The goal of this Bible study is to get you to study it and to kind of guide you through. So I am going to give you some guidance. I'm going to answer some of your questions. So hopefully my guidance is going to give you some direction as to where the text is going, what to highlight, what to point, what are some hermeneutical principles as we are studying through it that you should know.

The majority of it is going to be you doing your homework and coming. So just to kind of give you a heads up, and I'm going to tell you this again next week, when you come next week, you're going to start with your small group. You're going to get into your small group and you're going to start with your small group.

So if you're in a habit of coming 10, 15 minutes late, you're going to miss your small group every single week. If you can't come for whatever the reason, let your small group leaders know ahead of time so that they'll know that you're getting off work late and you're always going to be here at 7.15 or however that's going to work.

But if you're just kind of coming in, strolling in late because you grabbed dinner and you went to go get some boba or something and you're always coming 10, 15 minutes late, the Bible study format is going to be in such a way where you're going to miss a good chunk of what the Bible study is if you miss that part of it.

So I'm just going to give you a heads up. I don't mean to scare all of you, but again, the purpose of this Bible study is to get you to kind of know what it is that you signed up for. So today's Bible study, I'm just going to give you an overview.

And then I'm going to have you guys get into your groups and do some study on your own. Let me pray first and then we'll jump right in. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the blessing that we have in you. We thank you for your living word that causes us to see you, to understand your heart.

We pray, Father God, that your thoughts, your intentions, your will, all of it, Lord, would be revealed as we study your word. We pray for your blessing. And I know that many of us may come into this room already distracted because of work and various things that are going on in our lives.

I pray that our refreshment may be found in your word, that it would be an opportunity for us to recalibrate our thoughts and priorities according to your word. We pray for your blessing and your Holy Spirit's guidance. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. Oh, it's working back here.

Okay. All right. So all of this is on your, you know, the two-page outline that you have. That's all on there so you don't need to take any notes. I wanted you to have this because you're going to have to use this for your study. So hold on to this, but I'm going to go over it real quick.

First of all, I'm going to introduce you to the purpose of the class. It's to learn how to study the Bible on your own without having to depend on others to feed you. So unlike the other Bible studies and Sunday messages, the purpose of this is to get you into the word of God.

And being a listener isn't enough. Again, I forgot the exact numbers, but you know, there's listening, there's reading, there's memorizing, there's meditation. I forgot one. Teaching. Anyway, so the listening portion of it, if the only intake of God's word is listening, the retention of God's word is probably less than 3%.

And then as time goes by, whether it's a month or two months, it's less and less. That means a very small portion. As much as so many of you said that Leviticus was eye-opening, if all you remember from that is from what you heard, give it about six months and it's going to be very, very vague to you.

You're not going to retain any of that. And so the goal of this is to get you into the word of God so that you don't say, "You know what? The church hasn't been teaching me the word of God." You shouldn't be starving to death because you haven't heard God's word in a while.

Because you have God's living word. So you know the saying, "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and get him off your back to stop begging other people for food." So something like that. So that's our goal, is to get you off my back.

So B, to handle the word of God carefully and accurately. First Timothy 4.16 and second Timothy 2.15. I'm not going to read that now, but basically Paul says to teach the word of God, to watch your life in doctrine carefully. And so we want to make sure that what we understand of God's word is not dependent upon the culture you're at.

So if you're born in a Baptist church, you become a Baptist. If you happen to go to a Presbyterian church, you're a Presbyterian. You shouldn't make doctrinal convictions based upon your environment and who you like and what pastor you like to hear. It should be based upon what you see in God's word.

And so you have to be able to handle the word of God and even at times to disagree with me. If you never disagree with anything that I've ever said, you're probably not studying the word of God. Because I've sent some controversial stuff. So if you disagree with anything I've ever said and you've been here more than two, three years, you're probably not thinking critically.

I'm not asking you to disagree with me. I'm just asking you to think critically. The word of God has to be understood in this order. And this is where bad theology comes from. When you begin to gain theology and you got this order mixed up. The four things, and I mentioned this, and I'm going to mention this over and over and over again throughout the years.

Right understanding of the Bible first has to come from exegesis. Exegesis of what we are going to be doing. What we're trying to do in Bible study. It has to come from careful analysis from verse by verse by verse. If you understand your Christian life simply based upon topics.

A pastor is giving a topic about love, a topic about generosity, a topic about being good, a topic about unity. What does the Bible teach about that? You would never know because you don't know if that's coming from that man's personal experience or if it's from God's word. You can learn topically all your life and never really understand what God's word says.

You're going to be absolutely dependent upon what that person says. It has to be from exegesis. Whatever doctrinal statement you come from, "Well, where did you get it?" "Well, I happened to grow up in a Baptist church." That's not a good reason to be a Baptist. Or "I had this pastor that I really liked." What if that guy commits adultery?

Your whole doctrinal position falls apart because you like that guy and then now you can't trust him. So your convictions has to come from what you see in Scripture. You see in Scripture, not what I see in Scripture, not what we collectively see, what do you see? So when Jesus asks you, "Who do you say I am?" You individually have that answer.

