hands of Elijah. So he was Elijah’s assistant. He was Elijah’s understudy, so to speak. And whenever Elijah was taken up into heaven in the chariot, then Elisha was left to carry on the work. But whenever we let me see where we are here in the book of Second Kings.

Okay. Second Kings Chapter Eight or Second Kings 2:23. Second Kings 2: 23. I’m just going to  read this just very short, but you’ll see right away what the topic is. And when and Elisha, as he went up from thence to Bethel, and he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city and mocked him and said unto him, go up thou bald head. Go up thou bald head. And he turned back and looked on them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood and tear 42 children of them. And he went from thence to Mount Carmel and from thence he returned to Samaria.

That’s one of those passages that cause us to ask, what is that about? 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: What is that about? Well, there’s quite a bit behind this account. But we have here in the midst of Elisha’s tremendous ministry of miracles for the nation of Israel, which of course people would have known about.

And these young men, whenever they or these children, whenever they said, go up thou bald head, that’s clearly a reference to Elijah was taken up into heaven. He, Elijah, went up, and now they are taunting Elisha to do the same thing. In other words, they’re telling him, get out of here. Get out of here. We don’t want anything to do with you. But it says he turned back, looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. But it says that there came forth little children and it says there in verse 24, there came two she bears out of the wood and tear 42 children of them. Whenever we think of children, we think you know, I’m thinking of, like, five and six year old kids that came out and haunted him. But as we look at this term little children, Jesus called his disciples little children. And, of course, they were grown men.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Paul called the Galatians in Galatians 4:19 little children. You see what I’m talking about is I’ve got a question about who are these little children? So what I’m going to do is just look in my concordance or one of the benefits of using the Blue Letter Bible is I can type in two words. I can type in little children and look at the references there. And that’s why I see Jesus called his disciples little children. Paul called the Galatians little children in Galatians 4:19. Well, he’s clearly talking to adults there, but he’s talking to adults that are immature. And then taking a look at going ahead and looking at the word that’s translated little children, I find the word is the word naar or yeah. Naar is the way that it would be pronounced, not r. And it’s used to describe Joseph when he was 17 years old.

In Genesis 37:2  and then in Genesis 41:12, it’s used of Joseph again as a young man. In first Kings 3:7, Solomon referred to himself as a little child, a naar, whenever he was asking God to give him wisdom, and he said he was just a little child. Well, he was a young man. The same word is used to apply to Joshua whenever Joshua was Moses’ servant. Well, was a young man at that time. In Judges 9:54, we see the term applied to the armor bearer of Abimelech as a Naar. So what we’re seeing here is the general usage of this word in the scripture is more for young men. In fact, the spies that went into Jericho that were hidden by Rahab the harlot. That’s the word that was used to describe them.

Kimberly Faith: Interesting.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah. So these were not five or six year old little boys.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: But they were young yet they were young adults. So with that scriptural background in mind of the use of this word, what we see is that these that are called little children here were actually immature young men that came out.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So they were little children in contrast to Elisha and Elijah and the men that carried on the business of the nation of Israel. But these little children were immature young men that were coming out. And you know, with that understanding of it, yeah, you can’t. I don’t really see a group of five or six year old little boys saying, go up bald head, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve been around enough junior and senior high guys to hear them taunting someone like that.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  So, also, I think it’s noteworthy. It says that the bears came forth and tear 42 children. That may soften the blow. It says that they tear them. It doesn’t say that they killed them. So these boys may have maybe they were killed or maybe they just had the beating of their life.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: But that’s just an interesting little topical study that you can get into when you’re studying a particular passage to go ahead and study. What does the Bible say about this, and how does the Bible use this word rather than just to impose my twenty first century understanding on what those words mean.

Kimberly Faith: I think that’s really helpful because also, you know, when we talk about in the concepts, you know, the law of sin and death as a result of who God is and we study the nature of God being righteous, just and loving, you know, and so we read this verse in Kings in the context of understanding God’s righteousness, His justice, and His love. I think that we are better able to grasp who God is in that context by using these topical, these word studies and instead of imagining that God is just this vicious being who tears three year olds apart because they’re innocently acting under their nature’s adamant nature, making fun of an older man.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Kim, are you still there?

Kimberly Faith: Yep.

Dr. Kenny Francis: We’re going to have a little editing here. I just lost my picture of you.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, that’s okay. I can still see you.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Okay. Well, I’m okay with that. I just wanted to pass that on to you.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, no worries. We’ll edit that out.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Okay. Starting to get at what I think is going to be a never ending group text. Okay. Let’s continue on then. Also, I’d like to point out a topical study on a person, and the person that we won’t spend a lot of time with, but a man named Ahithophel, who was one of David’s right hand men, in fact, David’s counselor. He was a counselor to David. The reason that I got interested in Ahithophel was that he was one of the people in the scripture who committed suicide. And, of course, that’s the ultimate expression of hopelessness and sadness.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And yet this man, as you read through the Bible, you see that he was one of David’s right hand men, one of his counselors. And you ask, what happened? What happened to him? So as we go through, and I won’t for the sake of time, won’t take us through all the scriptures on this, but what we find I’ll give you some references. What we find is that in First Chronicles 27, Ahithophel is referred to as a counselor to David.

