4 Steps to Bible Application

Introduction to Hermeneutics and the Evening’s Outline

Board. Welcome everyone to Sovereign Grace Academy, our first zoom class. And tonight we are going to be going on to class number seven on introduction to hermeneutics. And you should be seeing the screen up on your screen, you should be seeing the the keynote presentation.

And it says introduction to hermeneutics. And I'm going to go to our first slide, which is the outline for the evening. The outline for the evening is application part two. And that is four things that we're going to be looking at first is the four steps to application, then we're going to look at the nine questions asked.

Now those are the same nine questions that we asked last week. And this week, we're going to do them. And we're actually going to go through that together. And then ordinarily, we would take a break, but tonight is going to be a little shorter than normal.

So we probably won't take a break, we'll probably just go right through that. And as far as the workbook assignment, we're not going to be going over the workbook assignment tonight. So basically, we're just going to be doing the first two, and then we'll we'll pray at our break.

If anybody has a question about the workbook assignment, I'd be willing to go over it. But I just feel like in this, in this setting, it's going to be hard for us to read through the workbook together.

But if you do have a particular question about your workbook assignment, you can ask it at the end. Everybody understand? Yes. Okay, good. Yep. All right. Reminder of our method. Our method for this class is observation.

Observation is what does it say? What does it say? That's right. Interpretation? What does it mean? Mean? That's right. And then application. What does or how does it apply for our lives or how does it work?

How does it work? Yeah. And the reason why we say how does it work, rather than does it work because it does work. It just is a question of how how how does this particular passage play out in our life.

And that's the three steps to our hermeneutic is observation, interpretation and application. In our last session, we read this from Dr. Hendricks's book, application is the most neglected, yet the most needed stage in the process.

Too much Bible study begins and ends in the wrong place. It begins with interpretation. And it also ends there. Both of those are wrong. It shouldn't begin and end with interpretation, it should begin with observation and should end with application.

Based on last week's lesson, and you can, everybody can feel free to chime in. Why do you think people avoid application? I don't want to do it. That's the simple answer, right? That who said that, Sean?

Yeah, yeah, it's people like their sin more. They like their sin more. That was Matt, right? Yeah. Yeah, people. It's easier to want to continue doing what we're doing than to apply the Bible to our lives and actually have to change.

That's right. That's right. The Bible or I heard a pastor and this has been attributed to several pastors. I don't know who actually said it first, but somebody once said that the Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

And I think that's true. Because in my own life, I know that when I'm, when I'm struggling with a particular sin, or what I'm dealing with a particular sin, I really don't want to be in the Bible, because I don't want to be dealing with Scripture, that's telling me that I shouldn't be doing these things.

You know what I mean? So either the Bible will keep me from sin or sin will keep me from the Bible. All right. Everybody good? Yeah. Okay. All right. So we're going to move on now to part one, four steps to application, four steps to application.

And the four steps that we're going to look at tonight are are coming out of your book. So if you did read in the book, you probably know what these are already. But just for just for the sake of in class conversation, want to go through them now.

And, and start talking about the first step is no. And the two things that we should know whenever we're seeking to apply the text is we should know the text and know yourself know the text and know yourself.

Knowing the text means what is this text really teaching? And also, what is this text not teaching? And I think that that's important, because oftentimes, it's, it's just as important to know what it's not saying, as to know what it is saying, like, for instance, people who often use passages, Jesus is teaching, maybe to say that everyone's going to be healed, because Jesus told a man in the Bible that he would heal him.

And that's not what that's teaching. But that is what some people apply that passage as. And so we have the issue of not only knowing what the text is really teaching, but knowing what it's not teaching.

And then the second part is knowing yourself, assessing our own personal assets and liabilities. Now, I want to talk about those terms for a moment. Because when we think about assets and liabilities, we often think about either a business like a business might have things that are positives and negatives, assets and liabilities.

But we normally don't think about those things regarding our lives. But if we were to take stock of our own life, if we were to take our life and put it into a category of what are the things that we are, that we feel like are positives, and what are things that are negatives, or things that maybe we could say our assets or what God has done in our life to gift us in a certain area, and liabilities, maybe what things we need to be developed in.