You can't be dependent upon the leaders to answer the questions for you. If a Jehovah's Witness comes into this church and challenges you of the identity of Jesus Christ and you've been a Christian for more than two, three years and you can't refute his doctrine, you're still an infant.

It doesn't matter how many mission trips you've been to. It doesn't matter how many small groups you've led. You're still an infant because you're dependent on somebody else to protect you. So all the more, as the day is drawing near, there's more and more bad doctrines, more and more bad teaching, more and more false prophets that are coming out.

And the reason why they're very effective is because they're very good at it. So if you don't learn how to handle the Word of God accurately by yourself, there's going to come a time when the leadership is going to disappoint you and your whole doctrinal disposition is going to be challenged because you don't respect the leaders.

Your spiritual life should not fall apart because we disappoint you. So we need you to get into the Word of God on your own. So it has to start with exegesis, and then from exegesis leads to systematic theology. Give me an example of a systematic theology. Some of you guys know what these terms are.

Some of you guys may be hearing this for the first time. Exegesis, just to put it simply, is just careful study of God's Word from verse by verse, what we are doing. What is systematic theology? A collection of the things that you've studied that point us to something collectively about God.

So give me an example of systematic theology. Trinity, right? The word Trinity does not exist in the Bible, but the doctrinal statement Trinity is a collection of study of the identity of Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. And when you put it all together, we have the doctrine of Trinity, right?

Or God's sovereignty, right? Election, justification. These are all doctrinal statements that comes from a careful study of all the collective passages we see in Scripture. And then when we say, "What does the Bible say about salvation?" Then you can give systematic theology, right? So exegesis is from the text.

Systematic theology is the collection of it, right? What is historical theology then? What has been passed down to us from the church fathers, right? So the doctrines that we have didn't just pop out of the sky. It was handed, the word of God was given to the early church and they wrestled with it.

So we have 2,000 years of Bible scholars who've been wrestling through the original language, refuting back and forth, fighting with false doctrines, and then have decided that this is not biblical, this is biblical. This is orthodox, this is unorthodox. So that's not where we get our final authority. But it would be wise to make sure that whatever doctrinal statements that we come up with, that it doesn't contradict historical theology.

Does that make any sense? No? Okay. Does that make sense? So historical theology is part three where we're comparing. So if somebody comes up and says, "You know, I believe this about God and it contradicts historical theology," he's probably wrong, right? A person did not all of a sudden 2,000 years later find something new that 2,000 years of study of God's Word did not find.

It doesn't mean it can't happen, but 99.999%, you're probably the one who's wrong, right? So that's where it's historical theology. And then philosophical theology is how do we make sense of it? If God is sovereign and man is responsible, how does this work? And trying to understand how the Bible fits together is philosophical theology, where we're trying to philosophically make sense.

How does God's righteousness and His mercy exist together, right? Does that make sense? Now, the reason why this is so important, this is where bad theology comes in, and see if you can recognize this kind of logic, right? I don't know if homosexuality is wrong. Why? Because I have gay friends and they're very moral people.

They're very kind and they're very upright people. So I can't believe that God would condemn such nice, kind people, and some of them are more moral than a lot of the Christian friends we have. So the Bible can't possibly be teaching that. So they go back to the Scripture and they look at certain things.

See, God says to love, and then maybe that's not what God says, right? So they're taking a philosophical issue of how do we reconcile, right, a condemnation of a group of people that seems to be nice, and then God says salvation is found in Christ and Christ alone. And again, if you reject the inerrancy in the Word of God, you reject Christ.

So how do you reconcile these things? And so a lot of times bad theology comes from our own perception of what we think is right or wrong. And then we go back to Scripture and then make the Scripture fit our philosophical theology. Does that make sense? So bad theology typically comes from thinking, trying to think logically and then working back to Scripture.

Okay? Now this is extremely important because you're probably being tested now. Maybe some of you are wrestling with it already because you've had conversations with your friends who've challenged you. How can you be that bigoted if these nice, moral, upright, generous, kind people, how can they be condemned in the Word of God, right?

So again, we have to make sure if we believe the Word of God is the Word of God, our right and wrong has to first come from the Word of God, not your sense of right and wrong, but God's sense of right and wrong. And that's why it has to start from exegesis, right?

You may reject the Word of God, but you cannot change the Word of God. You understand what I'm saying? I can tell you that this wall is beige, and you can say that you don't like beige, but you can't say it's not beige. Is it beige? Is it yellow?

Okay? You understand my point, right? You understand my point? The problem is they see Scripture, they don't like what it says, and then they say that's not what it says. You can't do that, right? You can reject what it says and say, "I don't believe that. I don't think that's fair.

I don't believe that this is God's Word." You can say that. That's your prerogative whether you believe it or don't believe it, but you can't go back to Scripture and say that Bible does not say that because you don't like it, right? So exegesis is a careful study of God's Word to find out what it says.

If you choose to believe it, not believe it, that's another issue, right? But we don't change what it says because you like it or don't like it. So the study of exegesis, our doctrinal statements all come from exegesis, which leads to systematic theology, which leads to historical theology, right, which kind of connects us to historical theology, then we can have conversations about in our application time, what does this mean in the life of a Christian, right?

