Dale Partridge - Bible Blueprint - Block Diagram of Ephesians 4_1-7

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this edition of the Bible Blueprint. My name is Dale Partridge, and we are going to be breaking down in a block diagram Ephesians 4, 1 through 7.

00:00:10.620 A block diagram is a method of scriptural observation that allows you to extract the grammatical structure in the author's original meaning through looking at the grammar and the syntax of the words that were used to convey what the author is saying.

00:00:33.320 And so it's a really great tool. It still isn't a silver bullet in the sense of landing at your interpretation, but it is a great process for biblical study and very helpful for preventing yourself from projecting your own emotional or intellectual desires onto the text

00:01:01.460 and allowing the text to really speak for itself.

00:01:05.840 And so always what I do before I start is I put every section of every phrase on its own line

00:01:15.940 broken up by the punctuation.

00:01:19.180 This is a little bit of a jump start to get us closer to our diagram.

00:01:23.900 So I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you.

00:01:29.040 Okay, let's go over here down to verse 2.

00:01:32.880 And anytime there's a comma or a period, we just want to send it to the next line.

00:01:39.500 And we do want to keep all of our verse numbers in there.

00:01:43.520 It's very helpful to have our verse numbers in there.

00:01:48.220 I'm going to actually break that end dash at the beginning of it.

00:01:53.820 actually no I'm not going to do it for that one because it's the end of a verse and so you get

00:02:00.240 all these punctuation marks here that are very helpful for breaking the text down so you can see

00:02:07.920 it again in blocks that allows for a more accurate observation and ultimately a better interpretation

00:02:15.620 and so let's look at our main clause we want to identify our main clause and we're going to

00:02:22.560 highlight that in yellow and the main clauses stay on the left and all of the developing clauses or

00:02:28.900 the modifying phrases or prepositional phrases, as you will see, will go under the words that

00:02:37.840 they are modifying. And so I will place the words of the prepositional phrase under the word it's

00:02:44.360 modifying. You're going to see that here just in a second, but I want to identify first our main

00:02:48.760 clause. So if we look here in verse 1, it says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to

00:02:58.780 walk. Okay, so this is a little bit of a tricky spot here. I'm going to put this back on this

00:03:04.540 line. Our main clause is basically has this modifier in the middle of it. So I'm going to

00:03:14.180 put parentheses around it because the main clause really is I urge you and that's going to be our

00:03:25.220 main our main clause I'm actually going to make that a little cleaner I urge you and we know a

00:03:30.820 main clause is what it is a subject a verb and its object and so we have I is Paul he's the

00:03:44.120 subject. Urge is the verb, and you is the direct object. So I urge you. And we're going to now

00:03:53.900 figure out what to do next. Is I urge you to what? Well, we know that we have to as a preposition.

00:04:02.880 So I urge you to walk. How are we to walk? In a manner worthy. Worthy of what? Worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

00:04:21.800 And you could possibly put this, the calling of the calling to which you have been called.

00:04:32.880 you can do that. I urge you to walk. That's how we're to walk. In a manner worthy.

00:04:43.600 That's how we're walking, I should say. Worthy of what? The calling to which you have been

00:04:49.040 called. Verse two, with all humility and gentleness. And so I believe he's saying,

00:04:58.620 I urge you to walk also, in a sense, with all humility and gentleness.

00:05:06.900 In other words, this whole section here is really just a modifier of to walk.

00:05:15.940 I urge you to walk.

00:05:17.780 How? In a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

00:05:21.120 I also urge you to walk with all humility.

00:05:25.320 and so next here we got to figure out our break this is and is a coordinating conjunction this

00:05:33.440 means that it's a um and but or or nor are coordinating conjunctions and they link equal

00:05:44.580 parts of a sentence together so we know that with all humility and gentleness uh are equal

00:05:53.340 They're not hierarchical. They're not a list that's going downward. They're chronological,

00:06:00.800 but they're not higher or lower in value. They're linking equal parts. And so I urge you to walk

00:06:07.320 in a manner worthy. I urge you to walk with all humility and, and I'm going to make sure we have

00:06:17.700 that. And gentleness. Now, I urge you to walk gentleness. Well, I think it's implied

00:06:24.880 here is with all. And I'm putting everything that I type in there in brackets so I know that it's

00:06:37.020 not the scripture and it's my own notes here. Because he says, I urge you to walk with all

