8 - Lesson 3: The Bible

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9 - Lesson 4: Baptism, Part 1

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipling. This is our introduction to discipling where we are using a book called

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Growing in Grace as a tool that we're using to basically teach you how to disciple others, and we're giving you this as a tool that you can use to just really facilitate discipling.

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And so we encourage you, you can always, if you don't have a copy, which I would hope you would, but maybe you're new to the class, you could pick it up at our store and pick up your own copy, which is at wherever that is down there, store at strivingforeternity .org.

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You could pick up your copy of the book. You could pick up multiple copies if you want to use it for homeschooling, with your children, with your

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Sunday school class, with anyone that's new to your church that you're discipling, with someone that you just met who's on the street and they are professing to be believers, whoever.

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But it's a beginner's thing. Now I do want to say that the last two lessons we've had on prayer, some people have contacted us and told us that that was the first they really had an understanding of what prayer is.

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One person said that he's read the Lord's Prayer many times and never saw it in the light of the way that we had explained it.

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And I'm bringing this up because though these lessons are really, we would think, basic principles of Christian belief, it's also for some who have not been well discipled, many churches don't disciple at all.

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Once someone gets saved, it's just sit in a pew, serve in church, learn from a pulpit.

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We don't do proper discipleship in many churches anymore. And so for that reason, some of this stuff is new even to people who grew up in the church, who've been in the church for a long time.

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You could be a missionary's child, a pastor's child, someone who went to Bible college.

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I know someone who went to a Bible college and went through these lessons with him and there were things he was learning.

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So don't think that just because it's kind of discipleship that it's so elementary that we can't learn things.

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We always got to be looking to learn things. I want to try and teach you how to teach others and that's what these lessons are for.

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So if you're new to the class, we welcome you. We want to do an overview from last class.

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We'll put that up there. There you go. Why do we have the background we got?

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That's what I want to know. All right, so, but if you look at that, you'll see that we have, we basically have an outline to, oh that was neat, that was quick, all right.

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So there, the background is now covered. Nice. Okay, so this is a review from last class and what you have there is kind of, if you paid attention in the last class, you see where this was going, but we talked about when should we pray, how we should pray, does

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God answer our prayers, and then what should I pray for? Now your homework for last week was to memorize

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Philippians 4, 6, and 7. So, I'm going to ask for you guys to say that aloud right now.

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We're waiting, waiting, I'm sure you guys are all doing it, all right.

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For those of you who didn't, let's do it together because I know you were waiting anyway. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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And so, that is that verse you want to encourage the person you're discipling to recite that.

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In whichever translation they feel most comfortable, don't get on them if it's not word for word, okay.

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We could try to do that, we want to do that, but you know, keep in mind, you always want to be keeping in mind when you're discipling someone, where is that person at spiritually?

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The younger they are, the more grace you want to give to show to them. You also want to see that they have a prayer list.

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Now, I'm going to ask for those of you who are taking this class online, if you go into our Facebook group, the

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Striving for Eternity group in Facebook, post your prayer list there as long as it doesn't have anything that should not be known publicly.

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But if you want, you could do that, just like we did with the lesson on salvation, people are posting their homework up there.

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If you are taking the class, you should be penciling in answers to the fill in the blanks on your own before class, and then when we come to the class,

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I'm going to give you some possible answers, because sometimes there's more than one for each lesson. And so,

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I'm going to give you some answers that would be right, and then you can fill it in with pencil or pen if you want, but I want to just go through, give you not only the answers, but explaining how to disciple other people through this.

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So let us look now, we are in lesson number three, lesson number three, the

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Bible, the revelation about our Lord. A look at that, and we see here in the book, if we have it, it says, and I'm going to read a little bit from the book, so if you don't have your

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Growing in Grace book, you want to order one. All right, so God has taken the initiative in arranging for fellowship with men by revealing himself in three ways.

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Now, there's three different ways that God has revealed himself over time.

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The first one is through creation. Through creation, we see this in Psalm 19, the first four verses, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim his handiwork.

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Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

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There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

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Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

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In them he has set a tent for the sun. What you see here is that the heavens declare the glory of God.

