back to index2018-01-09: Wed Bible Study Lesson 1
00:00:00.000 |
The goal of this Bible study is to get you to study it and to kind of guide you through. 00:00:12.680 |
So hopefully my guidance is going to give you some direction as to where the text is 00:00:17.120 |
going, what to highlight, what to point, what are some hermeneutical principles as we are 00:00:25.800 |
The majority of it is going to be you doing your homework and coming. 00:00:30.920 |
So just to kind of give you a heads up, and I'm going to tell you this again next week, 00:00:34.840 |
when you come next week, you're going to start with your small group. 00:00:39.120 |
You're going to get into your small group and you're going to start with your small 00:00:42.560 |
So if you're in a habit of coming 10, 15 minutes late, you're going to miss your small group 00:00:47.240 |
If you can't come for whatever the reason, let your small group leaders know ahead of 00:00:50.960 |
time so that they'll know that you're getting off work late and you're always going to be 00:00:56.520 |
here at 7.15 or however that's going to work. 00:00:59.480 |
But if you're just kind of coming in, strolling in late because you grabbed dinner and you 00:01:02.840 |
went to go get some boba or something and you're always coming 10, 15 minutes late, 00:01:07.140 |
the Bible study format is going to be in such a way where you're going to miss a good chunk 00:01:11.400 |
of what the Bible study is if you miss that part of it. 00:01:16.920 |
I don't mean to scare all of you, but again, the purpose of this Bible study is to get 00:01:21.600 |
you to kind of know what it is that you signed up for. 00:01:26.000 |
So today's Bible study, I'm just going to give you an overview. 00:01:35.600 |
And then I'm going to have you guys get into your groups and do some study on your own. 00:01:41.080 |
Let me pray first and then we'll jump right in. 00:01:42.080 |
Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the blessing that we have in you. 00:01:50.640 |
We thank you for your living word that causes us to see you, to understand your heart. 00:01:57.720 |
We pray, Father God, that your thoughts, your intentions, your will, all of it, Lord, would 00:02:08.000 |
And I know that many of us may come into this room already distracted because of work and 00:02:12.760 |
various things that are going on in our lives. 00:02:15.800 |
I pray that our refreshment may be found in your word, that it would be an opportunity 00:02:21.680 |
for us to recalibrate our thoughts and priorities according to your word. 00:02:26.360 |
We pray for your blessing and your Holy Spirit's guidance. 00:02:51.640 |
So all of this is on your, you know, the two-page outline that you have. 00:02:55.280 |
That's all on there so you don't need to take any notes. 00:02:57.480 |
I wanted you to have this because you're going to have to use this for your study. 00:03:01.400 |
So hold on to this, but I'm going to go over it real quick. 00:03:05.080 |
First of all, I'm going to introduce you to the purpose of the class. 00:03:21.280 |
It's to learn how to study the Bible on your own without having to depend on others to 00:03:27.440 |
So unlike the other Bible studies and Sunday messages, the purpose of this is to get you 00:03:37.280 |
Again, I forgot the exact numbers, but you know, there's listening, there's reading, 00:03:55.440 |
Anyway, so the listening portion of it, if the only intake of God's word is listening, 00:04:03.740 |
the retention of God's word is probably less than 3%. 00:04:07.960 |
And then as time goes by, whether it's a month or two months, it's less and less. 00:04:13.240 |
As much as so many of you said that Leviticus was eye-opening, if all you remember from 00:04:19.240 |
that is from what you heard, give it about six months and it's going to be very, very 00:04:26.840 |
And so the goal of this is to get you into the word of God so that you don't say, "You 00:04:32.080 |
The church hasn't been teaching me the word of God." 00:04:34.160 |
You shouldn't be starving to death because you haven't heard God's word in a while. 00:04:40.480 |
So you know the saying, "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish 00:04:44.920 |
and get him off your back to stop begging other people for food." 00:04:52.020 |
So that's our goal, is to get you off my back. 00:04:55.100 |
So B, to handle the word of God carefully and accurately. 00:05:02.360 |
I'm not going to read that now, but basically Paul says to teach the word of God, to watch 00:05:09.660 |
And so we want to make sure that what we understand of God's word is not dependent upon the culture 00:05:16.180 |
So if you're born in a Baptist church, you become a Baptist. 00:05:19.540 |
If you happen to go to a Presbyterian church, you're a Presbyterian. 00:05:23.480 |
You shouldn't make doctrinal convictions based upon your environment and who you like and 00:05:30.660 |
It should be based upon what you see in God's word. 00:05:34.720 |
And so you have to be able to handle the word of God and even at times to disagree with me. 00:05:41.020 |
If you never disagree with anything that I've ever said, you're probably not studying the 00:05:50.820 |
So if you disagree with anything I've ever said and you've been here more than two, three 00:05:55.060 |
years, you're probably not thinking critically. 00:06:07.760 |
The word of God has to be understood in this order. 00:06:12.400 |
When you begin to gain theology and you got this order mixed up. 00:06:19.040 |
The four things, and I mentioned this, and I'm going to mention this over and over and 00:06:26.480 |
Right understanding of the Bible first has to come from exegesis. 00:06:35.580 |
It has to come from careful analysis from verse by verse by verse. 00:06:40.200 |
If you understand your Christian life simply based upon topics. 00:06:45.600 |
A pastor is giving a topic about love, a topic about generosity, a topic about being good, 00:06:54.600 |
You would never know because you don't know if that's coming from that man's personal 00:07:00.640 |
You can learn topically all your life and never really understand what God's word says. 00:07:05.200 |
You're going to be absolutely dependent upon what that person says. 00:07:11.280 |