These are areas that it can be useful when we're seeking to apply the text, because we can see where God might be working in an area, it doesn't always have to be in the areas where we have liabilities, it can be in the areas where we have assets, God may have gifted us in the area of teaching.

Therefore, when we get to the passages that regard how the word is to be taught, and, and those passages about preaching and those passages, being leaders, those passages can be very important to us. Because that's a place where we have a gifting.

Like, for instance, how many of you know, by heart, James 3 .1? I don't hear anybody. James 3 .1 was don't look it up. I'm asking you may know it by heart. What does it say? Our life or something? No, that's, that's in James, but not James 3 .1.

James 3 .1 is the passage I think every preacher should know by heart. It says, let not everyone assume to be teachers, for teachers will be judged with a greater strictness. And it's translated different ways.

But you guys know that passage now, right? Remember, everyone does not need to be a teacher, because teachers are going to be judged with a stricter judgment. And therefore, your asset may be teaching, but you may you need to realize the the great responsibility that comes with that.

Does that make sense? Okay. All right. And then again, a liability is an area where God needs to develop us. And so understanding yourself helps you to apply the text. And often we do not grow, because we do not know ourselves or we're not honest with ourselves.

I would say the second one is probably even more so that we're often very dishonest with ourselves. We're often in a, we often think too highly or too lowly of ourselves and whatever the particular situation may be.

So the first thing is to know, know the text, and know yourself. And how do you know the text, you do that through the hermeneutics of observation, interpretation, and application, know yourself by assessing your assets and liabilities.

All right, here's a text to go with that what I just said, Romans chapter 12, verse three, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.

But to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Notice what Paul says, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but think with sober judgment.

And I often remind people that we ought not think too highly of ourselves. But also Paul tells us in first Corinthians 12, that we shouldn't think too lowly of ourselves, either the hand shouldn't say to the foot, that I have no need of you remember that.

So we shouldn't think too highly, we shouldn't think too lowly, but we should think with sober judgment, the word sober judgment there, of course, just simply means with a right judgment, a, a thoughtful and true judgment.

And, and that's, again, assessing our strengths and weaknesses. Just make sense.

I'm just I'm just saying I would I would never have associated those two verses. I mean, but that's because I don't know what I don't know what you know. But I would never have associated those two verses.

That's I don't I didn't I don't get it. The hand and the foot thing as in association with thinking too highly of oneself. I mean, I just don't get it. I'm sorry.

No, what I said is the hand and the foot thing is thinking too lowly of yourself. Okay. If a person says I'm not a hand or I'm not a foot, therefore I'm not. I'm you know what Paul says in first Corinthians 12.

He says the hand hand should not say to the foot because I'm not a foot I am or the I can't say the year because I have no sense of hearing you get what I'm saying. We shouldn't think too lowly of ourselves.

Okay, I'm sorry. I hope I'm being clear. Again, this is not the best. Yeah, I.

Guess best way. Oh, no, I'm here. I'm here. And yeah, I just I just would never have thought that. I would have thought that that's part of why we in here. I mean, I would have thought that that reverse was referring to someone else and not wasn't referring to would refer to members like hands and feet that it would be referring to parts of the body but not parts of my body.

Yeah, I just wouldn't have internalized it like that. Surprise. I'm sorry.

No, that's fine. That's fine. Okay. So that's part one, or step one is knowing the text knowing ourselves. Step two is relate and relate simply means to relate the text that we're studying to every area of life to look at the text in light of various areas of life and seek to relate it to each.

So here's a few I have on my notes here. When we're looking at a text, we can ask certain questions. How does this relate to how I worship God? Does this relate to how I treat my spouse? Does this relate to how I spend my free time?

Does this relate to how I spend my money? Does this relate to how I behave in the workplace? Does this relate to how I respond to authority? I mean, any one of those would be a relation where where does this relate in my life?

And how does this relate in my life? I think a big one that I just mentioned was how I spend my money. You know, often oftentimes, we don't realize that how we spend the money that we have shows where our priorities are.