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So, one way in which that we see God speaking to us is in what we call natural revelation, natural revelation, in creation, in that which we see around us.

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A second way, and the most specific way that God has revealed himself is through his son,

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Jesus Christ. Jesus said to them, this is John 14, 19, Jesus said to them,

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Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the

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Father. How do you say, show us the Father? And so, what you see there is that Philip wanted to see the

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Father, and Jesus said, If you've seen me, you have seen the Father. So, the second way, and I think the clearest way is through the son.

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Now, we still have creation to look at. We can still look at creation, and there's certain things that creation teaches us.

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You can look in Romans 1, which we're going to look at in a moment, and you can see that there's certain things creation will teach us, but it doesn't teach us enough.

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Jesus Christ has the most to teach us as far as God's revelation, but he's not among us right now.

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He was for 33 years, but he's not walking among us anymore. So, the third way that God reveals himself, and the way that we have that is the most authoritative in our life right now, is through the written word, the

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Bible. The written word, the Bible. 2 Peter 1, 21 says,

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For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so, that talks a little bit about how we got the word of God.

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Now, creation, if you look in your book there, creation can only teach us about, well, let's take a look at that passage before we fill it in.

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Let's look at it. Romans 1, 20. For the invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, are clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.

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And so, what we have here is that creation can only teach us about God's attributes, that's your first blank,

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God's attributes, and his eternal power, that's your next blank there, eternal power.

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So that's, creation is limited in what it can teach us. It can show us something about his attributes, we see he's a great designer, we can see when we look at the vastness of creation, we can see how grand he is, how awesome he is, we can look at a small part of a cell and see the same amazement.

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Now, his Son, as I said, is the fullest revelation of himself that is possible.

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We see that in Colossians 1, 19, let's not go there for the sake of time, but you can see that there.

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During this age, however, Christ is not physically present to teach us anymore the objective truth.

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We can't go to Jesus the way we'd go to someone else that we might meet on the street and talk to them.

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We can't go to Jesus and ask him questions. So what has he left us with? He thus has given us his

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Word, the Bible, and sent us the Spirit to guide us in all truth.

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1 John 2, 27. Let's put that one up if we can. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you that you have no need that anyone should teach you, but that his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as he taught you, abide in him.

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So what you have there is you have a case where we see there. We can also look in John 16, 13 that the

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Holy Spirit will guide us in all truth. That was basically part of the passage that I just preached this weekend at a conference on the

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Holy Spirit and his convicting work. But one of the things the Holy Spirit does is he illuminates our mind as believers to the truths of his

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Word. So it's of his Word that he teaches us. Now we receive communication from God today through his

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Word, the Bible. And it's the Holy Spirit who takes the Bible and illuminates our mind to it.

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The Bible is God's authority for faith and practice. So if we want to know how we should do things in church, how we should do things in our life, we're going to go to the

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Bible. So when we are going to teach someone, especially someone that's a new believer, this is really important because most people do not understand the

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Bible. Now we did a whole class, 20 lessons on how to interpret the

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Bible. That's in our School of Biblical Hermeneutics and we started that class with explaining some things about the

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Bible. We've also done a Systematic Theology class, our School of Systematic Theology and we have the class there and we're going to get to the one there where we have a class on Bibliology, the study of the

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Bible. And we'll see in there some of the same things we're going to look at very briefly here. We'll look at those in more detail but we want to give a student, a new believer especially, kind of an overview just so they have a little bit of a handling of the

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Word of God and understanding how we got it because our culture attacks this issue very much.

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Our culture really tries to show that we are basically don't have a book written by God.

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We have a book written just by men. So let us start with that. Let's start with the Doctrine of Inspiration.

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The Inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We're going to start here and we'll look at this and start with this.

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Letter A in your book is that it was inspired by God. That's your blank there.

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That the Scriptures were inspired by God. Let's take a look at a passage of Scripture. We'll read just verse 16 here.

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I put 16 and 17 because we're going to get to that later. But all

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Scripture is breathed out. Now that word breathed out in some of your translations is the word inspired.

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If you have a King James or a New King James they'll say all Scripture is inspired. But when you inspire something it means we're going to get to it.