Whatever doctrinal statement you come from, "Well, where did you get it?" 00:07:13.760 |
"Well, I happened to grow up in a Baptist church." 00:07:26.000 |
Your whole doctrinal position falls apart because you like that guy and then now you 00:07:33.000 |
So your convictions has to come from what you see in Scripture. 00:07:38.040 |
You see in Scripture, not what I see in Scripture, not what we collectively see, what do you 00:07:43.240 |
So when Jesus asks you, "Who do you say I am?" 00:07:49.080 |
You can't be dependent upon the leaders to answer the questions for you. 00:07:52.760 |
If a Jehovah's Witness comes into this church and challenges you of the identity of Jesus 00:07:59.520 |
Christ and you've been a Christian for more than two, three years and you can't refute 00:08:05.680 |
It doesn't matter how many mission trips you've been to. 00:08:08.560 |
It doesn't matter how many small groups you've led. 00:08:11.040 |
You're still an infant because you're dependent on somebody else to protect you. 00:08:15.560 |
So all the more, as the day is drawing near, there's more and more bad doctrines, more 00:08:22.040 |
and more bad teaching, more and more false prophets that are coming out. 00:08:25.920 |
And the reason why they're very effective is because they're very good at it. 00:08:31.440 |
So if you don't learn how to handle the Word of God accurately by yourself, there's going 00:08:37.000 |
to come a time when the leadership is going to disappoint you and your whole doctrinal 00:08:41.000 |
disposition is going to be challenged because you don't respect the leaders. 00:08:45.280 |
Your spiritual life should not fall apart because we disappoint you. 00:08:51.080 |
So we need you to get into the Word of God on your own. 00:08:54.440 |
So it has to start with exegesis, and then from exegesis leads to systematic theology. 00:09:06.160 |
Some of you guys may be hearing this for the first time. 00:09:09.400 |
Exegesis, just to put it simply, is just careful study of God's Word from verse by verse, 00:09:17.360 |
A collection of the things that you've studied that point us to something collectively about 00:09:26.040 |
So give me an example of systematic theology. 00:09:31.400 |
The word Trinity does not exist in the Bible, but the doctrinal statement Trinity is a collection 00:09:37.760 |
of study of the identity of Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. 00:09:41.640 |
And when you put it all together, we have the doctrine of Trinity, right? 00:09:51.680 |
These are all doctrinal statements that comes from a careful study of all the collective 00:09:59.280 |
And then when we say, "What does the Bible say about salvation?" 00:10:02.360 |
Then you can give systematic theology, right? 00:10:08.600 |
Systematic theology is the collection of it, right? 00:10:16.320 |
What has been passed down to us from the church fathers, right? 00:10:20.600 |
So the doctrines that we have didn't just pop out of the sky. 00:10:25.000 |
It was handed, the word of God was given to the early church and they wrestled with it. 00:10:28.920 |
So we have 2,000 years of Bible scholars who've been wrestling through the original language, 00:10:34.920 |
refuting back and forth, fighting with false doctrines, and then have decided that this 00:10:45.120 |
So that's not where we get our final authority. 00:10:50.160 |
But it would be wise to make sure that whatever doctrinal statements that we come up with, 00:10:56.560 |
that it doesn't contradict historical theology. 00:11:08.280 |
So historical theology is part three where we're comparing. 00:11:11.800 |
So if somebody comes up and says, "You know, I believe this about God and it contradicts 00:11:16.280 |
historical theology," he's probably wrong, right? 00:11:22.960 |
A person did not all of a sudden 2,000 years later find something new that 2,000 years 00:11:30.800 |
It doesn't mean it can't happen, but 99.999%, you're probably the one who's wrong, right? 00:11:38.600 |
And then philosophical theology is how do we make sense of it? 00:11:41.840 |
If God is sovereign and man is responsible, how does this work? 00:11:46.320 |
And trying to understand how the Bible fits together is philosophical theology, where 00:11:54.060 |
How does God's righteousness and His mercy exist together, right? 00:12:01.440 |
Now, the reason why this is so important, this is where bad theology comes in, and see 00:12:08.360 |
if you can recognize this kind of logic, right? 00:12:19.940 |
Because I have gay friends and they're very moral people. 00:12:23.960 |
They're very kind and they're very upright people. 00:12:28.800 |
So I can't believe that God would condemn such nice, kind people, and some of them are 00:12:33.760 |
more moral than a lot of the Christian friends we have. 00:12:36.560 |
So the Bible can't possibly be teaching that. 00:12:39.000 |
So they go back to the Scripture and they look at certain things. 00:12:41.480 |
See, God says to love, and then maybe that's not what God says, right? 00:12:45.080 |
So they're taking a philosophical issue of how do we reconcile, right, a condemnation 00:12:52.640 |
of a group of people that seems to be nice, and then God says salvation is found in Christ 00:12:59.400 |
And again, if you reject the inerrancy in the Word of God, you reject Christ. 00:13:04.760 |
And so a lot of times bad theology comes from our own perception of what we think is right 00:13:12.460 |
And then we go back to Scripture and then make the Scripture fit our philosophical theology. 00:13:19.800 |
So bad theology typically comes from thinking, trying to think logically and then working 00:13:31.240 |
Now this is extremely important because you're probably being tested now. 00:13:36.680 |
Maybe some of you are wrestling with it already because you've had conversations with your 00:13:42.160 |
How can you be that bigoted if these nice, moral, upright, generous, kind people, how 00:13:48.840 |
can they be condemned in the Word of God, right? 00:13:52.760 |
So again, we have to make sure if we believe the Word of God is the Word of God, our right 00:13:58.220 |
and wrong has to first come from the Word of God, not your sense of right and wrong, 00:14:04.440 |
And that's why it has to start from exegesis, right? 00:14:07.560 |
