So, we're talking right now about not just simple Bible inductive study, but because that's going to be something more like a five part series. Today we're going to be talking more so about, we're going to be talking more about observations. How do you fine tune or just simply improve the method by which you do observation of scripture.

Now, I love doing things by my hand and like making things like little boxes or tables and painting stuff. And one thing about creating anything, making anything is that you never finish with one coat, right? Just like with cleaning, anything else that you want a nice fine finish, you don't just do one coat.

As a matter of fact, recently my wife and I, we made a little table out of plywood and all it is is cheap plywood, 20 bucks for a whole sheet. All we did is put polyurethane right over it. First coat, all bumpy, bubbly, looks disgusting. Second coat, you sand in between, put another coat down and all of a sudden it looks a lot better.

Third and fourth coat, you go in with fine sandpaper and when you finish it, the grain pops, it's reflective, it looks like mirror finish and it looks awesome. Likewise, with Bible observations, one reading will never do, two readings won't do, but on multiple layers what you find is there's a beauty that comes out from scripture as you look at it again and again.

Likewise, today we're going to go through a specific passage in Ephesians and we're going to read it several times observing all the stuff that's in there. And that's why with multiple layers of observation, people, you will find that the scripture is so deep, scripture is so profound, you could spend your whole life observing the same passage again and again only to glean greater riches.

If you look at your packets or your handout, there's a section that says just improving observation with multiple, multi-layer observations through, and I give you a little list. These are some of the steps that we'll be taking in order for us to improve. Just running through it really briefly, we always have to start with our simple reading to get the picture.

If it's a specific text in the New Testament, what's the general picture, what's the narrative? We do second layer by looking at the paragraph and outlining the topics, the major themes. We do sentence diagramming or what you call syntactical diagramming to see the relationships between what is said in phrases.

There's categorizing the different parts of speech, and lastly, getting a good feel of the text. We're going to walk through that together. Let's take a moment to pray and jump right in. Our God, we thank you so much for your grace. Just as Pastor Aaron mentioned this just earlier, God, it is your grace given to us for us to be able to look and observe your precious word.

God, you say in your own words, Lord, that your word is bread to us. It's sweet like honeycomb. And I really pray, Father God, that we would be a people who have enjoyed that, who have tasted to see that it's good. And I pray for every single one of us, you continue just to inspire us and God, motivate our hearts, Lord, that we would come to your word.

It's in Christ's name, amen. Okay. What I'd like to do first and foremost is just give you a challenge that when you do your observations, you do want to make sure that you are looking at big picture. So on layers of the observations, you want to sometimes do the close look, but you also want to do the big look.

What I'd like to do is read with you guys together Ephesians. Oh wait, sorry. What I'd like you to do on your own, not together, is read Ephesians chapter one and two. So please take out your Bibles. And just to give a little sense of the pressure, you have six minutes to read it.

So this is not like all crazy, just like detailed observation, but just read chapter one and two. And then when you're all done, go ahead and look up and I'm going to give you a minute to just write a few observations on your own. Ready? Go ahead. th ( tiller squeaks ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( baby crying ) ( baby crying ) ( baby crying ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( baby crying ) Okay, there's about a minute left.

( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) Okay, even if you're not finished reading the two chapters, what I'd like you to do now is try to jot down any theme or major teaching that you saw in the next minute. But use not full-on sentences, but just about two to three words.

It could be "love of God," it could be et cetera, et cetera, right? Take about a minute from what you just cursory read. What themes or major teachings do you recall? Go ahead. ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) ( indistinct chatter ) Okay, so now that we've done that, for us, one of the first-- in the process of making good observations, one of the first things we want to do, again, is to read a large portion and then simply see the flow of thought.

And sometimes when you read, certain things pop out to you, and those are highlights. But is that the best way to feel like, "Oh, I understand this passage"? No. That's maybe a good way just to have a moment of conviction or devotion, but it's not a good way to sit there and say, "This is what he, the author, wants me to understand." So in so doing that, one of the very first things we do is we read a big section, and then we start to outline the thought process of the author.