In fact, in Second Samuel Chapter 16, and of course, you can find all of this information by using a concordance and just looking up Ahithophel. But in Second Samuel 16, it says that Ahithophel’s counsel was like the oracle of God. 

Kimberly Faith; Wow.

Dr. Kenny Francis:  It was as if God was speaking whenever Ahithophel spoke. That’s how wise he was. So he’s right up there with Solomon as a counselor to David. But as we investigate, and I think investigate is a term that we need to adopt because in a very real way, in topical studies and in verse by verse studies, we become detectives in a way.

Kimberly Faith: I like that.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Going through and questioning all the witnesses. The witnesses are the different books of the scripture and  the different testimonies that are given in different places. But the interesting thing that we find out is this. Ahithophel had a son whose name was Eliam, and Eliam was one of David’s mighty men in Second Samuel Chapter 23. But Ahithophel’s grandson, his son Eliam, had a daughter, and the daughter of Eliam was Bathsheba.

So Bathsheba, you may have heard of Bathsheba. Bathsheba was actually the granddaughter of one of David’s best friends, Ahithophel. And of course, Bathsheba’s husband’s name was Uriah. So whenever David and Bathsheba engaged in adultery, David was actually committing adultery with Ahithophel’s granddaughter. And then, of course, David conspired to have Bathsheba’s husband, who would have been Ahithophel’s grandson in law, had him killed.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So Ahithophel at this point is very likely carrying an anger and a grudge against David so that the next thing that we learn about Ahithophel was that whenever Absalom, David’s son, rebelled against David and tried to take the kingdom away from David, guess who was on Absalom’s side?

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And you can see why. Yeah.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: We see why.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Right. Talking about bitterness and unresolved anger. So Ahithophel

Kimberly Faith: And some people would say that that’s justified.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, our human nature, aside from the spirit of God says, well, yeah, the guy murdered. And of course, I’m going to be on the side of the person, somebody else, you know.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So we have a very human situation here in the scriptures. A very human situation here with Ahithophel, and so he joined the rebellion against David. David knew that Ahithophel was counseling Absalom, and David knew the great wisdom of Ahithophel. So David sent a spy in there, a double agent, to go and join himself to Absalom. And this spy of David was named Hushai.  And whenever Absalom was meeting with his council to discuss how he could defeat David, Ahithophel gave his council as to what would be the best way to defeat David. But Hushai gave his counsel as the best way to defeat David, and Absalom listened to Hushai instead of Ahithophel. Ahithophel wanted to lead a battle against David and he in which he would personally kill David. But whatever Hushi’s counsel  was chosen then Ahithophel went home. The scripture says he went home, set his house in order, and killed himself. He hung himself. So that’s the lesson of a man who was overcome with bitterness. And, of course, you can’t, that’s the account of that man, but it shows how devastating bitterness can be in a person’s life.

Kimberly Faith: But also to me, a great lesson from that whole story, when you really walk through the whole life of Ahithophel, I  can’t even say the name, is that sometimes our wisdom without God’s will, without incorporating God’s will, our wisdom, it is what seems right to us. You know, like it reminds me of, you know, there’s a way that seemeth right unto man, but the ways thereof are the ways of death. I’m probably paraphrasing it wrong. But without listening to God’s wisdom and His will, you know, he just was operating based on well, this makes sense because David is supposed to be a man after God’s own heart. And I was advising him and look what he did. And therefore I am justified in leading Israel with a better king. We use, quote, what we have God’s will to do to work against God. And I think the worst thing in the world that could happen to a Christian including myself, this is why I desperately know I need God is to part company with God. And to be working against God, it would be like hell. It would be like hell on earth, you know. 

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Especially as a born again person. And so, you can kind of see why that took him down the path of despair, because he had at one point obviously been serving the Lord, and been in tune with the Lord and then completely let his anger take him to a place that ended his own life, which is I can see that. If you have walked with the Lord and felt his peace and his love and his joy and compassion and just his wisdom, and then you don’t have it anymore, that’s horrible. Sorry. That was like

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. Well, this is what you’re doing is just typical of what happens whenever we study a particular topic, whether it’s a topic in the Bible or a particular person in the Bible. That information causes us to just explode in our mind about applications.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Applications. And Ahithophel, of course, is an example to avoid.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: And, of course, the place to avoid it, the place where Ahithophel went off the tracks was his failure to forgive David of what David had done. David had resolved things with the Lord. And Ahithophel needed to let it go because Bathsheba became David’s wife and birthed the son Solomon that was going to become the king of Israel. Ahithophel needed to let it go too. 