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But the word here is actually to breathe out. All Scripture is breathed out by God.

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And that's the point that I want to focus on. Just that. That all Scripture is breathed out by God.

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The word inspired means to exhale. To breathe out.

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And that's what we do when we talk. We breathe out our words. We exhale the words.

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And so the idea of inspiration is that it's God's spoken word. Now God doesn't speak with sound coming out of His vocal cords the way we do.

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But He breathes it out. It is an act if you look in your book it is an act that takes place when one is speaking.

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All Scripture from Genesis to Revelation should be red letters. Now if you really want a red letter

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Bible the whole thing is what Jesus said. It is breathed out from the mouth of God.

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The Bible is the product of God's spoken words. That's why we call it God's word.

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Because God has spoken it out. Letter B there in your syllabus and we're going to come back to 2nd

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Corinthians sorry 2nd Timothy in just a moment 2nd

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Timothy 3. So I'm going to hold off on the rest of that passage. But letter B there.

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Men were directed by the Holy Spirit. That's your blanks there. The Holy Spirit to write the

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Bible. We already looked at 2nd Peter 1 21. That men were moved by the

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Holy Spirit. Now here's some things about the Bible. I have just a couple paragraphs there just for you to understand.

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The reason this is important is because if you look at any of the other world religions you usually have one religious leader who writes down their authoritative work and when they do so they do it and it is even within that you have contradictions within what they write and then they try to fix those contradictions over time as people point them out.

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And so it's important to realize that if you have one person who over many many years can't keep his story straight if I take 10 people in a room and say describe to me in detail about God you're probably going to get 12 different stories.

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So why is that important? Because look at what we say the men were directed or what's actually the theological term super intended.

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It means God the Holy Spirit working through the people so even though they wrote exactly as they chose they wrote exactly as God intended.

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He worked through them in that way. But it says we have here the Bible was written by about 40 men over a period of 1500 years.

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Now that's the point remember one man can't keep his story straight for 30 -40 years here you got 40 men keeping a story straight for 1500 years.

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Men who never knew each other and these men were included fishermen such as Peter James, John, Andrew scholars like Paul poets like David and Solomon prophets like Jeremiah Isaiah, Ezekiel Daniel and others.

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Shepherds like Amos and David Kings like David and Solomon. See wide walks of life from the very from those that are noble to those who are paupers and everything in between.

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What you see is that the scriptures are quite clear that what we have is we have a case that this was written by many men over a long period of time different walks of life and there's no disagreement in what they say about who

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God is. And while the Bible was written by men it was the spirit of God who used each of these men's personalities and surroundings to record all that is written so that we may be assured that the scripture is

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God's word without error. In other words it means that when we look at God's word we can trust it.

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It's an authority. It's something that we don't have to wonder. It is the only authority in a world of relativism in a world that wants to teach that there's nothing that's absolute here we have an absolute authority

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God's word. We can trust it why? Because it's the product of God. So that's the thing we want to remember about it.

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This is God's word speaking to us. Alright? And so it's important to think about that to understand that.

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So even though God used men, yes he did. Paul wrote Romans but God wrote

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Romans because God worked through Paul to write Romans. Now that's a hard concept for us to understand and you want to let your disciple know that.

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Yes that's hard to understand but what it means is that we can trust that every word is exactly as God intended it even though men wrote it.

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Okay? And that's important because we know we can trust it. So let us look at the importance of scripture.

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Okay? The importance of scripture. So this is Roman numeral number two here and by answering the questions below in your book, a student of scripture may see exactly how important the word of God is.

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So we're going to take a look at these and I'm going to ask the questions and I'm going to give you some of the answers that you could have.

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And if you have different answers than what I put or what I say, please just type them into the chat room.

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Shoot in your answers. Actually you could probably do that now if you're watching live. Just shoot your answers into the chat room and that way if you do that with each of these just put like A period and then your answer and that way

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I can see what they are, tell you if you have some right or wrong from, you know, or if another answer is close enough that it would work as well.

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I say to do that now because there's a slight delay from watching live and so you'll, by the time

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I get there you'll have put it in. Such. Alright? So, the first one, letter

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A says What does the apostle say is the power unto salvation?