How do we share this with non-Christians? How do we reconcile this, right? Hopefully that makes sense. I'm going to say this over and over again. As long as you're at church, I'm going to make sure that this is pounded in because that's how bad doctrine comes in, right? I know people that I've studied the Word of God with years, and then all of a sudden, I don't see them for years, and they come back, and they say, again, their logic, their theology has gone way astray, and I asked them how that happened, and it always starts with, you know, how can God be fair if He does this, and they work backwards to Scripture, right, instead of arguing from Scripture, okay?

So we want to make sure that you know what the Word of God says. Observation, interpretation, application, okay, and this is basically what we're going to be working through, and this is probably where we're going to be doing most of our work is the observation, is getting you in the habit of asking and observing and interpreting, right?

So that's the part I'm going to ask you to do, right? So if you've never done this before, you say, "I don't know if I can do this. You know, I've never even read the Bible through one time. Like, how am I going to do this?" We're going to break it down so that everybody, at least at the end of Colossians, you know what kind of questions to ask and how to interpret the passage, okay?

So observance stage, we observe the passage, it says, "Answers who, what, where, why, when, how of the text." Pretty easy. Who? Paul. Who did he write it to? Colossians, right? And then if you read a couple of times, you should already know why he wrote it. What is the theme, right?

Where is Colossians? If you look it up, Google it, it's easy, right? Years ago, I had to go to the library and find out an atlas and then find where it was and it took me an hour to find out. Now you just have to say, "Colossians," and it just pops up in an image, right?

So it's easy. So we're going to talk a lot about that part of it. Second part of it, interpretation. Once we've made all the observations, what does it mean? You can't go to what does it mean before you made any observations. You understand what I'm saying, right? It's kind of like trying to figure out what somebody said without listening to everything that they have to say.

You're just kind of jumping in the middle and then it's like, "Oh, that's what you meant." So observation part is making sure we're doing our homework before we say, "This is what it says," right? And then the application part. If it does not lead to application, that's not Christian study.

The purpose of Christian study is never to simply know, right? It's to know so that we can do. It's to obey. So we're not studying scripture like we're at a museum just enjoying fine art. We just happen to like theology. If it doesn't lead to obedience, it leads to arrogance.

And it always leads to one or the other. It fills you with pride, thinking, "I know better," and look at all those other people don't know what I know, and it actually ruins you, right? But the purpose of Christian Bible study is always to lead to application. And so at the end of every Bible study, we're going to give you time for application like we've been doing through Leviticus, okay?

Keys to good observation, ask as many questions as possible. Become a child. Even silly questions, even questions that you think are dumb, right? Just ask the question. If you're curious, ask the question, right? I've always found the people who are the most curious are the best Bible students. People who ask the most, "Why is this?

Why is that? How come this is? How come that is?" And it may sound annoying, but those are the people who learn and grow. But people who just kind of accept whatever it is, they're always at the exact same place. They never mature and they never really grow, right?

So the first part of Bible study is asking as many questions as possible. So we're going to give you an opportunity to do that. And we're going to have you constantly practice asking questions, thinking critically, right? And I know some of you guys don't like to think critically because, you know, you just kind of like, "Well, just tell me what to do.

I've heard that so many times." You know, like, "Just what is it you want me to do?" The point of it is not to get you to simply jump from point A to point B. You need to know why. If you don't know why, what later on isn't going to be enough.

You understand what I'm saying? If you don't understand why God wants you to do something, eventually you're going to lose motivation and you're going to become a Pharisee. You're just jumping through hoops without knowing why. Look for who, what, why, where, and how. Take some small chunks at a time.

I'm not going to ask you here. You're going to have some time to do Bible study in your small groups. My guess is a lot of you, a Bible study is reading one chapter a day. Or you read through the Bible three chapters, like if you're diligent. There's a huge difference between understanding the Bible from big chunks at a time, right?

Let me tell you the difference, and I think it's a very good analogy. There's about 140, 150 people in this room. Now if you've been at a church for a while, my guess is you'll probably know about 50%, 50 to 60% maybe. Maybe if you're good, maybe about 80, 90%.

You'll know the people in this room. But how well do you know them? Some of them you're very close with, and some of them you're acquaintances with. Some of them you've just seen their face. You know that they go to this church, but you don't really know them. So from a distance in a large group, you know them, but you don't really know them.

The people that you are intimate with are either they were your roommates, you grew up together, you went to missions, you spent intimate time with them very personally. And that's how you got to know them. You were in a small group, or you did one-to-one, or whatever it may be, right?

Bible study is the same. If all you know about the Scripture is in a large context, and you're just kind of serving, I'm not saying serving the Bible, you'll know major themes topically. God is good. God died for us. Everything God wants us to be holy. You know these major themes, but you don't know the details intimately.

And so that's why it's important for us that when we study the Bible, that you don't just understand the large themes in the Bible, but the details and how those things came together. And that's why inductive Bible study is so important. I know some of you guys memorizing through the Book of James.

I'll bet you some of you guys have done quiet time, many times through the Book of James, but memorizing it all of a sudden, you notice things that you probably never noticed before. And you probably looked at that passage and heard sermons about that so many times, but all of a sudden, there are certain words in there, there are certain phrases that you see repeated and connected that you probably didn't notice before, if you're memorizing Book of James.