In fact, I heard a pastor one time say, he said, you show me a man's checkbook, and I'll show you what he worships. And that's, you know, that's very powerful. So what's that? I didn't hear. You just stepped on Ross's toes.

That's funny. Great. So we have, you know, all of these questions, show us how to relate the text. And one of the things that I mentioned last week, is not every text, not every text is meant to be emulated, or, you know, not every text is meant to teach a moral lesson in the sense of giving us some kind of moral example to follow.

But sometimes these sometimes texts do show us how to worship God, and or that we should be worshiping God, or we should see God's hand and, and life. And, and so, you know, we have to ask this question, how does it relate?

Does it relate to something? And how does it relate to this thing? And we're not looking to, we're not looking to stretch the meaning of the text past what it what it means. But we are looking to relate it to every area of life.

And the Bible does relate to every area of life, we just have to, the goal is to discover where those relationships are. And so that's, that's the number two is to relate. Number three is meditate. Now, we discussed meditation earlier in this course.

And I said meditation does not mean what we typically tend to mean with like Eastern transcendental meditation, transcendental meditation is when someone tries to clear their mind of all thought, and arrive at an at a place of, of, of Zen, which is a sense of nothingness.

The goal of that is is finding complete clarity. You know, you've heard the term one with the universe. What's that? Oh, we can. I'm hearing an echo, Rebecca, so I'm sorry, I can't, I can't understand.

She was asking me what some of these words are, because they're hidden behind everybody's pictures. So she was trying to figure out what they were. So I was reading it to see if I can figure it out.

I gotcha. I gotcha. I think you can move the pictures. But I don't know. I don't want to mess you up there. But the whole idea of being one with the universe, the universe doesn't have any thought. Universe doesn't have any feelings.

Universe is nothing. In one sense, it's it doesn't have it's it's a cold, dark place and in Eastern religion, and therefore, to be one with it is to be one with nothing. And so this whole idea of meditating, to reach nirvana, to reach nothing is is not what the Bible means when it says meditate, meditate, from a perspective means to think about God, it means to think about the Word of God.

And it means to to ponder and to and to fill our minds with the things of God. And we discussed meditation during the observation process, we wanted to know as much about the text as we could, we said we meditate on the text to learn what it says, and what it means.

And this meditation in the application process is about learning all we can about ourselves in relation to the text. If you read the book you read on page 324, where Dr. Hendricks talked about his friend, who was having a conversation with him, and his friend said, you are behind in your think time, your think time.

And he said, what that meant was he he hadn't he hadn't really sat and thought a lot about, about the Lord and about the things that he should be thinking about the you know, the Bible says for us to think on those things which are good and wholesome and pure.

And, and he says, as he says, quote, true meditation is pondering the truth with a view to letting it help and readjust our lives. I want to I want to say something and I want to know, I want you to know, I'm talking to myself as much as I'm talking to any of you.

But we live in a world right now, where our lives are so filled with constant stimulus and information, that it's hard to find time to just stop and think. And, and we, you know, I read somewhere recently, and it really got my attention.

It said, it said that one of the worst things that we can do is the first thing when we wake up in the morning is pick up our cell phone and open it up and look at it. It said, because we're immediately starting our day with telling our brain that we need to be, we need to be engaged in this in this device.

And therefore, we're sort of training our brains to have that device and be sort of the leader of our day. And everything we do after that is always going back to that device. And I, I've gotten to the point now where first thing in the morning, I reach for my phone, and I have to, I have to consciously tell myself, don't do that.

Pray, don't do that. Open the Word of God. Don't do that. Just meditate, just think, spend five minutes thinking, you know, I.

What's that? Can I ask a question about what you're saying? Because I let me finish my.

Sinclair Ferguson, I think it was who said this. He said, he said, to ask most Christians to sit down for five minutes and think about Jesus is hard, only because most Christians don't have five minutes worth of Jesus in their head.

And I thought that's, that's, that's bold. That's harsh, but it's true. Okay, Matt, ask your question.

So, for me, I wake up and then I go, sometimes I wake up really since I work from home. And when I work with an agency, like, I basically work with a job, but I have to get up at 3am. Anyways, so I have, I used to like get on my phone right away and do all this stuff.