You may reject the Word of God, but you cannot change the Word of God. 00:14:13.920 |
I can tell you that this wall is beige, and you can say that you don't like beige, but 00:14:28.960 |
The problem is they see Scripture, they don't like what it says, and then they say that's 00:14:37.720 |
You can reject what it says and say, "I don't believe that. 00:14:44.600 |
That's your prerogative whether you believe it or don't believe it, but you can't go back 00:14:47.700 |
to Scripture and say that Bible does not say that because you don't like it, right? 00:14:53.240 |
So exegesis is a careful study of God's Word to find out what it says. 00:14:58.440 |
If you choose to believe it, not believe it, that's another issue, right? 00:15:03.380 |
But we don't change what it says because you like it or don't like it. 00:15:06.540 |
So the study of exegesis, our doctrinal statements all come from exegesis, which leads to systematic 00:15:12.060 |
theology, which leads to historical theology, right, which kind of connects us to historical 00:15:19.380 |
theology, then we can have conversations about in our application time, what does this mean 00:15:34.020 |
As long as you're at church, I'm going to make sure that this is pounded in because 00:15:41.340 |
I know people that I've studied the Word of God with years, and then all of a sudden, 00:15:45.400 |
I don't see them for years, and they come back, and they say, again, their logic, their 00:15:50.200 |
theology has gone way astray, and I asked them how that happened, and it always starts 00:15:54.040 |
with, you know, how can God be fair if He does this, and they work backwards to Scripture, 00:16:00.560 |
right, instead of arguing from Scripture, okay? 00:16:04.640 |
So we want to make sure that you know what the Word of God says. 00:16:08.000 |
Observation, interpretation, application, okay, and this is basically what we're going 00:16:13.560 |
to be working through, and this is probably where we're going to be doing most of our 00:16:18.000 |
work is the observation, is getting you in the habit of asking and observing and interpreting, 00:16:25.720 |
So that's the part I'm going to ask you to do, right? 00:16:28.180 |
So if you've never done this before, you say, "I don't know if I can do this. 00:16:31.840 |
You know, I've never even read the Bible through one time. 00:16:34.960 |
We're going to break it down so that everybody, at least at the end of Colossians, you know 00:16:40.680 |
what kind of questions to ask and how to interpret the passage, okay? 00:16:44.760 |
So observance stage, we observe the passage, it says, "Answers who, what, where, why, 00:16:57.720 |
And then if you read a couple of times, you should already know why he wrote it. 00:17:05.020 |
If you look it up, Google it, it's easy, right? 00:17:08.080 |
Years ago, I had to go to the library and find out an atlas and then find where it was 00:17:12.880 |
Now you just have to say, "Colossians," and it just pops up in an image, right? 00:17:18.320 |
So we're going to talk a lot about that part of it. 00:17:22.240 |
Once we've made all the observations, what does it mean? 00:17:25.880 |
You can't go to what does it mean before you made any observations. 00:17:32.880 |
It's kind of like trying to figure out what somebody said without listening to everything 00:17:40.040 |
You're just kind of jumping in the middle and then it's like, "Oh, that's what you meant." 00:17:43.380 |
So observation part is making sure we're doing our homework before we say, "This is what 00:17:53.080 |
If it does not lead to application, that's not Christian study. 00:17:57.600 |
The purpose of Christian study is never to simply know, right? 00:18:06.400 |
So we're not studying scripture like we're at a museum just enjoying fine art. 00:18:14.880 |
If it doesn't lead to obedience, it leads to arrogance. 00:18:21.720 |
It fills you with pride, thinking, "I know better," and look at all those other people 00:18:26.040 |
don't know what I know, and it actually ruins you, right? 00:18:29.640 |
But the purpose of Christian Bible study is always to lead to application. 00:18:33.560 |
And so at the end of every Bible study, we're going to give you time for application like 00:18:40.600 |
Keys to good observation, ask as many questions as possible. 00:18:48.160 |
Even silly questions, even questions that you think are dumb, right? 00:18:56.800 |
I've always found the people who are the most curious are the best Bible students. 00:19:08.280 |
And it may sound annoying, but those are the people who learn and grow. 00:19:11.160 |
But people who just kind of accept whatever it is, they're always at the exact same place. 00:19:16.160 |
They never mature and they never really grow, right? 00:19:19.120 |
So the first part of Bible study is asking as many questions as possible. 00:19:23.440 |
So we're going to give you an opportunity to do that. 00:19:25.320 |
And we're going to have you constantly practice asking questions, thinking critically, right? 00:19:32.360 |
And I know some of you guys don't like to think critically because, you know, you just 00:19:36.880 |
kind of like, "Well, just tell me what to do. 00:19:40.320 |
You know, like, "Just what is it you want me to do?" 00:19:44.240 |
The point of it is not to get you to simply jump from point A to point B. You need to 00:19:49.120 |
If you don't know why, what later on isn't going to be enough. 00:19:56.680 |
If you don't understand why God wants you to do something, eventually you're going to 00:19:59.960 |
lose motivation and you're going to become a Pharisee. 00:20:02.600 |
You're just jumping through hoops without knowing why. 00:20:14.000 |
You're going to have some time to do Bible study in your small groups. 00:20:18.880 |
My guess is a lot of you, a Bible study is reading one chapter a day. 00:20:24.520 |
Or you read through the Bible three chapters, like if you're diligent. 00:20:28.680 |
There's a huge difference between understanding the Bible from big chunks at a time, right? 00:20:34.520 |
Let me tell you the difference, and I think it's a very good analogy. 00:20:46.360 |
Now if you've been at a church for a while, my guess is you'll probably know about 50%, 00:21:02.680 |
Some of them you're very close with, and some of them you're acquaintances with. 00:21:07.880 |