So here, in point 2, in the next section, I have the heading "Paragraph Outlining" or "Topical Outlining." And when we do that, what we're searching for are themes in the Scriptures. Many times when people try to outline the Bible, they'll use various methods. One method is simply to use the paragraphing in the Greek text, because just like you guys learn in high school, you write your thoughts in terms of paragraphs.

You have your topic sentence, and then you have your paragraph, and you make a new paragraph, and you move into a new thought. Well, if you have the ESV and ASV Bible, what they'll show you is, it'll show you a number in terms of the verse numbers. It'll be bolded based on where the Greek text has a new paragraph.

Now, is the paragraphing inspired? It's not. Ancient Greek texts are actually written in Unicode, meaning there weren't paragraph break-ins. However, much later on, as people, scholars, are looking at the text, and they're doing their translations, there are clear markers of where their new thought or transition was, and they added these paragraph settings.

So in your Bibles, you have these bold numbers to show you those paragraphs, and that way you can break up your sections to study them. What I like to say is actually the best thing to do is look for process of thought, and think where are the big sections of thought.

Together, I'd like to read this section. Again, even though you've already read it, we're going to do multiple, okay? I'm going to read this for us here, and it says-- I'll just read it off my phone though. It says, "Blessed be the God of thought and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places." This is clearly a thematic verse.

Why? Because everything falling underneath it is simply an extrapolation of that theme verse. It says, "Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.

To the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us and the beloved. In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. In our wisdom and insight, He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention, which He purposed in Him.

With a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens, things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will.

To the end, that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Now, what's really interesting is when certain passages of Scripture like this we observe, you find a level of repetition and redundancy, right? What I find is that typical pattern when people read sections like that, what they remember is just simply the stuff that pops out. For example, I remember reading just a Bible help tool that gives you major chapter headings, major chapter maybe memorable things, so that you kind of know what's contained in each chapter.

I asked you guys to read chapter 1 and 2, that Bible tool, it basically said chapter 1, predestination, chapter 2, grace of God and gospel, right? And I'm not sure if some of you guys wrote that in terms of your observations or what you recall. Chapter 1 seems like it's all about He chose you, okay?

Well, obviously the case I'm going to make to you is there's so much more than that. If we take a look at the theme, thematics, and then unpack it, there's so much more. So, what am I talking about? Well, the reason why I'm saying verse 3 is the thematic verse is because everything else supports it, and you can tell because it says at the very beginning, "Just ask." So, here, see I'm doing that here.

This is a theme verse where it says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ." Right? You take a moment to think, and in verse 4, he begins by saying, "Just ask," and all he's doing is extrapolating and giving you examples of what?

The spiritual blessings. So, we key on this idea of the spiritual blessings right here, and we realize we can simply ask the question, "What are these spiritual blessings?" Well, we can walk through it really closely and realize there's so much more than just predestination. For example, verse 4, "Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world," verse 5, "He predestined to adoption as sons," verse 7, "In Him we have redemption through His blood," comma, "the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace." What's more, you have in verse 9, "He made known to us the mystery of His will." Think about that.

He counts it a spiritual blessing that He will disclose to you information. Isn't that what Jesus said? He said, "Because I call you friend." Why do I call you friend? Because I make known to you what I'm going to do. I make known to you the plans of the Father.

What's more, verse 11, "And we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to His purpose." Over in verse 13, "You are sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit." So, when you make certain of these observations, you realize this is the theme because everything He says contributes to extrapolating what He first said in verse 3.

So, by quick summary, you have these points and you can make a list. I want to challenge you guys, whenever you see repetition in the Scriptures, don't get bogged down and say, "Oh man, he's just being overly redundant." I want you to take a piece of paper and start jotting it down.

Let's make a list. Let's count. How many blessings is He talking about? Here, you have four just from the first half and another four in the second half. That's a total of eight different blessings that Apostle Paul wants the people to recognize. Is chapter 1 just about predestination? No, it's not.

He is talking about the incredible, vast, deep array of blessings that God has given to you in the name of Christ. So, at this point then, when we do observations of thematics, it helps us see these sections. What I'd like to do then is move forward to sentence diagram.

We're going to take one verse and we're going to diagram it. What I've done for you is just sentence 3 is your thematic verse, which yes, you should diagram, but I'm going to take verse 4. That I have laid out for you on your piece of paper, the handout.