But now the only thing I do is I check because sometimes my work, it's like, back a couple hours, I can go right back to bed. So I check just those messages to see if there's anything saying, hey, we're not starting till later.

And if I don't, if it's just normal, then I'll pray I put it away and I pray I don't check anything else. Just that like, is that I don't know. I don't know if that's a problem. Because like, I, when I first started believing I wanted to make sure I made time to write in the morning, do anything I used to check up on yourself.

And then like, after like 30 minutes, pray. But now it's just to look at those messages and pray right away. Is that? Is that a problem?

No, that's fine. And again, I'm not I'm not saying this is a standard that anybody has to meet. I was just saying for myself, I found it that I was immediately opening Facebook immediately reading messages that didn't matter.

That's one thing if I open up if I if I wake up, and I've got a call from an elder, I got to deal with that right away. Because that's important. Or if I open up my phone, if I wake up and I see that my phone there's a message from somebody at the church, then yeah, I mean, I have to take that.

But what I'm saying, Matt, and I think I think you're you get what I'm saying is, is we we often dive right into the worldly things that don't matter before we stop to think about anything else. And yeah, certainly there are things for our job.

There are things for life that have to be dealt with as soon as we wake up. But. But, but I think you get what I'm saying, right?

Yeah, I don't even answer the message. I just like I said, literally, the only reason I check is because I might be able to get like two extra hours of sleep if that's the case. Yeah, so I don't even answer the message.

It's literally just okay. I'm starting at normal times. And then I go read the prayer. I don't look at any social media and videos. Yeah,.

I would. I'd pay money to get two extra hours of sleep sometimes. I get it. Yeah. All right. So here's a here's a Bible verse to go with this one. Psalm chapter one, verses one and two says, Blessed is blessed man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night. That that's, that's what it is. We, we don't just read the word, so that we know what it says. But we read the word so that we can meditate on it and and apply it to our lives.

And we do that throughout the day. Here's a good visual illustration. The difference between a microwave and a slow cooker. Most of us know that if you cook food in a microwave, it's not going to taste quite as good.

If you cook a roast in the microwave, it might it might cook, but it's not going to taste as good as if you put it in a slow cooker all day. And the the phrase I have in my notes here is quality in quality out.

You know, if we spend time with the word and meditating on the word and put the quality work in, then we'll get a quality, a quality out. And so that's, that's just a good little visual. Most people, their Bible study is a lot like a microwave.

You know, I'm going to put my 20 I'm gonna put my 20 minutes in in the morning. And, and that's it. We can meditate on that, whatever it is, we're studying meditate on that all day. I'll tell you something that I have done recently.

I show you a share of Foskey Foskey lesson. I don't know if I don't know what that means. Let me let me start again. Recently, I, you know, I have to study for my sermon every week. And I study for hours and hours to prepare for the message.

But I've recently begun to do something a little bit differently. And that is every day that I before I preach a text, I've always I've always studied the text. But now it's every day I'm trying to read it almost for fun.

And when I say for fun, I hope that that makes sense. Because, you know, the Bible is is not certainly not a game. But what I mean is I'm just I'm just trying to enjoy the text that I'm in. And and I've been what I what I found is I found a couple of online resources that do the text in drama that that like one is a guy who reads it in different voices.

Another one is one that actually has actors that do the different people. So right now I'm in Genesis. So you got a different person doing Abraham and Sarah. And and I'm gonna tell you, it's been really neat.

Plus, it proved a point because Bobby and I were talking about how I sometimes say names and stuff. Funny. Everybody does. Everybody says the names differently, depending on who you listen to. No, I promise it's Baybel not Babel.

But that doesn't matter. The point is, it's that whole slow cooker mentality because I'm because I'm bathing in it all week long. Because I'm listening to it. And I'm reading it. It's Yeah, like an air fryer.

I can hear y 'all. But it's it really is. It's changed a little bit. I mean, because when I stand up in the pulpit, it's like I've it's like I've been it's just like I've been swimming in this pool all week long.