You know that they go to this church, but you don't really know them. 00:21:11.480 |
So from a distance in a large group, you know them, but you don't really know them. 00:21:15.760 |
The people that you are intimate with are either they were your roommates, you grew 00:21:20.960 |
up together, you went to missions, you spent intimate time with them very personally. 00:21:27.520 |
You were in a small group, or you did one-to-one, or whatever it may be, right? 00:21:33.480 |
If all you know about the Scripture is in a large context, and you're just kind of serving, 00:21:38.760 |
I'm not saying serving the Bible, you'll know major themes topically. 00:21:48.480 |
You know these major themes, but you don't know the details intimately. 00:21:53.700 |
And so that's why it's important for us that when we study the Bible, that you don't just 00:21:57.800 |
understand the large themes in the Bible, but the details and how those things came 00:22:03.400 |
And that's why inductive Bible study is so important. 00:22:06.400 |
I know some of you guys memorizing through the Book of James. 00:22:08.680 |
I'll bet you some of you guys have done quiet time, many times through the Book of James, 00:22:13.040 |
but memorizing it all of a sudden, you notice things that you probably never noticed before. 00:22:18.960 |
And you probably looked at that passage and heard sermons about that so many times, but 00:22:22.160 |
all of a sudden, there are certain words in there, there are certain phrases that you 00:22:25.800 |
see repeated and connected that you probably didn't notice before, if you're memorizing 00:22:32.260 |
Because you're looking at it much more intimately than you did before. 00:22:35.480 |
And the book will begin to come alive when you are that intimate with that book. 00:22:40.440 |
And so inductive Bible study is kind of like that, is to get us to go deeper. 00:22:46.000 |
And this is why, again, I say, if you're coming to be spoon-fed, you're going to be disappointed 00:22:58.360 |
The goal of the inductive Bible study is not quantity, but quality, as I've been mentioning. 00:23:02.440 |
Look for the following as you read, background and context. 00:23:07.960 |
And that's the part that I want you to hold on to this sheet as we're doing the study. 00:23:19.760 |
Who are the two key people that are mentioned right off the bat? 00:23:26.560 |
He mentions a bunch of people's names at the end of chapter four, and we'll go and take 00:23:36.720 |
Like, "Indeed," "verily," "truly," like Jesus says a lot of these things. 00:23:42.080 |
When these things, when you see these things, it means to slow down and take a look. 00:23:49.280 |
Like, six things God hates, seven things God detests. 00:24:03.880 |
It was meant for us to slow down and take this part of it a lot more carefully and with 00:24:10.240 |
So when you see certain things or phrases, even in the epistles that are repeated, it 00:24:14.760 |
may not be repeated right, like, back to back. 00:24:18.460 |
Sometimes it may be repeated within the span of maybe five, six verses. 00:24:22.760 |
You'll see the same words being repeated like 10 times, right? 00:24:27.240 |
If you remember when we were studying through the book of Romans, by the time we get to 00:24:33.720 |
Romans chapter six, the word "law" is repeated over 20-some times over there. 00:24:39.460 |
So you know just by circling "law," like, that's what Paul is talking about. 00:24:44.920 |
This whole chapter is about how the law fits into the gospel, right? 00:24:51.800 |
I'm going to have you guys ask, "What are some words that are repeated?" 00:24:55.360 |
And then when you see that for yourself, you'll see, "Ah, this is Paul's main point," right? 00:25:00.000 |
And all the other points are kind of to bolster up this point. 00:25:12.320 |
When he says, "The gospel is foolishness to those who are being saved," right? 00:25:20.640 |
It's to those who are perishing, and it is the power of God for those who are being saved. 00:25:27.120 |
You notice the tense there that he uses the present tense, right? 00:25:35.040 |
He describes our salvation as an ongoing process. 00:25:38.600 |
So that's huge in how we understand justification and sanctification. 00:25:42.240 |
So asking what tense is being used will highlight certain major doctrinal things that you may 00:25:58.160 |
Is it simply saying that this is who God is, or is it saying you need to do this? 00:26:03.060 |
Is it an imperative, or is it an indicative, right? 00:26:07.520 |
How you read that passage and how that passage is applied will differ tremendously based upon 00:26:14.480 |
if it is a command or is it a statement, right? 00:26:20.960 |
You know, a lot of people get into trouble when they study the book of Proverbs, and 00:26:26.020 |
then because they take it as a command, right? 00:26:29.680 |
It's a wisdom literature, and wisdom literature is giving wise sayings. 00:26:33.320 |
It doesn't mean that God's going to do this, right? 00:26:36.800 |
That if you raise up a child in the Lord that He will not stray, that meaning that if you 00:26:40.960 |
did quiet time and did family worship that He will never stray from God. 00:26:50.840 |
It is not an imperative saying if you do this, and then it says, "Well, God said He would 00:27:06.340 |
The difference between a descriptive and prescriptive is descriptive is just telling you what happened, 00:27:13.880 |
So here's a, again, common mistake that people make. 00:27:18.400 |
They got together, they prayed, and the Holy Spirit fell upon them. 00:27:22.280 |
And so therefore, every time we pray, we should be speaking in tongues. 00:27:36.780 |
That's the difference between a narrative, something that God is recording, something 00:27:40.560 |
that has happened, versus telling us this is what you ought to do, right? 00:27:45.760 |
So descriptive is, is it describing something? 00:27:52.360 |
You have to make the distinction between the two, okay? 00:27:58.000 |
Bad application, a lot of times comes from that. 00:28:01.040 |
Purpose of words such as "for," "so that," "in order that," "since," "because," "therefore," 00:28:04.920 |
these are all words that connect sentences to other parts. 00:28:09.000 |