00:06:44.560 humility here with all humility with all humility and gentleness i think he's saying with all

00:06:50.620 humility and with all gentleness but he wouldn't say that because it would be redundant but i think

00:06:55.640 the context and the grammar shows that it's saying with all humility and with all gentleness

00:07:00.640 and so i'm putting that there i urge you to walk uh you would think that it would say i'd urge you

00:07:07.040 to walk with patience but really with patience is different it's actually modifying with all

00:07:12.720 humility and gentleness with patience. It's kind of showing that we need to walk in humility and

00:07:20.940 all humility and all gentleness, and we need to walk that way with patience. The next thing is,

00:07:29.180 I urge you to walk bearing with one another. How? In love, because we know we have a preposition,

00:07:39.640 in. You want to know a preposition is just a preposition and the object of the preposition.

00:07:47.200 And so you're going to see prepositional phrases always start with the preposition.

00:07:51.580 For example, of is always a preposition, but we have many other prepositions like in and by

00:08:00.280 and through and to and toward and before and after. A lot of directional

00:08:07.940 words that are prepositional phrases that start off prepositional phrases.

00:08:13.740 So we have here in verse 3, I urge you to walk eager to maintain the unity.

00:08:25.960 So we want eager to maintain the unity.

00:08:30.080 The unity of what?

00:08:31.380 The unity of the spirit.

00:08:35.320 In, that's our preposition, right?

00:08:37.360 Oops.

00:08:37.940 prepositional phrase, in the bond of peace.

00:08:42.820 Now, some people would want to maybe put a line break here

00:08:45.320 because you have of peace, the bond of peace.

00:08:48.580 But this is what's called a noun clause.

00:08:50.880 It's when a group of words, a phrase, really is acting like one thing.

00:08:58.380 For example, the king of kings or the word of God.

00:09:02.420 You don't go the word, the word of who? Of God.

00:09:05.800 And you could technically do that, but the reality is that it's implied as one thing.

00:09:11.720 And it is here, is of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

00:09:17.560 Now, what we're seeing here is a little bit of structure, and we'll go back through here in a bit,

00:09:23.920 and we'll mark these things out and get a chance to see the clauses and structure here.

00:09:29.660 But let's get through verse 4 here.

00:09:32.460 And so we have, there is one body and one spirit.

00:09:37.660 Now, this is a little bit harder to find the main clause because you're trying to figure out where's your subject?

00:09:43.140 Where's your subject? Where's your verb?

00:09:46.680 And where is your object?

00:09:50.980 And you go, there is one body.

00:09:52.880 Well, what's the subject? Is there a subject?

00:09:56.140 Well, there is operating as a pronoun.

00:09:58.940 And it's very rare that this happens, but there is, for example, if you see there is a spider, it's introducing the spider.

00:10:09.440 So it's operating as there.

00:10:12.040 What's there?

00:10:13.040 The spider.

00:10:14.000 And so there is operating here in this instance as the pronoun.

00:10:19.100 And so there is one is a state of being verb, right?

00:10:26.900 So we have action verbs and state of being verbs, and is is a state of being verb.

00:10:32.020 So there is one.

00:10:35.600 Well, one what?

00:10:36.900 Well, there is one body, and there is and one, oops, don't want to switch to Greek right now, and one spirit.

00:10:55.080 Okay, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

00:11:05.880 Now, this is a little bit of a tricky spot here, because you have to make sure the sentence works.

00:11:11.860 Can you put it here? Can you go, there is one, just as you were called to one hope.

00:11:16.000 I think that this is modifying this line here, maybe.

00:11:24.680 There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called, how are we called, to the one hope that belongs to your call.

00:11:41.380 to the one hope that belongs to your call.

00:11:50.760 And then you get back.

00:11:52.140 So this is kind of like a parenthetical sentence here,

00:11:55.380 or structure, right?

00:11:56.480 It's kind of like there is one body and one spirit,

00:11:58.880 and then he modifies that and gives some more information.

00:12:02.700 And then he gets back to his structure here,

00:12:05.040 and he goes, there's one body and one spirit,

00:12:07.500 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,

00:12:09.060 one God and Father over all.

00:12:10.300 And so we got to see that, that that's what Paul is doing here.

00:12:15.240 So we go, we can put this here.

00:12:17.760 There is one body and one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, God and Father.

00:12:38.560 Right. So we've got another coordinating. Conjunction here, God and father.