And when I finally get out and I'm ready to preach, it's like it's all over me. And it really I mean, like I said, I've done this for years. But it's it's very recently have I have I really committed my week to to just to just bathing in it.

And like I said, it's hard. Sorry. No, you're fine. It's hard sometimes because I know you guys all have jobs. You guys all have to go to work and you all have to deal with people and you all have things you have to do.

But finding the text to be in throughout the week is into really slow cook, you know, let it let it be like a slow cooker is really helpful. And you maybe choose the text that you're in in church. I mean, you all you guys all go not all of you go to set free, but a lot of you guys go to set free.

You know, whatever text mark is preaching, spend a few days after he's preached it to to just let it marinate. And so just so that's just a way you know, that's you'll see that application. I think I told the story earlier in class that I tell you guys the second Peter story.

Okay, there was a guy who was having trouble getting he was having trouble with making the Bible come to life for him. And he went, yeah, every day. Yeah, the pastor told him read second Peter every day, he said, for 30 days, and by the end of the like the week, first week, he was talking about second Peter, by the end of the second week, he knew all about it.

By the end of the month, his whole life was wrapped up in second Peter. And it's like, it's just one small book, but it just had his whole life wrapped up because he invested he did that slow cooker thing.

So that's what this is. Yeah, getting getting to. Alright, so number four, number four is practice. As long as the Word of God is just a series of facts and figures, it will not make any impact. It has to be seen as practical, because it is practical.

And this is where I just said, have fun with the Word of God. Dr. Hendricks says this, the Word of God experienced is the Word of God enjoyed. If we can learn to experience it, we can learn to enjoy it and and love the Word.

And you know, the think about how much the writer of the Psalm Psalm 119, how I love your law, Oh, God, how you know, it is my meditation all the day. It's the delight of my heart. It's I love your word.

And that's what we want to develop. And we do that through practice. Scripture was written to train us like athletes and soldiers. And we see these examples in First Corinthians nine, and 25 and second Timothy two and three talks about First Corinthians 925 says every athlete exercises self control and all things they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.

And second Timothy two, three says share and suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. So we see athletes and soldiers being used by the apostle as an example of how we are to treat the scriptures how we're to treat our spiritual disciplines.

And it cannot be successful unless they're implement their learning and put them to use. That's the point. If a guy goes out and throws a football, and he's not going to ever put that to use, he's not going to he's not going to see any value in it.

But if he's got a game coming up Friday, he's going to see value in that because he knows he's got to get ready for that game. And and that's the whole thing is preparing like a soldier preparing like an athlete.

We are in we're in the battle for our lives battle of our lives. And this is our this is our this is our book. This is our this our playbook. And so treating it that way is very important. No doubt you will not be able to put everything to use immediately.

But you can and should look for ways to begin practicing what you read. Ask the question, what in this text can I begin practicing now? And we're going to look at a text in a little while. And we're going to we're actually going to go through tonight.

If time allows, we're going to go through this in the text. But that's the question. How can I how can I put this to use right away? What can I do today? With this text? Excuse me. I am so glad that I'm here and not in front of you all because I'd already would have coughed on you a lot.

So thank you. Thankfully, I'm not. Dr. Hendrick says this too much application stays at the level of good intentions because we talk about the end of the journey without specifying when where and how we're going to take the first step.

And that and that's a that's a good point. Because what he's talking about here is he's talking about application without a plan. Okay, we're going to apply this text, but we don't have a plan for how to apply it.

We're going to apply this text, we don't have any idea how that's going to look or what that's going to look like. And so in a minute, when we get to the actual text, we're going to apply tonight, I want to start looking at some action action items.

What can we do to apply this? How can we apply this immediately? And, and that's what that's what we're going to look at. Alright, so part two is nine questions asked now we did these last week. But now what we're going to do is we're going to do these, we're going to be looking at a particular passage of scripture.

Ephesians 6 and the Armor of God

And I want to ask you if you have your if you have your Bibles, go ahead and take them out and turn to Ephesians chapter six. What was that? You know it. I got it. Okay. Go to verse 10. Yeah.

Once or twice, I've heard it.

Now I'm assuming I'm assuming that being set free, you guys have probably read this several times you probably.