So whenever you see the word "therefore," if you don't know the previous passage, you're 00:28:13.560 |
not going to understand the next passage, right? 00:28:17.360 |
One of the biggest "therefores" in the New Testament is Romans chapter 12, verse 1. 00:28:21.760 |
"Therefore, in view of God's mercy," 11 chapters. 00:28:25.320 |
So if you didn't study 11 chapters, you're not going to get the same impact that Paul 00:28:30.480 |
intended in Romans chapter 1 and chapter 12, 1 and 2. 00:28:34.000 |
So watch out for these key words, because these words point to something else, okay? 00:28:42.840 |
I'm going through this real quick, because I want you to -- these are things that you're 00:28:45.560 |
going to be practicing as we are observing and asking questions, okay? 00:28:51.880 |
Keys to accurate interpretation is thorough observation of the context, the historical 00:28:58.520 |
You may not know it, but all of our communication is almost always first from where we are, 00:29:11.960 |
So if you said -- again, if you said "bomb," depending on what generation you grew up in, 00:29:20.560 |
that word "bomb" is going to sound very different, right? 00:29:24.380 |
If you happen to be, you know, during World War II, where the nuclear bomb was dropped, 00:29:33.120 |
Or if you happen to be a younger generation, "da bomb" meaning like something nice or great 00:29:42.440 |
It meant something different, so everybody hears it based upon your cultural context. 00:29:48.080 |
You have to make sure that when you're studying the Bible that you make an effort to hear 00:29:56.320 |
When the Bible says, "Slave, obey your master," the natural culture -- our culture is going 00:30:04.760 |
to hear that from the atrocities that were committed by slave traders in modern history. 00:30:10.560 |
So natural question that they ask is, "How can God allow this?" 00:30:15.760 |
Because they're taking what they knew and then projecting it back into the Bible. 00:30:21.040 |
So when he talks about slavery, what was slavery like in the New Testament? 00:30:25.840 |
Was it an evil institution where people were forced into slavery like the modern history? 00:30:37.280 |
You have to go back and understand it from their cultural context. 00:30:44.720 |
So that you don't project and say, "They did this, and how come they're doing that?" 00:30:55.920 |
Every time, if you've ever gone through cross-cultural evangelism, you know that you have to understand 00:31:06.320 |
Like Pastor Alex said many times that in China, when they talk about sin, they hear criminal. 00:31:14.480 |
And so you kind of have to explain to them what sin is because automatically they say 00:31:34.000 |
So the cultural context in which that was written, are we interpreting it based upon 00:31:43.280 |
And then in the context of the rest of the scripture, nothing written in the New Testament 00:31:53.860 |
You have to look at all 66 of the Bible, the letters, as one author and one theme. 00:32:04.560 |
It is about God's redemptive history of mankind. 00:32:09.120 |
It's about Christ, and it's about Christ who has come and his second coming. 00:32:12.920 |
So all of scripture has to be connected to that. 00:32:15.600 |
So if your interpretation has nothing to do with Christ, you probably are not getting 00:32:23.080 |
It doesn't mean that every single word, every single passage has to mean Christ. 00:32:27.220 |
But if the collective understanding of your interpretation doesn't add to an understanding 00:32:32.480 |
of redemptive history in Christ, you probably missed the point. 00:32:39.240 |
And then obviously the context of the immediate letter. 00:32:41.200 |
So you never take a word or a verse without understanding the chapter and the book, because 00:32:51.920 |
People jump into Colossians chapter 3 and then say, "This is my verse for this year." 00:33:03.520 |
You're just projecting what you think that word means, right? 00:33:09.680 |
You would never walk in the middle of a movie and watch a movie that way. 00:33:13.900 |
But for whatever the reason, when we study the Bible, people are in the habit of jumping 00:33:17.720 |
right in the middle and then claiming certain things without knowing the context. 00:33:25.440 |
All right, so I'm going to hurry through this because I'm going to go through this real 00:33:33.400 |
quick and I'm going to talk about it more later. 00:33:38.640 |
Sixth question, "Is there an example for me to follow? 00:33:40.720 |
Is there a sin to avoid, promise to claim, prayer to repeat, command to obey, verse to 00:33:47.640 |
This is an aspect that, again, every week after we do our analysis, we're going to ask 00:33:52.800 |
you guys to make an effort to, like, what does this mean? 00:33:57.360 |
Before you ask the question, "What does it mean to me?" 00:34:00.560 |
You have to ask the question, "What does it mean first?" 00:34:03.680 |
So all of the hermeneutic stuff that we talked about, after you've done that, you ask, "What 00:34:20.200 |
All right, so this is the part where I'm going to have you guys come and help. 00:34:27.280 |
Again, like I said, today is going to be a bit different than the other weeks. 00:34:33.280 |
All right, so the first thing I want to do is take out your sheet and I want to go over, 00:34:42.560 |
before we jump into the actual verses, we want to get an overview, understanding of 00:34:50.960 |
And so I'm going to work through the first chapter with you, and then I'm going to ask 00:35:00.560 |
And then we're going to see, I'm going to have you guys do the study. 00:35:03.560 |
So again, I know some of you guys may not have done this in the past. 00:35:09.640 |
Maybe you just came in here and said, "Yeah, I don't want to study." 00:35:15.640 |
This is because I'm going to get you to study. 00:35:21.600 |
So what I want you to do is we're going to try to outline, and I don't think we're going 00:35:26.680 |
to go through all four chapters, but we're going to try to outline this first chapter 00:35:31.880 |
So as you're reading it, what I want you to do is, again, read on your own. 00:35:48.720 |
So when we read together, "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy, 00:35:52.920 |
our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae, grace to you 00:35:59.440 |