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This is in Romans 1 and remember you always want your student to read the verses so I'm going to ask you guys to read this out loud while I read it out loud.

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Even though people at your work may think you're crazy. But it says here,

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek. So this is letter A would be the gospel.

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Now, more specifically it would also be fair to say the gospel of Christ as some translations say and you could also say the scriptures.

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The reason that I'm making a distinction of scriptures is because that is separate from the gospel we know from the scripture and this is different than creation.

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There are some people that try to argue that you can be saved by looking at nature.

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You cannot. Nature itself, natural revelation does not provide enough information and we're going to see this a little more later, but it doesn't provide enough information for one to be saved.

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We need the gospel and the gospel comes from special revelation or what's called supernatural revelation.

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So we have natural and special or sorry general and special. General revelation being nature, special revelation being the

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Bible or natural revelation being creation, supernatural revelation being the Bible.

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The gospel of Christ or the gospel is the answer to your first one. Letter B which

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I haven't seen anyone answer in the chat room up there. I do see one. That's right. Letter B here.

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What does the Bible say we can know for certain? What can we know for certain?

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That's 1 John 5 .13. I write these things to you who believe in my name in the name of the

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Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. So what is it that we may know?

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That we can know that we have eternal life. Alright? And that's what we can know for certain.

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So the scriptures are important because from them we can know that we have eternal life. And so that seems to be the answer that everyone else has so letter

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C. What did the rich man's brother or brothers need to believe in order to escape hell?

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This is out of Luke 16. The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky proclaims his handiwork day to...

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that is not the right one. Thank you. That's better.

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Luke 16 not Psalm 19. But Abraham said they have

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Moses and the prophets let them here and this is the context is the rich man says send

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Abraham back from the send Lazarus back from the dead and my brothers will believe and Abraham said they have

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Moses and the prophets let them hear them and he said no father Abraham but if someone goes back from the dead they will repent and he said if they do not hear

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Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should come back from the dead.

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So the answer to this would technically be Moses and the prophets what did they need?

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They needed Moses and the prophets but if you look I say there Moses and the prophets is one of the Jewish names for the scriptures so if you put scriptures for letter, if you put the word of God, scriptures or Moses and the prophets for letter

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C all of those are good answers. Okay, either of those will work. That is that when you see

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Moses and the prophets, Moses is the first five books of the Bible and the prophets would be the end of the book so it's basically all inclusive of the

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Jewish writings. So sometimes you'll see Moses and the prophets, sometimes you'll see Moses, the prophets and the writings or the historical works okay, and so that is the way that we would see that, okay that that's referring to scripture so basically what he's saying is in this parable,

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I believe it's a parable, if you have questions on why you can talk to me about you can ask us about it, but in that parable what

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Abraham is saying is that they need the word of God not someone coming back from the dead someone coming back from the dead is not enough to convince someone and you say why not, that would be some pretty incredible proof.

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Jesus Christ rose from the dead and people did not believe him okay, so someone who walked among them came back from the dead and they didn't believe

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Jesus if they don't believe if someone doesn't believe the bible, they're not going to believe even if someone like Jesus comes back from the dead, so let's look at letter

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D letter D here says Job considered the word of God more necessary than food look at this one

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I have not departed from the commandments of his lips I have treasured the words of his mouth more than the portion of my food and so some say daily food which is fine but it's basically the idea of your daily food your food, having bread having a regular portion of it so is the word of God more important to you than what you eat

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Ray Comfort says it this way you know you should read your bible every day no food

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I'm trying to remember how exactly it sounds like, no bible, no breakfast it sounds like that no physical food until spiritual food and so that's not saying you have to have your breakfast first thing in the morning you know, before breakfast you have to have your prayers first thing in the morning you can have your devotions anytime but the idea is that you want to have a regular time of being in God's word alright, letter

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E we should consider the word of God so that we may grow, 1

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Peter 2 that we may grow like newborn infants who long for pure spiritual milk that they may grow up into salvation and so what you have here in letter

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E is the idea grow that would be the blank there so what you have is if you take a newborn and you just give that newborn nothing but milk