Every morning, every morning.

Okay, so you read it every morning? Yes. All right. How about is it just versus 10 to 20 that y 'all read or do y 'all read the.

Whole chapter 10 to 20 to 20. And the end after Proverbs.

Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Well, then, this should be pretty easy then. It says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might put on the whole armor of God that you might be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

What do we notice right there in verse 11? The devil scheming, devil scheming. Yep. Well, the first thing that I was just want to mention is that that it's a command.

I was gonna say it's application. I mean, it's something that can that it seems like an action because it seems like all of this in application. It seems like application is an action.

Yeah, it's telling you. Yeah, we have. I want to show you something on the screen real quick. The Do you guys know the difference between indicative and imperative? Yes. Okay. And indicative is telling you what something is.

And an imperative is telling you what should be right. And so going back to the Ephesians passage, then the indicative of this would be things like the schemes of the devil, you know, those are that something that's there.

But the command is that we stand against the schemes of the devil. So we have the imperative to stand against those schemes. And so we're told to put on the whole armor of God that we may be able to stand against those schemes.

Now we go back to the question, what's the example to follow is there send to avoid, we can go through all nine of those. But very quickly, just looking at the text, we have here, pieces of clothing, which each one is meant to tell us something that we're to do, because it says to put this on, therefore, these are things that we're supposed to do.

And it begins, it says, verse 14, it says, stand up, stand, therefore, having fastened the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and the shoes for your feet having the readiness of the gospel of peace, and all circumstances take up the shield of faith, for with it you extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God praying at all times in the spirit with prayer and supplication. So we have here these articles of clothing. Excuse me.

And what do we see? We see first is mentioned the belt of truth. Why do we have a why do we have truth as a belt? A belt holds everything together. Now I want you to think about this. I want you to think about this as far as application is concerned.

Do you know the truth? And I'm not asking for an answer. I'm asking. I'm asking you to think about that as an application question. Because when we deal with the subject of truth, we're dealing with two things.

We're dealing first with truth as principle. Truth is what is true. It's what is real. It's what is actual. But truth is also a person Jesus Christ. And I am truth. I am the truth. And so that belt of truth is really dealing with where we are in this life.

Are we people who try to live our own truth, which is nothing but a lie. You hear people say that all the time. I'm just living my truth, which is a joke. What does it mean to live your truth? It means that you're living a lie.

If it's not the truth of God, but let me just back that up. And you know, if your truth is God's truth, that it is the truth. But people who try to say I'm living my truth, but it's not the truth of God, then it's false.

And so right away, we have to ask ourselves the question, are we living in the truth? Do we love the truth? And do we understand that the truth is more than just a principle, but it's a person. And it's the person of Jesus Christ.

And right there's the application. Where am I with Christ? Where do I stand with Christ? Even though it's the belt, even though it's the first part of the armor, and it's certainly the part that most people don't even think about.

Most people think about the shield and the sword and the helmet. But the truth is everything. Without the truth, not only do your pants fall down, but without the truth, everything falls apart. And so you see how you begin to apply that, you begin to look at the deep part of that word truth, I'm reading, I'm teaching through second john right now on Wednesday nights.

And one of the things that we see in second john, is his devotion to the truth. He says in the first four verses of second john, he uses the word truth five times. And it's overall love and truth devoted to the truth.

I'm what you're walking in the truth. It's truth, truth, truth, truth, truth. And then what does he say right after that, in second john, to be aware of those who are deceivers, and it would come to you and lie.

So not only is truth a positive, but truth is also a battle against the negative. I'm gonna start preaching the microphone. But you get what I'm saying is, you can do this with every one of these articles of clothing.

You mean, you can look at the the shoes shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. And what does that mean? It means that everywhere we go, we are we are prepared with the gospel of peace to take us wherever we're going.

We're taking the gospel with us. How beautiful are the feet of those who share the good news? You guys probably have heard this before. But there was a that's connected to that when someone when a when a when a soldier, when they when they would when they would go to battle, they would stay would have a person who would bring the bring the battle back to the people would bring whether or not it was victory or defeat.