So what I want you to do is when you look at the first two verses, that's the introduction. 00:36:11.740 |
So you bracket that together and say, "That's the introduction." 00:36:19.840 |
Read that on your own and find the next paragraph. 00:37:00.640 |
It doesn't help you to just copy someone's paper. 00:37:38.680 |
If you have an opinion as to where the next outline should be, I'll give you a chance 00:43:06.320 |
if you see it for yourself where Paul is saying -- 00:43:27.320 |
and trying to analyze what he meant by those words, 00:43:30.320 |
you're not really going to get the full impact. 00:43:37.320 |
so that you can go back and look at the sentences 00:43:55.320 |
So that when we jump into verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, 00:44:05.320 |
So, some of you guys are already kind of like, 00:44:07.320 |
"Oh my gosh, I don't know if this is what I want to do." 00:44:17.320 |
You can't be a Berean because you became a member. 00:44:21.320 |
You're not a Berean because you became a member. 00:44:24.320 |
Because we're trying to teach the Bible from the pulpit. 00:44:27.320 |
You have to know what the Word of God says yourself. 00:44:34.320 |
And I'm going to ask you guys to study it in that way. 00:44:49.320 |
probably for the first five or six years of my ministry. 00:44:58.320 |
for the first six, seven, eight years of my life. 00:45:01.320 |
because that was what my Bible study leaders told me to do. 00:45:07.320 |
when I began to teach the Bible from book to book to book. 00:45:12.320 |
And I didn't do that because I was convicted. 00:45:14.320 |
I did that because I was running out of topics. 00:45:17.320 |
Yeah, because how many times am I going to preach on lordship? 00:45:20.320 |
How many times am I going to preach on finance and about being holy? 00:45:23.320 |
And I can give all these topics, and I knew that well. 00:45:26.320 |
Like, I probably had about 20 sermons that I could have just-- 00:45:29.320 |
if somebody said, "Hey, go and give a, you know, like, seven sermons on this topic," 00:45:36.320 |
because I did six, seven years if that's all I was doing. 00:45:42.320 |
That was the first book I started to preach through. 00:45:44.320 |
And then I started preaching through Philippians. 00:45:47.320 |
And then from Philippians, I remember jumping to Thessalonians, 00:45:50.320 |
and first and second Thessalonians, and went to James. 00:45:54.320 |
By the time I got to about a third to a half of the New Testament, 00:45:58.320 |
my paradigm of how I understood God completely changed. 00:46:03.320 |
And I realized that so much of what I thought the Bible said, 00:46:15.320 |
because I could live my whole Christian life hearing topical sermons 00:46:23.320 |
thinking that you understood what the Bible says, right, 00:46:32.320 |
just because you've heard expositional preaching for ten years 00:46:39.320 |
You know what I know, but you don't know the Bible, right? 00:46:50.320 |
Being a member at a Bible-teaching church doesn't make you a Berean. 00:46:54.320 |
You're not any more protected from bad doctrine that's coming in 00:47:00.320 |
if you don't know how to handle the Word of God yourself. 00:47:02.320 |
So if you're in a regular habit of not coming to the Word 00:47:06.320 |
and you're enjoying the fellowship of the church, right, 00:47:13.320 |
when your friendship is not going to be enough. 00:47:17.320 |
Then you're going to realize that you had no faith at all, right, 00:47:21.320 |
because you're being propped up by external things in the church, 00:47:25.320 |
but it's not about your personal walk with God. 00:47:31.320 |
If you are not in the habit of studying the Word of God, 00:47:37.320 |
All right, so the next part, before I break you up into small group, 00:47:40.320 |
is I want--again, your first homework is to go through that, 00:47:48.320 |
The outline that we have here is the first five weeks of the Bible study. 00:47:52.320 |
So today we're going to be looking at verse 1 and 2 together 00:47:55.320 |
just to kind of give you a guideline as to how to do observation. 00:47:59.320 |
And then next week, the homework is from verse 3 to 8. 00:48:03.320 |
And I'm going to give you, again, assignments to what to do before you leave. 00:48:08.320 |
All right, so let's look at verse 1 and 2 in observation. 00:48:23.320 |
All right, so we're not going to be able to practice all of it, 00:48:29.320 |
but the point of this exercise is to ask as many questions. 00:48:33.320 |
It's not to get the answer, so don't raise hands and say, 00:48:36.320 |
"The apostle means this." Like, I don't want answers. 00:48:44.320 |
So I'm going to give you just two, three minutes on your own. 00:48:48.320 |
Just look at those two verses, and I want you to jot down 00:48:51.320 |
as many questions that comes out from those two verses, 00:49:23.320 |
Professor Scott Goudsmith - Once upon a time. 00:50:43.360 |
So on that piece of paper, write down as many questions as you can. 00:50:48.360 |
And the more you do this, the better your questions will become. 00:51:14.360 |
Again, this exercise is not to find the answer, just the questions. 00:52:44.360 |
Okay, for the sake of time, if you guys can look up for a minute. 00:52:49.360 |
So again, this part of it is not for us to find the answers. 00:52:57.360 |
Any questions, the more questions the better. 00:53:03.360 |
It's probably better if you share with your small group first. 00:53:09.360 |
I don't expect good participation in this large group. 00:53:13.360 |
So in your small group, share the questions that you have with each other. 00:56:50.360 |
For the sake of time, if you guys can take a look. 00:56:54.360 |
If you look at what I did, I put the verses and I divided it into, you know, those key 00:57:01.360 |
words when I told you about and, by, and, that kind of gives you an idea of the thought 00:57:07.360 |
So whenever I do Bible study, I divide the Bible verses like this first. 00:57:11.360 |
The reason why I do this is because visually I see the outline, even in a sentence, and 00:57:17.360 |
it helps me to see, like, oh, Paul, who's he talking to, right, in his identities, and 00:57:22.360 |
an apostle, okay, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother. 00:57:26.360 |