00:12:48.360 Father of who of all we're going to want to identify the pronoun all what type of pronoun that is and what the antecedent is.

00:12:59.280 OK. And who is over all who's overall? Well, it's not, you know, the baptism.

00:13:07.780 It's, well, it's God and it's the Father who is over all, who is, so I keep going to Greek there.

00:13:20.000 Hopefully that's, there we go, who is over, that's a preposition, all, and through, that's a preposition, all, and in, all.

00:13:47.120 so we get some unique structure here so let's get back to breaking down the text a little bit more

00:13:53.860 of again we're not interpreting as much but we're trying to draw connections see what's being said

00:13:58.280 here preparing our exegetical outline so we can make a proper interpretation so

00:14:02.940 i'm going to go back down here and we go well there is one so this is our

00:14:08.300 our other main clause here. And main clauses I like to do in yellow. And then I like to do,

00:14:17.400 let's see here. We have other colors here, I guess we can add. I like to do green for my

00:14:26.180 developing clauses. And so let's see what other developing clauses we have here.

00:14:30.840 And we'll try to identify them. There's really a handful of developing clauses. There are purpose

00:14:36.300 clauses, which begin with the words, in order that, that, or so that. Contrast clauses that

00:14:44.380 begin with, but, yet, nevertheless. Explanatory clauses that begin with for, or you see, or that

00:14:51.420 is, or namely. Conditional clauses that come with if, or unless. Noun clauses, which we talked a

00:14:59.740 little bit about. They're harder to identify. We also know of sequential clauses, which is just

00:15:05.080 really showing a span of time or then now this happened and then that happened kind of structure

00:15:10.780 a result clause which is therefore as result so thus so that can also be that as well comparison

00:15:18.840 clauses as even as just as and so you start to see the connections there causal clauses right

00:15:26.620 as because, for, or since. And then just a couple more. Temporal clause is when, while, after, then,

00:15:35.540 since, before. Temporal has to do with time. So you want to identify those. A relative clause is who,

00:15:40.720 whom, which, that. It's a relative clause. It's talking about a person like that relative that

00:15:47.120 you don't like or that you need to pray for. Concessive clause is although, though, even though

00:15:55.920 it's introducing something unique. And so I know these sounds like a lot, but you will learn them

00:16:03.160 if you keep watching these block diagrams. And eventually I'm going to create a PDF with all

00:16:08.560 those listed out for you guys here. But so let's go through it. So I, therefore, a prisoner of the

00:16:15.900 Lord or prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have

00:16:21.900 been called with all humility and all gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love

00:16:30.420 eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace there is one body and one spirit

00:16:37.180 just as okay so this is this is a clause this is a um this is a comparison clause

00:16:47.460 likely a comparison clause, just as you were called. It's kind of showing that there's a

00:16:54.420 relationship, is that there's one body and one spirit in the same way that you were called to

00:17:00.900 one hope that belongs to your call. And so that's a harder one to find, but yeah, just as is a clause

00:17:08.660 to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father

00:17:15.900 of all who, right? So we got a, is over all and through all and in all. So let's just read it

00:17:24.300 one more time just so we can make sure we're not missing any here. I urge you to walk in a manner

00:17:31.980 worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness,

00:17:41.680 with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the

00:17:49.000 bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that

00:17:55.840 belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over

00:18:03.820 all and through all and in all. Okay. I don't see any blaring and glaring, um, uh, subordinating

00:18:15.220 developing clauses that I'm missing here maybe, um, which is actually pretty rare. Usually have

00:18:21.680 a few of them in there. However, I do see lots of antecedents. And so I'm going to grab my pink

00:18:28.080 and i'm going to mark my antecedents so um you know we know i so i therefore

00:18:35.140 prisoner for the lord we know who the lord is to walk in a manner worthy of the calling

00:18:40.180 to which you you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing

00:18:49.300 with one another we want to know who the one another is um you know is who are we talking

00:18:58.300 about here right we know that that i i mean i know because i've studied is this is the audience

00:19:02.980 is christians it's the elect it's um gentiles primarily and some jews but a variety of ethnic

00:19:11.980 diversity in the Gentiles. In love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit, right? In the

00:19:20.280 bond of peace, there's one body and one Spirit, just as you were called, okay? This is, again,

00:19:28.480 another, we want to find out who's the you. We're called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

00:19:34.860 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

00:19:47.900 Okay, the all here we know is not all people because we do know that it says right here, he's God and Father of all.