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I know someone that adopted a child who this child was I think 7 or 8 years old and had still been eating out of a bottle had nothing but milk still on formula was not properly developed at 7 or 8 years old had the body of a 2 year old 2 and a half year old very very small like a child couldn't walk that's what we would call abnormal once he was in a good household taken care of it took some time but he's eating real food eating, walking learning how to talk he's now caught up but until then if you feed a child just baby food as it grows it would be abnormal and the same is true for a

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Christian we want to take the person we're discipling and explain that to them if you do not continue to grow if you do not take the word of God on a daily basis you will develop abnormally as a

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Christian you will not grow the way you're intended to grow so we need to be in God's word regularly next let us look at letter

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F what along with prayer is our defense against spiritual warfare let's look at this in Ephesians Ephesians 6 17 we take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is what what do we take along with prayer it is the word of God so your blank there would be

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God's word the word of God the Bible any of those for F they work fine for letter

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F it's the word of God that we take with us what did Christ use to defeat

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Satan look at that in Ephesians 4 we got a couple verses here and we see and here you're not going to see it directly in there for letter

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G in Matthew 4 you're going to see what he uses what does he use but he answered it is written and he quotes scripture man shall not live by every word by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God another temptation comes and Jesus said to him again it is written you shall not you shall not put the

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Lord your God to the test again there's another temptation then Jesus said to him be gone Satan for it is written he gives another quotation from scripture you shall worship the

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Lord your God and him only shall you serve and so what you see here is three times

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Christ used God's word again you could use God's word scripture, the word of God the

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Bible, the Old Testament Bible is what he used but you see in each one of those temptations

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Jesus used scripture to answer Satan now remember scripture is inspired by God, it's

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God breathed so everything Jesus said was scripture ok and that's why we end up having a case where everything is going to be like I jokingly say if you want a red letter

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Bible then it's the whole Bible, Old and New Testament all in red lettering because it's all spoken by God there's nothing more special about the words that Jesus said while he walked the earth than the words he said through other human beings and having them record what he wanted so letter

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H again this is all in the importance, I hope you're seeing the importance of it, we're going to review it as we get done

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I'm going to review all of them again what effect will the word of God have upon one's life what effect you can go to Psalm 119, the whole

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Psalm which is the longest Psalm in the Bible, it's all about the word of God find that interesting that the longest

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Psalm in all the Bible longest chapter of any chapter in the

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Bible and the whole thing is all about the word of God but it says there in verse 9 how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word so when we ask the question what effect will the word of God have on one's life obedience, these are some possible answers, obedience prevention of sin protection, keeping from sin put that up there just for a second because it says, yeah the purity purity how to keep one man's way pure so any of these will work alright, obedience because it depends on the translation that you have but obedience, prevention of sin protection, purity any of those work, let's see what we have in the chat room for letter

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H purity and not sinning, good yeah so it looks like that's what we're getting keeping from sin keeping from sinning, those are the answers for H so those are good, so it could be the idea is really the purity the protection, keeping from sin, so that's the idea of that one and lastly,

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God's word is more powerful than what according to Hebrews 4 oh I didn't do, ok sorry

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I didn't do verse 11 on the previous one so let me put both up so we read 119 119 11 says

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I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you so when you look at both of those you see the idea of the protection and not sinning ok so let's go to Hebrews 4 12 and see what

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God's word is more powerful than for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword piercing to the division of the soul and spirit of the joints and of the marrow and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart now

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I know many people think of this as this big two handed sword and that's not actually what you know this word is, this word is the idea of more like a little scalpel something that's used for precision and if you see the context there it's for getting in and like a surgeon would have and cutting between the bone and the marrow you know kind of scraping away at a bone the idea there it's a very specific tool not something like a sword like we think of with this big two handed sword that we're going to chop people down with but it's more of a the idea of something that's going to be for precision two edged sword that's going to go in and cut that you're going to use maybe for surgery or something so that's more the idea of it more what we would think of today as a scalpel think of it that way so what is the importance well if we look at this now as we, let's review this kind of quickly and we'll finish up the rest next class because I just don't think that it would be even though if you've gone through the school of hermeneutics basically it's going to be a review of everything that we had but we don't want to rush anything here