Because you're looking at it much more intimately than you did before. And the book will begin to come alive when you are that intimate with that book. And so inductive Bible study is kind of like that, is to get us to go deeper. And this is why, again, I say, if you're coming to be spoon-fed, you're going to be disappointed because I'm not going to spoon-feed you.

I'm going to teach you how to eat. The goal of the inductive Bible study is not quantity, but quality, as I've been mentioning. Look for the following as you read, background and context. And that's the part that I want you to hold on to this sheet as we're doing the study.

What is the background? What is the context? Constantly looking. Who are the key people that are involved? Who are the two key people that are mentioned right off the bat? Paul and Timothy, right? He mentions a bunch of people's names at the end of chapter four, and we'll go and take a look at that later.

But who are the key people? What are words that are emphasized? Like, "Indeed," "verily," "truly," like Jesus says a lot of these things. When these things, when you see these things, it means to slow down and take a look. When certain things are repeated, right? Like, six things God hates, seven things God detests.

He's not stuttering. It's meant for us to slow down. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord," right? Again, He's not stuttering. It was meant for us to slow down and take this part of it a lot more carefully and with much more weightiness. So when you see certain things or phrases, even in the epistles that are repeated, it may not be repeated right, like, back to back.

Sometimes it may be repeated within the span of maybe five, six verses. You'll see the same words being repeated like 10 times, right? If you remember when we were studying through the book of Romans, by the time we get to Romans chapter six, the word "law" is repeated over 20-some times over there.

So you know just by circling "law," like, that's what Paul is talking about. This whole chapter is about how the law fits into the gospel, right? You'll see that as we're studying. I'm going to have you guys ask, "What are some words that are repeated?" And then when you see that for yourself, you'll see, "Ah, this is Paul's main point," right?

And all the other points are kind of to bolster up this point. And so look for repeated words, okay? Tenses. Is it in the past tense? Is it in the present tense? Is it in the future tense? When he says, "The gospel is foolishness to those who are being saved," right?

No, sorry, God. It's to those who are perishing, and it is the power of God for those who are being saved. You notice the tense there that he uses the present tense, right? So is that significant? Extremely significant. He describes our salvation as an ongoing process. So that's huge in how we understand justification and sanctification.

So asking what tense is being used will highlight certain major doctrinal things that you may have missed in the past. So what tenses are being used? Is it a statement or a command, right? Is it simply saying that this is who God is, or is it saying you need to do this?

Is it an imperative, or is it an indicative, right? How you read that passage and how that passage is applied will differ tremendously based upon if it is a command or is it a statement, right? What genre is it in? Is it poetic? You know, a lot of people get into trouble when they study the book of Proverbs, and then because they take it as a command, right?

It's a wisdom literature, and wisdom literature is giving wise sayings. It doesn't mean that God's going to do this, right? That if you raise up a child in the Lord that He will not stray, that meaning that if you did quiet time and did family worship that He will never stray from God.

Is that a promise? No, it's wisdom. It's life lesson. It is not a command. It is not an imperative saying if you do this, and then it says, "Well, God said He would not stray. Why is my son straying?" Because it's a wisdom saying. It is not an imperative, right?

So what genre is it in? Is it descriptive or prescriptive? And this is huge, right? The difference between a descriptive and prescriptive is descriptive is just telling you what happened, right? So here's a, again, common mistake that people make. They read the book of Acts. They got together, they prayed, and the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

They began to speak in tongues. And so therefore, every time we pray, we should be speaking in tongues. Is that what Acts chapter 2 teaches us? No, it's descriptive. It's telling us what happened. It's not telling us what to do, right? That's the difference between a narrative, something that God is recording, something that has happened, versus telling us this is what you ought to do, right?

So descriptive is, is it describing something? Prescriptive, is it telling us something? You have to make the distinction between the two, okay? Bad application, a lot of times comes from that. Purpose of words such as "for," "so that," "in order that," "since," "because," "therefore," these are all words that connect sentences to other parts.

So whenever you see the word "therefore," if you don't know the previous passage, you're not going to understand the next passage, right? One of the biggest "therefores" in the New Testament is Romans chapter 12, verse 1. "Therefore, in view of God's mercy," 11 chapters. So if you didn't study 11 chapters, you're not going to get the same impact that Paul intended in Romans chapter 1 and chapter 12, 1 and 2.

So watch out for these key words, because these words point to something else, okay? Again, you're not going to know all of this. I'm going through this real quick, because I want you to -- these are things that you're going to be practicing as we are observing and asking questions, okay?

Keys to accurate interpretation is thorough observation of the context, the historical context, okay? You may not know it, but all of our communication is almost always first from where we are, because that's what you hear, right? So if you said -- again, if you said "bomb," depending on what generation you grew up in, that word "bomb" is going to sound very different, right?

If you happen to be, you know, during World War II, where the nuclear bomb was dropped, you'd be "da bomb," the nuclear bomb, right? Or if you happen to be a younger generation, "da bomb" meaning like something nice or great or cool or something, right? It meant something different, so everybody hears it based upon your cultural context.

You have to make sure that when you're studying the Bible that you make an effort to hear from their context, right? When the Bible says, "Slave, obey your master," the natural culture -- our culture is going to hear that from the atrocities that were committed by slave traders in modern history.