The way I typically diagram things is by grammatical categories. What I mean by that is, you guys remember way back when you learned this is the subject, this is the predicate. You're just like, "Oh, so boring," but it actually comes so handy to Bible study. So, thank the Lord for all your English teachers.

What's really important is, actually, I started to learn and in seminary I struggled hard. In seminary there was a special class. It was not your Greek class or your Hebrew class, but it was your basic English class. I had to sign up for it because once I started studying Greek, I was like, "I don't know what they're talking about." They were talking about subjunctive clauses, independent clauses, dependent clauses.

I said, "No!" I convinced Mia, my buddy. He's my roommate. He's now a PhD holding. He writes books and stuff. I was like, "Please take it with me." He's like, "Okay." You know what's so funny is he failed the class. I passed and he failed. So, he had to take it again.

But the class taught us everything from not only do you have to understand your subject and predicate, but your verb tenses, your commands, your indicatives, all that kind of stuff because it's super important. Here, what you have is just simple, the main independent clause is, "He chose us." He chose us.

And so, sometimes I just automatically do that when I do my Bible study. I circle the main verb. Get a piece of paper, copy the verse. I just circle the main verb in the sentence because that's going to be your starting point. Verse 4 is about God's sovereign election.

He chooses. We don't choose Him. He chooses. But there are these dependent clauses that begins either with some kind of preposition, right? And what we find is it says, "In Him, He chose us." Then he says, "Before the foundation of the world." And then he says, "That we would be holy and blameless before Him." And all I've done is just broken up those small phrases into these sections, okay?

This is called sentence diagram. If you were to do this for the whole Bible, yes, it would take a long time. And I encourage you though, couple this with your other ways of studying. This is not how you, you know, you have to do every single day. But couple this with your Bible study, your Bible reading.

And it's going to show you a lot. Why? Because now, I have to, once I diagram it, categorize and identify. Remember in our layers? In our layers, I said there's going to be categorization. What I mean by that is, this is where you sit down and you say, "Okay, He chose us." Clearly, "In Him" is describing how He chose us.

So I'm sitting here and I've got to ask myself the question, "What is that?" "In Him." I could just read it and move on. Or I could ask the question, "Is this just simply the context by which He chose us?" Is He saying this is the means? But that's pretty crazy because if you think about that, God's just simply choosing.

What does it even mean that He would choose us in Christ? Right? What is He saying? And so, we have to ask that question as well. Here's another question. Before the foundation of the world, it describes how He chose us. So I could just chalk it up as, "It just describes how He chose us." But in greater detail, it describes to us the timing.

It describes to us the chronology of how He chose. So it's just simply a description of the timing. Another question. The next phrase, "That we would be holy and blameless." I love the word "that" because what it shows me is purpose. What it shows me is goal and intent of God.

He chose that we would be holy and blameless. So just taking a moment to think about this, recently I had a discussion with some individuals about free grace theology. Individuals will say, "You know what? The simple fact is you need to believe Jesus and you're saved. For you to teach about holiness, sanctification, righteousness in your life, all you're doing is just looking at works, works, works, works, works, and you're back-loading it into the gospel.

There's going to be people who are saved and then they never show it." And you're just kind of like, "Huh?" They're like, "Yeah, Romans says it's not by works. Ephesians says it's not by works. You have to know that you just saved and that's it." I'm going to look to Ephesians and say, "You know what?

I was studying this verse, verse 4. It says He chose us that we would be holy. So you can tell me what you want, but look at this passage. What do I do with this?" He tells you that in God's plan, His purpose was to redeem you and save you and choose you to be holy and blameless before Him.

There you go, right? So even in theology, some of this helps a lot because it shows you that kind of relationship. And then lastly, you know what? I totally forgot I had a slide for this. Oh, no wait. I don't have a slide for this. Okay. Yeah, okay. So here, lastly, the little phrase before Him, the holiness that we are to be is in reference, okay?

Is in reference to God. So what I did just right there is I did sentence diagramming to show you the relationship between the main subject and the main verb. And then every phrase that comes afterneath it, I gave it its weight by doing what? Asking the question, "How does this connect?

What is the relationship between these things?" And then I started to identify, "Wow. He is focusing on this choosing and telling us maybe the means and the source and the person of Christ, the timing of it, the purpose of it, and the context and reference that we should have." Right?