00:20:02.880 Well, the Bible specifically teaches that you are a child of God if you've been born again into his family, meaning that if you haven't been born again, Ephesians, I believe it's chapter two, says that you are a child of wrath.

00:20:22.200 Jesus talks about in John that you do your works, you do your father's works, which is the devil.

00:20:30.260 And so God is not the father of all.

00:20:34.000 It's a misconception in the church today.

00:20:36.260 God is, everybody's made in God's image, but we are not all God's children.

00:20:42.740 No, the only ones that are God's children who have been born again into his family.

00:20:48.440 The elect is who he is talking to here when he says all.

00:20:53.020 Okay, let's look at some other observations that I think are really important here.

00:20:59.080 I'm going to take, let's see here.

00:21:02.620 I'm going to grab this here.

00:21:05.880 I wish I could do, oh, I can grab a little bit thicker of a line here, huh?

00:21:09.760 And I'm going to make some notes in, let's make some notes in blue, I guess.

00:21:17.880 So I want to note out, so we have to walk, okay?

00:21:20.720 So we're going to walk, that's a little bit thick, huh, guys?

00:21:24.260 I'm going to go here, okay.

00:21:26.480 So we are to walk in a manner worthy.

00:21:30.620 So we have a handful of things here that are really important to note.

00:21:34.040 We have one, two, three, four, five.

00:21:42.080 So he's urging us, and that word urge actually in the Greek, I want to study that more.

00:21:48.800 I know that it can mean exhort, or I'm going to just do word study.

00:22:01.380 It can mean beseech, exhort.

00:22:04.960 And so urge is a little soft to translate there.

00:22:09.720 But he's given us five things.

00:22:11.400 I urge you to walk in a manner worthy, with all humility, with all gentleness, bearing with one another, and I urge you to walk eager to maintain unity.

00:22:28.440 So this is going to be a huge structure for a sermon or a Bible study.

00:22:34.680 Paul is calling you, you can make this one sermon right here and just go, well, you know,

00:22:42.840 we want to look at the five ways that Paul wants us to walk so that we can maintain unity

00:22:51.520 of the spirit and the bond of peace. There's your, there's your sermon structure,

00:22:56.460 your exegetical outline. But since we're doing both sections here, let's look at what's going

00:23:03.800 on down here. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called. And so I think about

00:23:12.780 these things here and I'm going, I want to count how many one things there are, right? So there's

00:23:17.880 one body. I should actually just label them in numbers. Oops. Those are there still. So we got

00:23:26.700 We got one body, one spirit.

00:23:32.860 We also got over here one hope.

00:23:37.460 And so this will be number three, number four, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God.

00:23:47.460 Oh, that's nice, right? Seven.

00:23:49.500 And so we have seven, what are these called?

00:23:52.600 These are, I'm going to call them bonds of union.

00:23:59.780 Bonds of union.

00:24:04.140 Okay, so we have seven bonds of union.

00:24:08.580 And then we have seven ways, or we have five ways to walk.

00:24:14.620 Right, so we have five ways to walk.

00:24:18.800 okay and so uh interestingly when i look at this i want to show that what i'm seeing here in my

00:24:30.920 observation this this little section here is uh one god and father right here

00:24:41.240 who is of all who is over all who is through all and in all i think of a saturation right i almost

00:24:54.960 think of a weaving and interweaving or interwoven right interwoven which is a basically unity

00:25:04.200 he's showing that we are we are unified and united uh and i think this is really what's

00:25:14.560 getting to the heart of this whole lesson here is that i think paul is showing if i go into red

00:25:21.220 and i go i think this section is really showing um that we we are

00:25:33.440 you unified it we are united and so i just go

00:25:38.380 united i'm equal like fact we are united we there is one body and one spirit just as you

00:25:51.020 were called to one hope that belongs to your call one lord one faith one baptism one god

00:25:56.240 and father of all who is over uh father of all who is over all and through all and in all

00:26:00.660 of us that are Christians, that are born again.

00:26:03.820 So it's not telling us that we need to go get ourselves united.

00:26:10.060 I think that it's actually saying you are united.

00:26:16.940 Therefore, what you get right here, walk as you're united.

00:26:24.580 And so you have two sections here, which I think if we had to basically create a statement that goes, what is the meaning?

00:26:35.020 What's the meaning?

00:26:37.520 If we want the meaning, I would say it's something like.