So natural question that they ask is, "How can God allow this?" Because they're taking what they knew and then projecting it back into the Bible. So when he talks about slavery, what was slavery like in the New Testament? Was it an evil institution where people were forced into slavery like the modern history?

Again, I'm not going to answer that for you. That's the thing that I'm asking you to do. You have to go back and understand it from their cultural context. Understand? Okay? So that you don't project and say, "They did this, and how come they're doing that?" From our cultural context.

So first is historical context. Our cultural context, right? Every time, if you've ever gone through cross-cultural evangelism, you know that you have to understand how to share the gospel in that context. Like Pastor Alex said many times that in China, when they talk about sin, they hear criminal. And so you kind of have to explain to them what sin is because automatically they say criminals.

"I'm not a criminal." That sounds very different. It's like, "Are you a sinner?" Like, "Are you a criminal?" So if I ask you, "Are you a criminal?" Most people will say, "No." "Are you a sinner?" Most people will say, "Yes." And so you have to understand the context. So the cultural context in which that was written, are we interpreting it based upon how they understood it?

And then in the context of the rest of the scripture, nothing written in the New Testament is independent of other passages. You have to look at all 66 of the Bible, the letters, as one author and one theme. You understand what I'm saying? It is about God's redemptive history of mankind.

It's about the preparation of coming Christ. It's about Christ, and it's about Christ who has come and his second coming. So all of scripture has to be connected to that. So if your interpretation has nothing to do with Christ, you probably are not getting the main point. It doesn't mean that every single word, every single passage has to mean Christ.

But if the collective understanding of your interpretation doesn't add to an understanding of redemptive history in Christ, you probably missed the point. And then obviously the context of the immediate letter. So you never take a word or a verse without understanding the chapter and the book, because that's where bad theology comes in.

People jump into Colossians chapter 3 and then say, "This is my verse for this year." And then say, "Well, what comes before? What comes after? Why did he write that? What did he mean by that?" You don't know any of that. You're just projecting what you think that word means, right?

You would never read any letter, any book. You would never walk in the middle of a movie and watch a movie that way. But for whatever the reason, when we study the Bible, people are in the habit of jumping right in the middle and then claiming certain things without knowing the context.

So context, context, context, context. All right, so I'm going to hurry through this because I'm going to go through this real quick and I'm going to talk about it more later. Sixth question, "Is there an example for me to follow? Is there a sin to avoid, promise to claim, prayer to repeat, command to obey, verse to memorize, and then is it practical?

Is it personal?" This is an aspect that, again, every week after we do our analysis, we're going to ask you guys to make an effort to, like, what does this mean? Before you ask the question, "What does it mean to me?" You have to ask the question, "What does it mean first?" So all of the hermeneutic stuff that we talked about, after you've done that, you ask, "What does it mean for me?" We don't start with this.

We end with this. All right, that part, we'll get to it later. All right, so this is the part where I'm going to have you guys come and help. So take out the four chapters. Again, like I said, today is going to be a bit different than the other weeks.

Okay. All right, so the first thing I want to do is take out your sheet and I want to go over, before we jump into the actual verses, we want to get an overview, understanding of what it says. And so I'm going to work through the first chapter with you, and then I'm going to ask you guys to do chapter two.

And then we're going to see, I'm going to have you guys do the study. So again, I know some of you guys may not have done this in the past. Maybe you just came in here and said, "Yeah, I don't want to study." Wrong Bible study. All right, I'm going to have no mercy.

This is because I'm going to get you to study. So take out the things. So what I want you to do is we're going to try to outline, and I don't think we're going to go through all four chapters, but we're going to try to outline this first chapter first.

So as you're reading it, what I want you to do is, again, read on your own. Don't look at me. Read your... That's why I got the printout. If you don't have a pen, go get a pen. Okay? And I'll give you an example. So when we read together, "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father." So what I want you to do is when you look at the first two verses, that's the introduction.

Right? And I'm going to do that one for you. So you bracket that together and say, "That's the introduction." So where is the next bracket should be? Read that on your own and find the next paragraph. Don't go too far. Just find the next one. Don't cheat. It doesn't help you to just copy someone's paper.

I want you to know what's in Colossians. So where do you think the next outline is? Okay, 3 to 8. That's what I have too. What would you title that? Hmm? Okay, Thanksgiving. Keep going. If you have an opinion as to where the next outline should be, I'll give you a chance to see.

Raise your hand and let me see. Okay. Okay, 9 through 12. And what would you title that? Okay. So far I have the same thing. Keep looking. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Where's the next section? Okay. 13 to 18. Anybody have anything different? Okay, 13 to 20.

Is that what you have? Okay. Which one are you going to go with? All right, 13 to 20. All right. Okay, and how did you name that? What? You can't read my writing? Or I just put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, so I'm going to put -- Okay, salvation.

Okay, I'll just put salvation there. And then the last section, what would you title that? Okay. Okay. Just look up here for a second, okay? So this is what I want you to do through the book of Colossians as homework. Okay? I'm not going to have you -- For the sake of time, I'm not going to have you guys do this now.