That's a lot to think about. What I'd like you guys to do, just take a moment, is take a look at verse 5. You know what? Sorry, I'm getting a little mixed up because I remember I made a slide though. Okay, yeah, I did. All right. Okay, okay, I see what I did there.

Sorry about that. Okay, so I was supposed to have this up while I was going through that. But giving you those relationships, you ask those categories of what is this. And in that, it really helps your observation. Okay? What I'd like you guys to do is just take four minutes.

Okay? Just take four minutes and take a look at verse 5. And in the space provided, I want you guys to divide the scripture in the sense that you're going to piece it in every phrase that Apostle Paul is saying, give it its legitimate weight. Okay? And then do your best attempt to answer the question, "What is this phrase?" How is it contributing to the main verb?

Go ahead, take your time to do that. All right. All right. (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) - Okay, good.

Seems like most of you guys might be done. If you're not, I apologize. Again, you gave me an hour to do something that I know takes a bit long. But just kind of encourage you guys again to get in the practice of these kind of observations. I wanna share with you, in the beginning, when I started to prepare sermons, it was super difficult because I felt like I needed to, again, just find profound things.

You know what I mean? You want your sermon to be good, so you want it to be like, yeah, right? But then, once I started studying the Bible this way, I realized I was just so confident I'm never gonna run out of stuff that's profound. Because take a look, this is how I prepare my sermon.

I said, take a look at verse four. Here's my outline for my sermon. Main sermon, the title, it's like, we want you to know that God has chosen you. And then say, in Christ. Now, if I don't understand, I put question marks 'cause that could be theologically pretty huge.

Put question marks and I'd pray about it. God, I know that we have to be, in Christ, genuinely chosen. I know that preparation for us to be united with Christ is there, and everything that's true of us comes because our identity is one with Him, right? Everything hinges on your union with Christ.

Boom, there's my second point of my sermon. Second point, or third point, before the foundation of the world. You could just gloss over that, but, oh my goodness. This is revealing of the nature of our God, right? That, if you think about it, the only person who's thought of me for a long, long time is my parents.

And as I'm a parent, I know that parents think long before even the child arrives. They prepare the child's room before the child ever arrives. They prepare for the child's space, and even purchase car seats to take home the child from the hospital. People who care that much for any individual is uniquely parents.

And I think about God and this idea of before even your existence, you know, He thought of me. That's quite amazing. That we would be holy, the purpose behind it. So I could just, title of the next point of the sermon, the purpose of your, you know? That's how I prepare my sermons now.

The scripture is dictating how my outline goes, okay? So now, we look at the next verse, verse five. This is the way I've done it. It's again, He has one topic in His main verb, the predestination, and He says, "He predestined us." How? In love. For what? To the adoptions as sons.

Through what means? Through Jesus Christ. To Himself. And then it says, "According to the kind intention "of His will." Apologize, this is so small. I should've just put it on here, pack it. But it's all in the verse, right? All I did was just piece it up. And then lastly, it says, "To the praise of the glory "of His grace." Not right now, but I wanna challenge you.

This is where you have to sit and start wrestling, start categorizing. Every one of those small phrases, how does it contribute to the concept of predestination, and what relationship does it have? Sometimes, the preposition or the word that begins that clause is gonna tell you exactly what He means.

This is through Jesus Christ, this is the means by which Christ has done it. He predestines, right? In this way, we find that there is an incredible amount, right, incredible amount of information that Apostle Paul gives in this section. What I'd like to do is just real quickly walk with you through the verse again and highlight one of those things.

You recall, right here, as you start reading, "Blessed be the God of our Father, "our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us "with every spiritual blessing "from the heavenly places in Christ." That was our theme verse, right? And so, you start seeing the extrapolation of that. "Just as He chose us in Him," verse five, "in love He predestined us to adoption as sons "through Jesus Christ," verse six, "to the praise of the glory of His grace, "which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved." In Him, we have redemption through His blood.

"In all wisdom and insight, "He made known to us the mystery of His will "according to His kind attention, "which He purposed in Him, "with a view to an administration "suitable to the fullness of the times, "that is, the summing up of all things in Christ." Jumping to verse 11, "In Him also we have obtained an inheritance." Jumping to verse 12, "In Christ," sorry, "to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ "would be the praise of His glory.