So just looking at it visually, instead of seeing it in just one line, seeing it this 00:57:30.360 |
way helps me to see, okay, oh, that's where his thoughts are. 00:57:33.360 |
And then to the saints and faithful brethren. 00:57:35.360 |
So it kind of helps me to dig in a little bit more detail. 00:57:39.360 |
I'm not saying you have to do this, but this helps me. 00:57:42.360 |
So every Bible study, every sermon I give, whatever text I'm studying, this is what 00:57:49.360 |
Okay, just to kind of get me to better understand the flow of his thought. 00:59:12.360 |
Okay, why is he distinguishing between saints and faithful brethren? 00:59:39.360 |
What specific things is he referring to when they say they were faithful? 00:59:52.360 |
So these are all things that the more you study, the more you're going to have insight because it's like, oh, Paul used this before. 01:00:01.360 |
But when Peter says in Christ, he might mean something different. 01:00:06.360 |
So the more you study it, the more you're going to be able to gain insight into these questions. 01:00:12.360 |
Does Paul use the term apostle exclusively to himself? 01:00:17.360 |
Is this a generic term talking about a messenger? 01:00:24.360 |
Is this a generic opening that he uses in every single letter? 01:00:28.360 |
Or are the other letters that he opens up, does it sound different? 01:00:35.360 |
And if he does, why does he give this kind of title in this letter and a different title in a different letter? 01:00:47.360 |
Again, the more you study, the more you ask questions, the more these things are going to make sense. 01:00:51.360 |
And the more deeper questions you're going to be able to ask. 01:01:13.360 |
Was that a common greeting for all Christians? 01:02:35.360 |
Like how many other letters does Timothy come out? 01:02:41.360 |
And obviously he writes letters to Timothy, but where else is Timothy mentioned? 01:02:45.360 |
How intimate is Paul's relationship with Timothy? 01:03:07.360 |
Does he already have a relationship with them? 01:03:31.360 |
Now, does Paul open up any letter, other letter with the same title? 01:03:44.360 |
Why does he use it here and in those letters? 01:03:47.360 |
There's about two or three different ways Paul opens up letters. 01:03:51.360 |
And if you study it, you'll find it is directly linked to why he's writing the letter, 01:04:00.360 |
So even in this just short introduction, then typically you will read and just kind of skim through, 01:04:06.360 |
"Oh, Paul's saying hi to the Colossians," and you just move forward. 01:04:09.360 |
But even in the way that he introduces himself kind of points to what he's going to say. 01:04:17.360 |
Why in some letters does he say, "A bondservant of Jesus Christ," 01:04:21.360 |
and why in some letters he says, "I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ." 01:04:25.360 |
Where one speaks, he speaks with authority, and the other one he kind of places him as a servant. 01:04:35.360 |
How does that set the tone for the rest of the letter? 01:04:38.360 |
So if you're writing a letter and you say, "Bondservant of Jesus Christ," 01:04:41.360 |
or "A prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," how does that set the tone for the rest of the letter? 01:04:47.360 |
He's a humble servant kind of coming to serve you, and then when he says, "Apostle of Jesus Christ," 01:04:52.360 |
you can kind of guess why he's setting his authority as an apostle. 01:05:04.360 |
He's going to be dealing with identity of Christ, Christology. 01:05:13.360 |
He's not just a bondservant coming and, you know, "What can I do? 01:05:17.360 |
He said, "Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." 01:05:21.360 |
So what I'm about to say to you, pay attention. 01:05:25.360 |
Does it come with that tone, or did I just milk that? 01:05:29.360 |
So again, as you're studying the Scriptures, you're going to see that even in the way that 01:05:33.360 |
he opens up the letter, it kind of sets the tone as to, "I'm an apostle talking, pay attention," 01:05:39.360 |
versus, "Prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," right? 01:05:43.360 |
Like, "As humble servant suffering for the sake of the gospel, you know, I'm pleading with you." 01:05:52.360 |
So if you've studied the Book of Colossians or you've known anything about the Book of Colossians, 01:05:55.360 |
you know that this is a book heavy with Christology, and he's dealing with very, like, 01:06:02.360 |
serious problems that are happening in the early church. 01:06:05.360 |
And he never visited this church before, but he's been hearing. 01:06:09.360 |
He's been hearing about how great this church is, but also there's two specific things that he's dealing with. 01:06:15.360 |
He's dealing with the Judaizers who are saying you have to become a Jew to be a Christian, 01:06:19.360 |
which was a problem in many other churches, and he was also dealing with the Gnostics. 01:06:24.360 |
So you know how each of the Colossians deals with the Judaizers, the first John deals with the Gnostics, 01:06:33.360 |
So if you look at the way he opens up letters, you'll see that Paul typically, 01:06:38.360 |
when he has something serious to say, he'll mention his apostleship, 01:06:42.360 |
and then on top of that he says, "By the will of God." 01:06:47.360 |
What I'm about to tell you isn't something that I've made up or these are not my thoughts. 01:06:56.360 |
So even in this introduction, if you don't ask questions and you don't dig, 01:06:59.360 |
you're not going to gain that kind of insight. 01:07:02.360 |
So get in the habit of asking, and you'll see. 01:07:06.360 |
For me, the greatest proof of the inerrancy of the Word of God is the Bible itself, 01:07:13.360 |
because there's so much in it that if you study it superficially and if you study it simply through commentaries, 01:07:19.360 |
you'll say the right things without ever being affected by it because that's someone else's study. 01:07:26.360 |
But if you get in the Word of God and you begin to ask questions, 01:07:28.360 |
you begin to unearth things that maybe you didn't understand before, 01:07:32.360 |
all of a sudden, not just once, but you're going to see how the Word of God is interconnected 01:07:37.360 |