But before we jump into what Paul is saying in verse 2 and 3 and 4, you need to know where he's going with this. Right? Instead of me just telling you, "Hey, this is what Paul is saying," if you see it for yourself where Paul is saying -- What is his argument?

What is verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? What does that argument ultimately lead to? What is his thesis? If you don't understand his thesis and you're just trying to dissect, right? If somebody gave a speech and you're just jumping in and you're just hearing the first few words that he said in the beginning of the speech and trying to analyze what he meant by those words, you're not really going to get the full impact.

You understand what I'm saying? You have to know what the speech was about so that you can go back and look at the sentences that he used to bolster up his main point. Right? So, it's not enough for me to tell you that this is what Colossians is about.

It's different when you see it for yourself. "Oh, this is what Paul is saying." So that when we jump into verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, that you know how this is connected to the rest of the book. Right? Okay? So, some of you guys are already kind of like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know if this is what I want to do." Right?

This is what we're doing. Okay? So you have to come in. You have to dive into the Word of God. You can't be a Berean because you became a member. You're not a Berean because you became a member. Because we're trying to teach the Bible from the pulpit. You have to know what the Word of God says yourself.

Right? And so, that's one part of it. And I'm going to ask you guys to study it in that way. And let me just tell you, I was a Bible major undergrad, and then I went to seminary afterwards, and then I started preaching topically probably for the first five or six years of my ministry.

I knew verses. I memorized two verses every single week for the first six, seven, eight years of my life. I mean, my Christian life, because that was what my Bible study leaders told me to do. My theology completely flipped when I began to teach the Bible from book to book to book.

And I didn't do that because I was convicted. I did that because I was running out of topics. Yeah, because how many times am I going to preach on lordship? How many times am I going to preach on finance and about being holy? And I can give all these topics, and I knew that well.

Like, I probably had about 20 sermons that I could have just-- if somebody said, "Hey, go and give a, you know, like, seven sermons on this topic," I could have just kind of did it, because I did six, seven years if that's all I was doing. And then I started preaching through John.

That was the first book I started to preach through. And then I started preaching through Philippians. And then from Philippians, I remember jumping to Thessalonians, and first and second Thessalonians, and went to James. So I remember very chronologically. By the time I got to about a third to a half of the New Testament, my paradigm of how I understood God completely changed.

And I realized that so much of what I thought the Bible said, that's not what the Bible said at all. And I--it just completely transformed. And so that's what kind of scared me, because I could live my whole Christian life hearing topical sermons and memorizing verses here and there, thinking that you understood what the Bible says, right, without really knowing what it says.

And that's why this is so important that just because you've heard expositional preaching for ten years doesn't mean you know the Bible, right? You know what I know, but you don't know the Bible, right? You have to study the Bible on your own. You have to study the Bible.

I can't emphasize this enough. Being a member at a Bible-teaching church doesn't make you a Berean. You're not any more protected from bad doctrine that's coming in if you don't know how to handle the Word of God yourself. So if you're in a regular habit of not coming to the Word and you're enjoying the fellowship of the church, right, I guarantee you there's going to come a time when your friendship is not going to be enough.

Then you're going to realize that you had no faith at all, right, because you're being propped up by external things in the church, but it's not about your personal walk with God. So again, I can't emphasize this enough. If you are not in the habit of studying the Word of God, this is a good time to start.

All right, so the next part, before I break you up into small group, is I want--again, your first homework is to go through that, all four chapters, and get a good outline. The outline that we have here is the first five weeks of the Bible study. So today we're going to be looking at verse 1 and 2 together just to kind of give you a guideline as to how to do observation.

And then next week, the homework is from verse 3 to 8. And I'm going to give you, again, assignments to what to do before you leave. All right, so let's look at verse 1 and 2 in observation. Okay. So what does the Bible say? All right, so we're not going to be able to practice all of it, but the point of this exercise is to ask as many questions.

It's not to get the answer, so don't raise hands and say, "The apostle means this." Like, I don't want answers. Right? I just want questions. And ask as many questions as possible. So I'm going to give you just two, three minutes on your own. Just look at those two verses, and I want you to jot down as many questions that comes out from those two verses, even if it sounds silly.

Okay? Professor Scott Goudsmith - Once upon a time. So on that piece of paper, write down as many questions as you can. And the more you do this, the better your questions will become. Again, this exercise is not to find the answer, just the questions. Okay, for the sake of time, if you guys can look up for a minute.

So again, this part of it is not for us to find the answers. Any questions, the more questions the better. What are some questions that you have? It's probably better if you share with your small group first. I don't expect good participation in this large group. So in your small group, share the questions that you have with each other.

Okay? I made 150 copies. We have over 175. I know, but on paper we're going to add 120. So there's 15 more people. See if I took more. I made 145 copies. I wasn't planning to. I want them to study. Okay, next week. Okay, next week. Don't let anybody answer.

Okay? Don't let anybody answer. This is just asking. All right. For the sake of time, if you guys can take a look. Okay? If you look at what I did, I put the verses and I divided it into, you know, those key words when I told you about and, by, and, that kind of gives you an idea of the thought flow.

So whenever I do Bible study, I divide the Bible verses like this first. The reason why I do this is because visually I see the outline, even in a sentence, and it helps me to see, like, oh, Paul, who's he talking to, right, in his identities, and an apostle, okay, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother.