"In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, "the gospel of your salvation, "having also believed, you were sealed in Him." So actually, given the fact that we've just highlighted the concept of our blessings being in Christ, this section is not primarily about predestination, is it? It's actually more so about the fact that the blessings we have is completely in our seat.

Everything from beginning, middle, and end is accomplished through Christ, right? Actually, if you think about the blessings and you've kind of meditated upon the elements, what kind of blessings are these, right? Does it not include the very beginning, but also the sealing of the Spirit to the ultimate inheritance?

It does. So what you can conclude is like, oh my goodness, everything, before it even began to the very end, is in Christ. That's what we observe, okay? All right, now moving forward, here's something interesting we must do. Once we have the first observation of reading through and getting a sense of the whole picture, and then we do an observation of that outline, what's the thought process based on these paragraphs?

And then we get even more detailed and do sentence diagram of syntax. What are the relationships? We should be really feeling the text, okay? And what do I mean by that is, feeling the text might not seem to you as initially just a good observation. It might be like, oh, are you asking for impressions and stuff?

No, what I'm asking is, you have to observe what is Apostle Paul emphasizing to you, right? Clearly, Apostle Paul wants you to understand something, and he's going to, at this point, use a literary device of repeating a concept in a certain structure multiple times. Every time he brings up a blessing, he's doing the same thing, isn't he?

He chose you, he predestined you, da-da-da, and then he's gonna surround that with the source, the means, the purpose, you see what I'm saying? So through the literary device of repetition, he is emphasizing a lot to us. That's what I'm saying. And that's where we have to ask the question about, you know, what do I observe as the main thrust of the passage, yes?

Okay, I'm gonna make the case that there is another repetitive concept that Apostle Paul is emphasizing to us, and I'm gonna go to the verse again and highlight something different. If you noticed, okay, some of these little prepositional phrases, in love, according to, it's like a weird chop, right?

But I think there's an element of intentionality behind that, because there's an emphasis there. But let's read through the passage, and I'm gonna read this time without skipping anything, and I'm gonna highlight to you, not simply just like, you know, the context, the purpose, whatever, but the manner by which God has done this.

Okay, that's the way I've categorized it. The manner by which God has done this. So, from the beginning, okay? And I'll just, in front of me so I'm not turned around. Verse three says, "Blessed be the God, "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, "who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings "in the heavenly places in Christ.

"Just as he chose us in him before the foundation "of the world, that we would be holy "and blameless before him." Here it is. "In love, he predestined us to adoption "as sons through Jesus Christ to himself," listen to this, "according to the kind intention "of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, "which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

"In him we have redemption through his blood, "the forgiveness of our trespasses, "and again, according to the riches of his grace, "which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, "he made known to us the mystery of his will, "according to his kind intention, "which he purposed in him.

"With a view to an administration suitable "to the fullness of the times, "that is the summing up of all things in Christ." Things in the heavens, the things on earth. "In him also we have obtained an inheritance, "having been predestined according to his purpose, "who works all things after the counsel of his will, "to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ "would be to the praise of his glory.

"In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, "the gospel of your salvation, "having also believed, you were sealed in him "with the Holy Spirit of promise, "who was given as a pledge of our inheritance, "with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, "to the praise of his glory." You notice I highlighted in green some of these words, and I'm gonna list it off for you.

Oh, sorry, there's one more little section here I wanna read. Down in verse 18 it says, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, "so that you will know what is the hope of his coming, "what are the riches of the glory of an inheritance "in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness "of his power toward us who believe.

"These are in accordance with the working "of the strength of his might, "which he brought about in Christ "when he raised him from the dead, "and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places." So let's take a moment to meditate on this. And again, what I would probably do when I'm studying this is, oh my goodness, there has been an incredible repetition of the manner by which God has blessed us, yes?

And there is clearly an emphatic repetition about this because he uses the same exact terminology multiple times. And what's more, if I read chapters one through three, what Apostle Paul is gonna say repeatedly is I pray you understand his love. I pray you understand his grace to you, right?