and the depth of God's Word, and there's no way that this was written by human hands. 01:07:44.360 |
Like, how many times can you watch a movie, you know, and then come with different insights? 01:07:50.360 |
It's like, no matter how much you dig and dig and dig, after a while, you kind of like know everything 01:07:58.360 |
But when you study the Word of God, there is no end. 01:08:00.360 |
The more you dig, the more you realize how deep this is. 01:08:03.360 |
And then once you begin to realize how deep this is, 01:08:06.360 |
you begin to see a supernatural authorship that this was not written by man. 01:08:13.360 |
And this is something that I can't just tell you. 01:08:17.360 |
This is something that you have to come on your own and begin to dig. 01:08:24.360 |
He didn't lay out there and say, "Anybody remember we talked about that?" 01:08:27.360 |
He's not going to reveal Himself who's going to be superficially, "Okay, God, talk to me." 01:08:38.360 |
He doesn't reveal Himself to people who are nonchalantly approaching Him. 01:08:43.360 |
See, if you, what, "Seek me with all your heart," right? 01:08:54.360 |
But He's going to reveal Himself to people who are hungering and thirsting for Him. 01:09:00.360 |
And so that's why I want you to get to the Word of God 01:09:02.360 |
because the primary way that I know that this is God's Word is the Word itself. 01:09:10.360 |
And I'm not saying this because I'm a pastor. 01:09:13.360 |
If you want to meet with God, you have to get into the Word. 01:09:23.360 |
The only thing that they can do is help you get to the Word of God. 01:09:26.360 |
But if you could meet with a mentor all your life and never get to the Word of God, 01:09:30.360 |
you'll love your mentor, but you'll never love the Lord. 01:09:34.360 |
So, again, even in this short verse, there's so much. 01:09:38.360 |
Even what we just talked about scratched the surface 01:09:40.360 |
because we asked the questions here, but the more you dig, 01:09:43.360 |
the more you're going to see how this is connected to the other parts of the Bible. 01:10:00.360 |
So today's Bible study is unique because this is an introduction to get you started. 01:10:04.360 |
So this is how the format of the Bible study is going to be. 01:10:08.360 |
So, again, for homework, finish up outlining for the rest of Colossians, 01:10:16.360 |
and then ask at least five important questions of Colossians 1 through 8, 01:10:25.360 |
We came up with about 10, 15 questions in two verses, 01:10:33.360 |
So the discussion questions, verses 3, 4, and 5-- 01:10:37.360 |
I'm going to have you guys in your small group and take some time to discuss before you end. 01:10:41.360 |
But here's how the Bible study format is going to be. 01:10:49.360 |
Then after the worship, you're going to go straight into your Bible study. 01:10:53.360 |
So verses 3 to 8, whatever discussions or insights that you have, 01:10:57.360 |
you're going to go and take some time to share that. 01:10:59.360 |
While you are sharing that, I'm going to have the small group leaders text me. 01:11:05.360 |
While you are discussing, these are some questions that we have about this text. 01:11:11.360 |
And so what I'm going to do is a part of it is I'm going to answer some of the questions that you have, 01:11:17.360 |
and then I'm going to try to give you some guidance on top of that. 01:11:23.360 |
So instead of me telling you, "Look at this first, and look at this, and connect it to this," 01:11:27.360 |
I'm going to go off of your study, and I'm going to try to guide you through your study. 01:11:31.360 |
And while we're doing that, I'm going to try to teach you hermeneutical things that you should be looking for. 01:11:36.360 |
Instead of me telling you all the principles and then just kind of go at it, 01:11:40.360 |
I'm going to be sharing that as we're going along. 01:11:42.360 |
So you're going to come and do the study, do the discussion, 01:11:46.360 |
and I'm going to give you about 40, 45 minutes to do it first. 01:11:49.360 |
I'm going to come in about 30 minutes, and I'm going to do my portion of that through those studies, 01:11:55.360 |
and after the 30 minutes, I'm going to get you back into your application part. 01:12:03.360 |
Now, are we going to sit in this format? I don't know. 01:12:15.360 |
You know, you guys are like crammed, so when you guys go into deep things, it might be hard for you to listen to. 01:12:20.360 |
So we're thinking about just getting rid of all the chairs and spreading you guys out so that you won't be crammed next to each other. 01:12:26.360 |
If that doesn't work, we might try to figure something else out, because it might not be conducive to sharing. 01:12:32.360 |
It would be good for Bible study, but it would not be good for sharing, 01:12:35.360 |
so we're just going to play it by ear, see what works best. 01:12:38.360 |
But at the minimum, next week, we're going to have everybody spread out further so that you won't be so crammed next to each other. 01:12:45.360 |
All right. So for today, if you can take some time to discuss this, and then before you end, 01:12:50.360 |
I don't want you to take too much time, but before you end, I want you to look at verse 3 to 8 together 01:12:54.360 |
and see if you can come up with about four or five questions, just to kind of get you guys going. 01:12:58.360 |
And then next week, to discuss that when you come. 01:13:02.360 |
Let me pray for us, and then I'll let you guys go to your small group. 01:13:13.360 |
Gracious Father, we thank you for your living word. 01:13:18.360 |
I pray, Father God, for myself, for my brothers and sisters in this room, 01:13:24.360 |
that we would desire to know you more than the love of our friends, 01:13:30.360 |
more than our desire to belong somewhere, and to connect, and to be a part of a church. 01:13:40.360 |
We want to hear your voice, Lord God, not mine, not older brothers and sisters. 01:13:51.360 |
I pray that the study of Colossians will open our eyes, that we truly may hear your voice, 01:13:58.360 |
that your children may hear his voice and follow him wherever he goes, 01:14:04.360 |
to help us, Lord God, in our weakness, open our eyes, cause our ears to hear, 01:14:12.360 |
that you would truly bless the time that we have.