So just looking at it visually, instead of seeing it in just one line, seeing it this way helps me to see, okay, oh, that's where his thoughts are. And then to the saints and faithful brethren. So it kind of helps me to dig in a little bit more detail.

Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm not saying you have to do this, but this helps me. So every Bible study, every sermon I give, whatever text I'm studying, this is what I do to the text first. Okay, just to kind of get me to better understand the flow of his thought.

So what are some questions that came up? Just shout it out. Okay, who is Paul? Right? Where is Paul? Where is he writing this letter? Huh? Why are you laughing? Huh? Okay, who is Paul? Where is Paul? Good question. Okay. Where is Colossae? Okay. Who is at Colossae? Who is he writing to?

Okay, what prompted this letter? Okay, good. What is an apostle? That's a very good question. How many apostles are there? Are there 12? Are there 13? Was Barnabas an apostle? Anyway. I heard a moaning, groaning. I didn't hear anything. Go ahead. Okay, why is he distinguishing between saints and faithful brethren?

Okay, good. Who are the saints? Why are they called saints? Huh? What makes them saints? What is the will of God? Okay. What specific things is he referring to when they say they were faithful? Okay. Okay. What does Paul mean when he says in Christ? 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.

When Paul says in Christ, he means this. But when Peter says in Christ, he might mean something different. Right? So the more you study it, the more you're going to be able to gain insight into these questions. Right? Does Paul use the term apostle exclusively to himself? Does he use it to other apostles?

Is this a generic term talking about a messenger? How is he using the word apostle? Is this a generic opening that he uses in every single letter? Or are the other letters that he opens up, does it sound different? Does he give them a different kind of title? And if he does, why does he give this kind of title in this letter and a different title in a different letter?

What is the reason behind it? Which he does. Again, the more you study, the more you ask questions, the more these things are going to make sense. And the more deeper questions you're going to be able to ask. What else? Okay. That's about four or five questions in one.

Okay. Good. What is grace and peace? Was that a common greeting for all Christians? Was that a unique Christian greeting? Did the Gentiles also use this greeting? Right? There's answers to all of these things. Good questions. Keep going. What made them holy? How did they become holy? Okay. Good.

Why did he write to Colossae? What's the purpose of this letter? Okay. Milk it. Just milk it. It's okay. Who's Timothy? Who? Oh, okay. He already knows the answer. Who's Timothy? Like how many other letters does Timothy come out? Right? And give you insight. And obviously he writes letters to Timothy, but where else is Timothy mentioned?

How intimate is Paul's relationship with Timothy? What relationship does he have with him? Did Paul ever visit this church? It's not here. Yeah, you'll find out. But that's a good question to ask. Does he already have a relationship with them? Those are questions that will help out. Right? Here are a couple more before we move on.

Okay. Good. Why does he emphasize God's will? Now, does Paul open up any letter, other letter with the same title? He does. And he mentions the will of God. But it is not the common way he uses it. Why does he use it here and in those letters? There's about two or three different ways Paul opens up letters.

And if you study it, you'll find it is directly linked to why he's writing the letter, who he's writing the letter to. So all of these things are relevant. So even in this just short introduction, then typically you will read and just kind of skim through, "Oh, Paul's saying hi to the Colossians," and you just move forward.

But even in the way that he introduces himself kind of points to what he's going to say. It points to his relationship. It points to why he says it. Why in some letters does he say, "A bondservant of Jesus Christ," and why in some letters he says, "I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ." Right?

Where one speaks, he speaks with authority, and the other one he kind of places him as a servant. Why does he do that? Like what is the purpose of that? What is the tone? How does that set the tone for the rest of the letter? So if you're writing a letter and you say, "Bondservant of Jesus Christ," or "A prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," how does that set the tone for the rest of the letter?

Right? He's a humble servant kind of coming to serve you, and then when he says, "Apostle of Jesus Christ," you can kind of guess why he's setting his authority as an apostle. Why would you think? Probably going to deal with some problems. Right? He's going to be dealing with identity of Christ, Christology.

So he's speaking with some authority. He's not just a bondservant coming and, you know, "What can I do? How can I wash your feet?" He said, "Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." Not my will, but God's will. So what I'm about to say to you, pay attention.

Does it come with that tone, or did I just milk that? So again, as you're studying the Scriptures, you're going to see that even in the way that he opens up the letter, it kind of sets the tone as to, "I'm an apostle talking, pay attention," versus, "Prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," right?

Like, "As humble servant suffering for the sake of the gospel, you know, I'm pleading with you." The tone is very different. Right? So if you've studied the Book of Colossians or you've known anything about the Book of Colossians, you know that this is a book heavy with Christology, and he's dealing with very, like, serious problems that are happening in the early church.

And he never visited this church before, but he's been hearing. He's been hearing about how great this church is, but also there's two specific things that he's dealing with. He's dealing with the Judaizers who are saying you have to become a Jew to be a Christian, which was a problem in many other churches, and he was also dealing with the Gnostics.