I pray you understand the width, the height, the breadth, everything about how much he loves you. And so, with the theme verse being, and look at how much God has blessed you, we look at the manner of which he loved us. I would list it off on a piece of paper, and then I would start meditating.

Oh my goodness. Everything that he said he's done, he's done in accordance with his kind intention. The blessings that he's listed off there, that's not exhaustive. But what he's highlighting is how he freely gave that to you. What he's highlighting is how he lavishly poured out upon you. What he's highlighting is how incredibly wise he was to do this for you.

What he's highlighting is how much he loved you, that he would do this according to the power of his might. That to me is amazing. And I recall, like, when you start thinking about that, that his mind is involved with this, his heart is involved with this, his intentionality is involved with this, I started recalling, like, when was the last time you saw those words all pieced together?

It was God commanding us, you need to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? And then I sit there and I'm just like, wow. God loved us with his might, with his mind, with his soul, with his heart. And he lavished his blessings upon us.

If ever, you know, there was a case, a scenario where there's, you know, a woman and a man who's involved in a romantic relationship, and there's ever a strife, you know, there's a lot of dissatisfaction, why? Because sometimes men do things, and there's no thought behind it, it's like, oh, it's your birthday, let's go out and eat something nice, right?

And then the woman's all disappointed, like, oh, you didn't give any thought behind it, we just eat every time, you know? And, you know, sometimes when we think about, like, again, ways that we have desired to receive love and affection, I want you to take a moment to think about, we have here God expressing, that he had us in mind and in view.

This is not, like, sappy lovey-dovey stuff, this is reality of how deep God's love is. The reason why I've highlighted these weird concepts of, in view of the plan for the fullness of times, with view of the redemption of God's own possession. God is not a God who, as he was accomplishing his plan, lost sight of it.

God is not a God who, as time went on, as people were super sinful, and they rejected him, completely lost sight of it. But rather, he is a God with immense intentionality. He's a God with perfect foresight. But what's more, he's a God with perfect power. And through all those means, he's blessed us, front, middle, and end.

Front, middle, end, right? This passage is not just about one way he's loved us in predestination, this passage is about the immense way in which God the Father has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the world. And that's what we're gonna do in this passage. We're gonna talk about the commandment of Christ.

So what is Apostle Paul's command in chapter one? His command is, bless the Lord. Chapter one is actually a command for every single Christian to bless and worship God. And that begins the whole trail of what he's gonna talk about in chapter two, and I'm not gonna go into the work and stuff, no.

Chapter two is all about how he has taken you who are far off, who are far from the commonwealth of Israel, you who had no God, he's brought you near. And you who are dead, he's given you life, right? There's so much more that we can observe from these passages when we see what Apostle Paul is doing in his train of thought.

So, couple things here. Today, again, remember, it was not just a Bible study, but it's about giving careful attention to observe what the passage has to give you. By way of review, look broadly at the whole context by reading a lot. Secondly, outline by process of thought. Sometimes it's already given to you by paragraphs.

Look for theme verses. Thirdly, take each sentence and break it down into grammatical syntax. How does one phrase relate to another phrase? And it shows you the relationships. Once you see those relationships, typically you will see a pattern. You'll see a pattern where Apostle Paul or whoever is writing, especially with these letters, are going to emphasize certain things to you.

If you're reading in the Old Testament and you're reading a bunch of narratives, you have to categorize, hey, I'm not gonna be able to break it down like this, but I will be able to observe categorically, is this section the twist in the plot? Is this section the end conclusion of that?

Is there a resolve? Is there a climax of the conflict in the story? And you get to categorize different parts of the narrative. And then lastly, once you see the emphasis, you can start making your summary. Oh, I think I get the heart of this passage. I think I understand the command, right?

I think I understand what he's driving you towards. And when you understand that, then you can make your conclusions. Then you can sit there and be like, oh man, how do I apply this, right? Because if you understand predestination out of the context of his love, it's going to be to you, oh, what?

How does that work with my free will? The point of him telling you he's predestined you is to show you how much he's lavished his love on you. Don't question predestination. It's his love for you, right? You see what I'm saying? Okay, with that said, I hope that was an encouragement and a challenge to you of how to make better observations of the scriptures.