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I'm trying to go through giving you some more information for you to be able to give to your disciple the person you're teaching so let's review these and at this point would be a good time what

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I typically do when I go through this is I ask someone to summarize now each of these we just went through 9 different things 9 different questions that show the importance of scripture and I would say can you summarize what is important about scripture what does it do the scriptures are where we learn about salvation it's where we get the gospel from where we can learn about the gospel the scriptures are important because it is what we can know for certain it's how we know about eternal life and we can know it with certainty it is what will teach us more than any supernatural thing and this is important also for those that say we need to have signs and wonders for people to know the gospel

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Luke 16 proves that's wrong we need God's word if they don't have God's word they're not going to believe signs and wonders so those who argue we have to have signs and wonders before we can present the gospel for them to believe that's not true and so what we see here is that we see that God's word is sufficient in teaching people about God it's more necessary than food it is what will help us to grow it is along with prayer a defense in spiritual warfare and it is what

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Christ himself used to defeat Satan when he came to attack it offers us protection and purity and it is something that is more powerful than a two handed sword now you could think of a two handed sword whether you think of it as a big sword that someone is going to hack someone up with it's stronger than that but it's also stronger than that small sword that people are going to use for a more precision cut so let's take a look we do have some time so let's take see if we could wrap this up next three is going to be investigation into scripture the investigation into scripture why should we study it why should we study the scriptures and this is really a recap to what we taught previously and we'll teach it again because it's important repetition is fine you'll learn more we just had someone that is retaking the classes on biblical hermeneutics and they're learning things they didn't see the first time through you may not be aware of this but the way

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I try to teach is at many different levels so if you do re -watch these again you'll pick up more that you may not have picked up the first time

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I try to purposely do that in a way that I'm teaching at multiple levels but at the same time not leaving anyone behind so that people don't realize that there's more that they might have been able to pick up keep watching and you're going to keep learning and pick those things up so why should we study it number one we should desire the sincere milk of the word of God that we may grow we already looked at this previously so we won't look at it again but your blanks there are we should desire the sincere milk of the word that's your first blank the word so that we may grow so that we may grow alright that's your first reason why we should study it second reason that we have there and we looked at these verses as well prior in Psalm 119 what do we need to hide in our heart to keep us from sin well

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God's word or scripture either of those work in the blank there or the bible you have the idea of it it's important because it's going to keep us from sin

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I often find that people who this is something really important to explain to a newer believer but I often find that people who struggle with sin often struggle with devotions the more they have devotions the less they sin the less they have devotions the more they sin so this is one of the first things

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I'll ask someone who tells me that they're struggling with sin I'm going to ask them how their devotions are going now

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I said we'd get back to this next one 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17 let's look at this and fill these in the word of God is profitable so all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching and that's your first blank teaching for teaching or doctrine either one depending on your translation for reproof that's your second blank there for reproof third blank is correction for correction and then the third one for training in righteousness or instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work now here's the thing with this let me just show you this

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I'm going to put up a slide here and you'll see that teaching or doctrine has to do with right thinking reproof has to do with wrong thinking correction has to do with wrong behavior and training has to do with right behavior now

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I've given you this to kind of put in your mind so you see what it is that Paul is trying to do in this verse he's trying to say that whether we have right thinking or wrong thinking wrong behavior or right behavior in all things

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God's word is profitable and he's going to say in a moment what it's profitable for now what

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I want to do with this is take a look at this because the next verse is going to say studying studying and obeying

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God's word will result in the man of God being two things and we're going to get to that in a minute so in this one though do you see teaching reproof correction training what you see there

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I've kind of put some lines there on your screen so you see how it's laid out they're bookends you have right the things that are right as bookends teaching is right thinking training right behavior those are the bookends within those bookends you have bookends so you start with a bookend of thinking right and wrong thinking another bookend of behavior right and wrong behavior and within it you have the two things that are wrong wrong thinking wrong behavior this is the way it's laid out this is a style of Hebrew poetry called parallelism and you can explain to your person or discipling this so they can see it and what you see here is the way it's structured this is done for emphasis now let's take a look at the whole verse again all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching for proof for correction for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work so number four there is that studying and obeying