Well, that brings us to the conclusions. Whenever we’ve studied a particular topic of the scripture, we need to summarize the teaching that we got from it, and we should place it into our conceptual framework.  I think our study, the studies that we’ve talked about here today, the roots and Ahithophel particularly,  those can go right into the concept of Christian growth, spiritual growth, what the Christian life is all about. We’re supposed to be what God wants us to be and we’re in the position to be ambassadors for Christ. We cannot harbor bitterness. We have to be people of forgiveness. And, of course, the Lord taught that many times in the scripture. And, of course, now we can look into going into a topical study on forgiveness.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Forgiveness of one person to another. And, of course, the Lord’s parable of the man who owed the tremendous debt and was forgiven and then went out and got his fellow servant and choked him demanding that he pay him.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Dr. Kenny Francis: So there is that. But we as believers in Christ, representatives of Christ, have to be people of forgiveness because we can’t be a good representative of Christ. So we can see that putting these things into our conceptual framework gives us a place to put them in our mind and orientation as to where does this fit in my life rather than just being a random lesson out there.

Kimberly Faith: Right. To me, we have to find a place. Doctor Caroline Leaf is a, she teaches, she’s a Christian, she teaches how to retrain your brain and cut new grooves. And that’s so important because if you just randomly study things, but you never figure out what part of the transformation they’re supposed to play in your life, then you forget it.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Right. That’s right. Yep. So we need to see how it applies to me and our conceptual framework gives us an orientation for that. So making the applications and then just keep on learning and keep on adjusting because we need to be lifelong learners.

Kimberly Faith: Right. I think just to kind of summarize this a little bit in my mind. I was having a concept study by Zoom today at lunchtime with a lady in Dallas and we was talking about, she wanted to have a study that she could teach her daughters this summer. And I said, well, I said, how about this concept study? You know, and she goes, oh, well, don’t really I don’t know. And I was like, No, I said, The best way to learn is to have to teach. And what better time for you to teach this than as you’re learning it and you’ve got a resource to ask when you get stuck, And just this idea of being a lifelong learner is best accomplished when you start teaching because I remember when I used to coach volleyball and I was still playing competitively and this was in my 40s and I became so much better of a player because I had to go through the mechanics with girls who’d never taken approach. They’d never learned to block. They’d never learned to get down and pass the ball correctly and it improved my form. 

And so, I just really appreciate you taking the time to walk through the mechanics of how you studied the Bible. It’s been very helpful to me and I’m definitely going to steal this outline with your permission.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Yes, Yes. Go please do. May the Lord bless you in using it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And I’m probably going to add some of the specifics to it that you have mentioned in these three podcasts, I may just add it to my concept study. Who knows?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Sure. I don’t have a patent pending on it or anything.

Kimberly Faith: Okay. All right. Well, just wrapping up because I know that you need to go and is there anything else that you would like to just any final thoughts you’d like to leave with our listeners on how you sow the Bible and or anything related to that?

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, the main thought that I would like to leave with everybody is just the idea that the Lord wants to bless us in His word, and He wants to give us understanding, He wants to give us encouragement. I think of First Corinthians 14 that talks about how prophecy is beneficial for exhortation, edification, and comfort. And the Lord wants to give us that exhortation, that encouragement, the edification, the building up and growing in our knowledge and understanding and comfort, assurance about our relationship with the Lord and assurance about God’s care and God’s plans for us. And we can grow in those things by reading his word, by consistently reading his word, and then knowing how to dig in and learn what he’s talking about verse by verse or topically. It’s really worth it. It transforms our life and draws us closer to Him.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. When you were talking, I was thinking about my own experience with God’s Word. I think about the verse in Psalms, it says, As a deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs after you and I’m paraphrasing. And Jesus called himself the living water. And or did he call himself living water or am I imagining that? Didn’t he say that to the woman at the well?

Dr. Kenny Francis:  Right. Told the woman at the well that he would give her living water. The living water that springs up into everlasting life.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. And I think about, you know, Jesus being the word and being the water and how, you know, when I’ve hiked in the desert and been so thirsty, when God plants that desire in us through salvation of wanting more of Him, then it’s almost like it becomes our greatest addiction.  We don’t want to live without it. We understand it as our greatest, Jesus as our greatest desire and His word is love letter,  or his love letter to us and what quenches our thirst. Brother Kenny, I just appreciate you being our guest and thank you for all your wisdom and may the Lord bless you.

Dr. Kenny Francis: Well, thank you very much. It’s been very enjoyable to be here and to share some things with you that I hope the Lord will use to be a blessing to people.

Kimberly Faith: Alright. Everyone, have a great week.

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.