If you guys have questions, please let me know. But there's a couple things I want to say in terms of takeaways in thinking about that, okay? Nice, always forget some part of life. God has blessed us with his love, which he poured out with his might, power, wisdom, insight, intention, and will, okay?

Bless the Lord, amen. Now, a couple things to think about, okay? At Berean, you know, again, this is tied to our second vision. Berean is not the one expecting you to observe scripture. It's God, yes? But sometimes I feel a timidity within people who are thinking, like, I know, but like, interpretation's hard.

I'm gonna tell you honestly, the vast majority of scripture is not hard to interpret. It's not. Are there very difficult portions of scripture that are hard to interpret? Like, what is this? Yes, there are. But the vast majority of scripture is repetitive, right? The vast majority of scripture, and we believe in the perspicuity of scripture, meaning the clarity of scripture that's going to be evident to you.

There's a normal reading where you read it because it was meant for you to understand. Should we be submitted to Christ and have the Holy Spirit? God wants you to know. And the reason, and the encouragement I want to give to you is if you have that timidity, don't think, like, oh my goodness, I have to be, like, you know, a scholar in this, and I'm gonna have to read all these commentaries, and I have to interpret this based on the four different views.

Wrong. What I want you to do is think, I have to read this over and over and over again, and all I'm doing is summarizing my observation, right? It's that simple. What you're doing is you're doing multiple layers of observation, and you're summarizing your observation, saying, hey, this is what I saw.

What I saw was that in every blessing that we have, there was an incredible intentionality that this is all to the praise of God. That's a great, great observation. And therefore, whatever you argue with another individual is derived from your observation of the text. That's how it needs to operate, not just on a church-wide level in preaching, but that's how it needs to operate in the individual level in your own Bible study.

Everything needs to be from your own observation in what you see in the scripture, okay? And since Pastor Aaron gave us a great message on what is expository preaching, I'm not gonna go into that in detail, but again, even the way you expect, I just wanna say this, though.

Even in the way that you expect expository preaching to happen, there's been this kind of weird, I don't know, like expectation that expository preaching should have with it, Greek grammar, and to say like, oh yeah, you know, this word, epiphemia or whatever, means this, and then you're like, oh yeah, expository preaching, let's go, right?

No, no, no, no, no. Expository preaching is just simply to expose to you that observation. And earlier, when I talked to you about finding the relationship between not only the syntax, but the paragraph to paragraph, and the pastor exposes that to you, that's expository preaching. When you're going through the text and emphasizing what the passage emphasizes to you.

The reason why I say that is because within Bible teaching churches, what I find is there is a diminishing and reducing and oversimplification of expository preaching as it needs to make sure that every single word is accounted for, and that's it. No, no, no, no, no. Good expository preaching should emphasize to you, sometimes it'll sort you and convict you, sometimes it'll break you and make you cry, right?

Sometimes it'll make you so emotional you don't know what to do with yourself, sometimes it'll make you so hopeful you'll just be like, coming out with a smile on your face. That's all dependent on what? The content of the passage. So expository sermons will not look exactly the same one to another.

And we kind of have to understand that because I feel like within Bible teaching churches, there is a misconception that expository sermons has to look exactly this way. It's not true. Expository sermons should actually reveal to you the relationships, the emphasis, and the heart behind the passage, okay? Let's take a moment to pray and wrap up our session.

Heavenly Father, we thank you, God, that today we got to take a look at Eden's chapter one. And Lord, we want to say, God, we have been so blessed by you. We have been so thoroughly loved by you. And God, we want to thank you. Lord, we recognize that oftentimes, just as children don't appreciate because we just don't see what we weren't alive for.

We don't see what you're doing sometimes without our eyes seeing. But God, as you reveal it to us in the scripture, we believe it and we want to thank you so much. I pray, Father God, that as you have given us then the revelation of your will, you've given us the intent of your heart, you've given us your own longing to have us as your possession.

We just want to respond by saying, God, we give you all of ourselves and we love you. And although, Father God, we repent of the fact that sometimes our love is so weak, we want to love you all the more. And I pray we would do that by carefully searching for you in your scripture.

We thank you, it's in Christ, let me pray. Amen. - Amen. - Okay, thanks everyone. You guys are dismissed for the next.