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God's word will result in a man of God being complete or mature or perfect some translations do it that way either one of those complete or mature is your first blank your second blank is equipped you're equipped for every good work now

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I want to do something I've done this before in the school of biblical hermeneutics but when we're going to interpret scripture what we want to do is get rid of all of the to get the main idea you want to get rid of you don't want to read the prepositional phrases so let's cross out the prepositional phrases there we go and now as we cross out each one of them we see that the emphasis is not how many people do it and what

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I actually have when I teach this to students I actually have this verse written out in pencil

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I write it out in pencil and then I erase each one of the prepositional phrases so by God that's a prepositional phrase

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I erase that for teaching that's a prepositional phrase for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness of God and for every good work all those are prepositional phrases so I erase those so that I can ask the student to read to me what scripture is breathed out and profitable for because it's not what most people think of they talk about it as for the training the teaching, the reproof, the correction, the training in righteousness no but when we remove all those let's read it without that there we go all scripture is breathed out and profitable that the man may be complete equipped that's what the word of God that's the purpose of the word of God so that's a little thing you could do help someone to see that we'll go a little bit long maybe this class but we want to try to wrap up because I think we can how should

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I read the bible and if you want to dig in more to this you can certainly go to the school of biblical harmonetics and see that maybe we won't look up some of these verses right now

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I would say you never want to skip reading verses with a student okay if you have someone that you are discipling you want to get them reading the scripture as many times as possible if the class takes long if you have to carry the class to two weeks do it don't cut that short okay take the time and so make sure you read every verse

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I'd encourage you to read a couple verses before and after each one of these with the person you are discipling just to get them reading the context is training them to read context not just the verse okay how should

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I read the bible one read it daily encourage your student to read the bible daily read it obediently read it obediently in other words obey what it says read it carefully as we just looked at in the one passage in 2nd

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Timothy 3 read it carefully look at it study it dig into it understand what it's saying don't just breeze over things don't just people read the daily bread and they just read a verse in a short devotional that's not reading it carefully this takes some study it takes time to read it slowly think about it process it what was going on at the time what was this person thinking what was happening try to put yourself in the mindset in the time to understand everything that's going on be careful with this study read it systematically what do

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I mean by that well it's important that we carefully and correctly interpret

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God's word when you approach the scriptures ask these questions who are the writers of the recipients so you want to ask who why why did they write what they wrote why was it being written when when was it written sometimes that becomes important what what timeless principles can we learn what was going on what was the writer trying to address what were the issues how how do the principles apply to my life how do the things that I learn fit for me so who what when where why

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I didn't get to where but that's one you could do where were these things happening who what when where why how that's basically what you want to ask yourself as you study each thing actually what

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I do is I have a sheet that I give people I disciple new believers that just ask those five questions and I ask them to fill that out each week

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I give them enough for each day for them to take a passage of scripture and each day try to fill out who what when where why how for every passage that they study study the word for like an hour each day small passage fill that out that's what

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I do to encourage them to be doing that some practical considerations for your study consider you consider a private study should be considering these things one have a plan a certain time of the day that you're going to read first thing in the morning later at night in the evening after school when

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I when I used to when I was in school I used to read first thing after I took a shower I'd read the

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Bible before I went to school as soon as I got home from school I would read the Bible I would or after work and then before I went to bed

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I would read the Bible so I had a set time that I would do that I started reading just first thing in the morning until I read

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Daniel that he had three days of devotion a day so I started doing that you could begin with prayer pray the

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Bible pray about what you're going to be reading pray about what you read yesterday if you're reading verse by verse you're going to remember the context from yesterday underline things of importance try to memorize important verses passages of scripture write down verses that have special meaning to you write down notes take notes on what you're studying and learning try to absorb that apply the scriptures the scriptures you studied to life

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I mean try to take it now do not take your life and apply it to scripture first we have to study the scriptures using principles and then apply it to life but if we follow the principles we want to do that properly studying doing the interpretation we have a whole class on that doing the proper interpretation then applying it to life and then close in prayer information about the scripture this is the last thing that we have here first off as far as the scriptures we know that it is trustworthy trustworthy we can trust the