So you know how each of the Colossians deals with the Judaizers, the first John deals with the Gnostics, this book deals with both. Right? So if you look at the way he opens up letters, you'll see that Paul typically, when he has something serious to say, he'll mention his apostleship, and then on top of that he says, "By the will of God." This is not me.

What I'm about to tell you isn't something that I've made up or these are not my thoughts. This comes from God's authority. God appointed me to tell you this. Okay? So even in this introduction, if you don't ask questions and you don't dig, you're not going to gain that kind of insight.

So get in the habit of asking, and you'll see. For me, the greatest proof of the inerrancy of the Word of God is the Bible itself, because there's so much in it that if you study it superficially and if you study it simply through commentaries, you'll say the right things without ever being affected by it because that's someone else's study.

Right? But if you get in the Word of God and you begin to ask questions, you begin to unearth things that maybe you didn't understand before, all of a sudden, not just once, but you're going to see how the Word of God is interconnected and the depth of God's Word, and there's no way that this was written by human hands.

Right? Like, how many times can you watch a movie, you know, and then come with different insights? Right? It's like, no matter how much you dig and dig and dig, after a while, you kind of like know everything because you're studying another human being. But when you study the Word of God, there is no end.

The more you dig, the more you realize how deep this is. And then once you begin to realize how deep this is, you begin to see a supernatural authorship that this was not written by man. And this is something that I can't just tell you. I can't give this to you.

This is something that you have to come on your own and begin to dig. Right? So, again, God is a holy God. He didn't lay out there and say, "Anybody remember we talked about that?" He's not going to reveal Himself who's going to be superficially, "Okay, God, talk to me." "Oh, where are you?" "Oh, shh." He doesn't make any sense.

He doesn't reveal Himself to people who are nonchalantly approaching Him. See, if you, what, "Seek me with all your heart," right? So He wants to be found. He wants to reveal Himself to you. But He's going to reveal Himself to people who are hungering and thirsting for Him. Right?

And so that's why I want you to get to the Word of God because the primary way that I know that this is God's Word is the Word itself. And I'm not saying this because I'm a pastor. If you want to meet with God, you have to get into the Word.

Your small group is not going to cut it. Your mentor is not going to cut it. The only thing that they can do is help you get to the Word of God. But if you could meet with a mentor all your life and never get to the Word of God, you'll love your mentor, but you'll never love the Lord.

So, again, even in this short verse, there's so much. Even what we just talked about scratched the surface because we asked the questions here, but the more you dig, the more you're going to see how this is connected to the other parts of the Bible. All right. So if you can go to the-- Can we switch back to the PowerPoint?

All right. So today's Bible study is unique because this is an introduction to get you started. So this is how the format of the Bible study is going to be. So, again, for homework, finish up outlining for the rest of Colossians, chapter 2, 3, 4, 5--no, 4, and then ask at least five important questions of Colossians 1 through 8, hopefully more than five.

We came up with about 10, 15 questions in two verses, so you should come up with five easily. So the discussion questions, verses 3, 4, and 5-- I'm going to have you guys in your small group and take some time to discuss before you end. But here's how the Bible study format is going to be.

When you come next week, have a seat. We're going to start with worship. Then after the worship, you're going to go straight into your Bible study. So verses 3 to 8, whatever discussions or insights that you have, you're going to go and take some time to share that. While you are sharing that, I'm going to have the small group leaders text me.

While you are discussing, these are some questions that we have about this text. 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, and then I'm going to try to give you some guidance on top of that.

Does that make sense? So instead of me telling you, "Look at this first, and look at this, and connect it to this," I'm going to go off of your study, and I'm going to try to guide you through your study. And while we're doing that, I'm going to try to teach you hermeneutical things that you should be looking for.

Instead of me telling you all the principles and then just kind of go at it, I'm going to be sharing that as we're going along. So you're going to come and do the study, do the discussion, and I'm going to give you about 40, 45 minutes to do it first.

I'm going to come in about 30 minutes, and I'm going to do my portion of that through those studies, and after the 30 minutes, I'm going to get you back into your application part. Does that make sense? That's going to be the format from now on. Now, are we going to sit in this format?

I don't know. Do you like this? Okay. Yes? Okay. We'll see. You know, you guys are like crammed, so when you guys go into deep things, it might be hard for you to listen to. 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.

If that doesn't work, we might try to figure something else out, because it might not be conducive to sharing. It would be good for Bible study, but it would not be good for sharing, so we're just going to play it by ear, see what works best. 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.

Okay? All right. So for today, if you can take some time to discuss this, and then before you end, 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 and see if you can come up with about four or five questions, just to kind of get you guys going.

And then next week, to discuss that when you come. Okay? Let me pray for us, and then I'll let you guys go to your small group. Gracious Father, we thank you for your living word. I pray, Father God, for myself, for my brothers and sisters in this room, that we would desire to know you more than the love of our friends, more than our desire to belong somewhere, and to connect, and to be a part of a church.

Lord, we desire to find our rest in you. We want to hear your voice, Lord God, not mine, not older brothers and sisters. We want to hear from you. I pray that the study of Colossians will open our eyes, that we truly may hear your voice, that your children may hear his voice and follow him wherever he goes, to help us, Lord God, in our weakness, open our eyes, cause our ears to hear, that you would truly bless the time that we have.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. (door closing)