Dr. James Rosscup · The Master's Seminary · 48 minutes
Lecture by Dr. James Rosscup, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This course begins inside a passage, not a textbook. Dr. Rosscup has assigned his class thirty five written observations on a single verse, Ephesians 5:18, and in this session he shows them how by working Philippians 4:1 in front of them: what the verse says, what it does not say, and the questions worth asking. Listen for how one small observation keeps opening into the whole letter.
The course's first paper asks for thirty five observations on Ephesians 5:18, the command not to be drunk with wine but to be filled with the Spirit. Rosscup grants that at first it will feel impossible, and tells of students who thought the assignment unfair until, praying and pressing on, they found they could do it. The method is prayer, hard study, and staying at it, trusting God's Spirit to help you see more than you have seen.
Every observation falls into one of three columns. First, what is said: only what can be pointed to in the text, verified, no reading in. Second, what is not said: people constantly read things into passages, and the interpreter who notices what a text does not say can head the flock off from error. Third, key interpretive questions: the terms, phrases, and connections you do not yet understand, written down for further study. Asking questions about the decisive things, not the peripheral ones, is what sharpens an interpreter.
Rosscup reads Philippians 4:1, a statement that stands on its own in the English: the beloved brethren he longs to see, his joy and crown, called to stand firm in the Lord. The rest of the hour simply observes this one verse, modeling the very process the students must do on Ephesians 5:18, and refusing to isolate the verse from its context before and after.
The verse opens with therefore, which appears to build on some preceding thought, and Rosscup deliberately says appears: cautious words give the text a fighting chance to say what it really says. The connection could be to 3:20 and 21, the citizenship in heaven and the coming Savior who will transform our bodies; or to 3:17 through 21, the contrast of the ungodly and the godly; or to all of chapter 3; or back through the therefore of 2:1 into chapter 1. His own conviction, held loosely, is that it gathers up the whole epistle to that point. The observation itself keeps issuing one summons: learn the context, learn the context, learn the context.
It seems obvious that Paul wrote 4:1, but Rosscup demands proof from the text: Philippians 1:1 names Paul, and an unbroken chain of personal pronouns runs from there through the letter, showing no new writer has stepped in. The habit at stake is being able to point to something in Scripture itself for every claim, because sincere people defend false doctrines with proof texts, and only the interpreter who can show the text in context can answer them.
At least six things in the one verse describe the readers' relationship to Paul: brethren, beloved, longed for, his joy, his crown, and beloved again. The word beloved opens the verse and closes it. Reading back finds the same warmth in 1:7, where Paul says he has them in his heart, so the observation grows into the letter's larger picture, the way puzzle pieces find their places.
Once you notice beloved repeated within one verse, ask whether the letter repeats elsewhere. It does: rejoice in the Lord, again I say rejoice in 4:4, and a double expression of joy in both 2:17 and 2:18. One observed repetition invites rereading the whole letter, and every rereading floods more of the picture into the notes and, eventually, the sermon.
Three examples. The verse does not associate Timothy with Paul as 1:1 does; here Paul speaks in his own individual relationship to them. It does not say sisters, yet the prepared interpreter can show that brethren embraces the women as well as the men, rather than being caught flat by the question. And the word crown stands alone, without the descriptions found elsewhere: the crown of rejoicing, the incorruptible crown, the crown of life, the crown of glory. Rosscup takes those not as five different crowns for five kinds of Christians but as five descriptions of one many splendored reward, an interpretive decision the observations must settle.
The unanswered questions go in the third column: could brethren include women; how can a group of believers be one man's crown, and could the same Philippians be Timothy's crown too; what past history made these people Paul's beloved? That last question sends the student to Acts 16, where Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer's household were converted at Philippi, background that keeps preaching from happening in a vacuum.
The goal of all this observing is to know far more about a passage than thirty or forty minutes can hold: reservoir preaching, overflow preaching, rivers of living water as in John 7. Rosscup closes with his own story as a new seminarian from a secular university, telling Professor Howard Hendricks that everything was new to him, and being told that was good, and to hope it never becomes old. Observation supplies the raw material; interpretation, correlation with other passages, and application to shoe leather life follow from it.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all ten are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What is the class's first written assignment?
2. What belongs in the first observation column, what is said?
3. Why does the lecture insist on noticing what a passage does not say?
4. Why does Rosscup use cautious words like appears and possibly in early observations?
5. What is Rosscup's own conviction about how far back the therefore of Philippians 4:1 reaches?
6. How would you prove from the text that Paul wrote Philippians 4:1?
7. What does the repetition of beloved in 4:1 invite the interpreter to do?
8. How does the lecture handle the five different crown descriptions in the New Testament?
9. Where does the question about the Philippians being Paul's beloved send the student?
10. What is reservoir preaching?
All ten correct. Lecture 1 is complete.
Rosscup's students thought thirty five observations on one verse was impossible until they tried it. Pick one verse from Sunday's sermon text and see how many honest observations your group can make before you run dry.
The lecture warns that sincere people defend false doctrine with proof texts. When has knowing the context of a verse changed what you thought it meant?
What is the difference between a sermon with a dab of the word mingled in and reservoir preaching that overflows? What would it take for your own study to become the second kind?
Paul's charge in Philippians 4:1: my beloved brothers, whom I long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord. A whole letter of hope stands under that one therefore.
The lecture's own trail: work the exercise yourself by writing your own observations on Ephesians 5:18 in three columns, read the two pages of worked examples on John 15:2 that Rosscup assigns his class, and read Acts 16 for the story behind Paul's love for Philippi. Where Greek is beyond you, he commends checking several good Greek commentaries firsthand.