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Bible it's the only thing in the world we can trust that we have we can trust God but we can trust God because we know him through the word he revealed himself through the

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Bible it is eternal the Bible is not going anywhere and then it is not to be altered or changed which means it stays the way it is now as homework memorize 2nd

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Timothy 3 16 and 17 and also set up a schedule for your

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Bible reading okay you want to set up a schedule for your Bible reading and so what I do at this point with my students is

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I would give them those sheets and ask them to study the scriptures and have them study that out that's going to be the homework alright have a plan and you can go into the

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Facebook group and put your plan in there alright so next class will be very entertaining

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I'm sure next lesson that we have will be on baptism some controversy when it comes to baptism so we'll probably even though it's a shorter lesson we have to get into a little bit more information on that in viewing some different views of baptism so encourage your friends you can encourage your

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Presbyterian friends so they can learn the right way of baptism that was kind of like a joke

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I mean I do think that but they would think that I should learn about their version of baptism so that me as a

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Baptist would learn the right way well you can encourage actually your Presbyterian friends to hear how I describe

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Presbyterian baptism because I will explain the differences next class and explain why

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I believe that in what I believe is the right mode of baptism we're going to get into that and so next class will be an exciting one if you have any questions about this or anything else you can email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org academy at striving for eternity dot org you can also go to our store and pick up some of our products that we have there we have those available for you now

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I am going to say this what we do every class what we want to do is encourage you to encourage others

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I'm going to give you a special homework assignment whether you are watching live or whether you are watching later on YouTube I'm going to give you an email address of a person very very few of you know

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I'll give you time to write down that email address this is Ms.

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Martha Ms. Martha is how everyone Ms. Martha Ms. Martha is someone who has every time this year

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I get very excited for the fall for Greenville why? one of the reasons

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I get excited is because I am going to meet once again get to spend time with Ms. Martha Ms.

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Martha is a woman who is I want to say maybe late 60's early 70's maybe

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I don't know but she is someone who goes out in her walker down to where there is thousands and thousands of people or to the abortion clinics so that she can hand out gospel tracts hold up signs she stands there in a walker holding up signs you know against abortion at the abortion clinics

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I mean for us who don't have trouble walking sometimes standing for a long period of time holding a sign can be a lot she has a walker and she is standing she is an encouragement if you email her you will get the greater encouragement if you spend any time talking with her talk to her pastor

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I just said we were walking down I said you know Pastor Marty I got to tell you Ms. Martha is always such an encouragement to me

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I mean that woman is there she has walked with the Lord for so long and has studied for so long that she just she encourages us

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I mean she is out there evangelizing she is out there talking to these people and just challenging them and with such a sweet spirit and so I am going to ask you to encourage her but I can guarantee if you start emailing her and you start talking to her she is going to encourage you her pastor actually told me he is like you know what

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I got to tell you son Andrew I try to get together with her for lunch on a regular basis at least every other week if not once a month just because it encourages me just to hear all the things she has learned over these many many years and so it is a thing that it is just amazing someone who has been walking with the

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Lord you and I have a lot to learn from someone who has been walking with the Lord for decades decades and still strong not letting physical ailments hold her back so I encourage you to email her name is

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Martha Merritt and her email is MerrittMartha63 at gmail .com

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and I told her that I was going to be giving out her email she gave it to me so I could give it out so I really want a lot of you to just email her just a short thing saying hey

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Ms. Martha I heard about your faithfulness to the Lord over these many decades and I just want to encourage you it can be as short as that it will be a great encouragement to someone who physically she struggles she struggles to get out she struggles to get to church she struggles to go out and evangelize on a regular basis because she has physical ailments and it would be an encouragement to her

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I know if she knows that you've been encouraged by her story don't wait until she passes away to find out about her and you should be looking for other people in your life like that and encouraging them but encourage her when you see this lesson just right now quickly jot down a quick email and say hey

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Ms. Martha I'm really encouraged by your life and testimony alright and now next class