00:26:42.580 walk as one because you are one.

00:27:03.220 And so we have this extraction of, okay, I see what you're saying here, Paul.

00:27:09.300 we are unified so unified at seven points um we are one by seven seven points

00:27:20.200 right and we are to walk as one with five points um and so we can create a message

00:27:31.680 or a structure that's explaining how we can walk this way

00:27:36.600 because we are this way.

00:27:40.000 And I think you can create a really interesting narrative.

00:27:42.680 Now, you can hear the teaching of this passage of Scripture

00:27:48.880 on the Real Christianity podcast.

00:27:51.260 This is Ephesians Bible study number five.

00:27:55.740 And I'm going to teach on this passage of Scripture

00:27:59.680 and break down the text there.

00:28:01.680 But this is the block diagram of how I got there.

00:28:07.780 And so there's still much more to look at.

00:28:10.700 You can still look at a lot of different things

00:28:13.260 that you might want to set aside and go,

00:28:16.940 okay, yeah, I want to know,

00:28:19.020 is this one faith as in like a creed

00:28:22.680 or is this like one faith as in like a gift?

00:28:26.480 Like we all have the same gift of faith

00:28:28.220 or do we all have the same confession of faith?

00:28:31.240 What does that mean there?

00:28:33.760 I think of Galatians.

00:28:35.600 We're all baptized into one body.

00:28:37.360 There's neither Jew nor Greek, right?

00:28:39.540 So you can kind of put some notes as you kind of,

00:28:43.120 how about I learn how to write?

00:28:45.600 You can put some notes there.

00:28:47.600 It'll help you remember that.

00:28:51.820 One body and one spirit, just as you were called,

00:28:55.080 to one hope that belongs to your call.

00:28:56.720 So I'm just going through and I'm looking at this.

00:28:59.060 What's the bond of peace?

00:29:00.520 I kind of want to know that.

00:29:01.680 Like, what's the bond of peace?

00:29:04.360 Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit.

00:29:06.680 So I think about this verb here, you know, eager, eager to maintain.

00:29:13.220 And then bearing, this participle, right?

00:29:16.620 Bearing with one another.

00:29:18.800 I want to know what that means.

00:29:20.160 I think it's forbearance, enduring, but bearing with one another.

00:29:26.720 And that's the thing.

00:29:28.300 I want to understand what all humility and all gentleness means here.

00:29:33.700 I think those are really helpful.

00:29:36.220 And in a manner, worthy.

00:29:39.020 Okay, what is worthy?

00:29:40.840 And this is, I think, a callback to the magnificence.

00:29:46.680 So you think about, you know, the magnif, there we go.

00:29:52.920 I'll just put that, of our redemption, our redemption.

00:30:05.660 I want to see, I think that we're, he wants us to see something that's,

00:30:12.040 he wants us to walk in a manner worthy that's equal to,

00:30:16.100 I'll even put that, equal to the magnificence of our redemption.

00:30:21.380 It's worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

00:30:26.460 This is also, I'm going to say, past tense.

00:30:29.060 So I'll put that as PT.

00:30:31.620 And so these are just a handful.

00:30:33.320 A prisoner of the Lord, we know this.

00:30:34.780 Paul is in prison when he writes the book of Ephesians.

00:30:37.940 So he's talking about his location.

00:30:42.000 And so there's just observations that you can make of the text.

00:30:45.360 And you could start to really develop your system and setup here.

00:30:49.220 So hopefully this was helpful for this block diagram for you guys.

00:30:52.720 Again, you can listen to this episode of the Real Christianity podcast.

00:30:55.320 You can listen to that on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or really anywhere podcasts can be listened to.

00:30:59.960 This is episode on Ephesians Bible study number five.

00:31:03.780 Hopefully this was edifying for you and you're learning more and more about scriptural observation.

00:31:07.960 I'm going to try to make these episodes a little bit more easy to understand

00:31:11.440 and offer you guys some of those clausal layouts and PDFs as we continue on here.

00:31:15.180 but you can always find these again at relearn.org

00:31:18.460 is another spot you can always find our podcast

00:31:20.220 or find any information to support our ministry

00:31:22.080 on that note my name is Dale Partridge

00:31:24.280 this is the Bible Blueprint

00:31:25.740 and we'll see you next time

Dale Partridge - January 12, 2022

Bible Blueprint - Block Diagram of Ephesians 4_1-7

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