We are on our second-to-last video in a 20-part video series on Bible study, and this one might be my favorite lesson yet, because it is changing the Bible from just a book report to an actual life-changing book, and that is what happens through the process of application. Hello, church. I am excited that you have been learning with me how to study God’s Word. If this is your first video, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and we have been recording a video series to try to help our church grow in knowing Jesus. So stay tuned to the very end to see how we are trying to do that every single week. But with that, enjoy this week’s video.
A Quick Review
Hello, and welcome back. This is class number 19 out of 20. This is our second-to-last class on Bible study, and I have enjoyed it. I said so much in the recap in the last video that I will just do a quick review, and then we are going to end today with the most important step of Bible study, which is application. We see that in the steps we have been following, we read the text, and actually step one-half was choosing the text, but we read the text, and then we reread the text, and we flag words to figure out which words we need a new definition on, or which ones are repeating. Then we boil it down to a word, expand that word to a phrase, and then really try to summarize the text in a sentence. We flip that sentence around into a question, and if the text is answering a question, then we are digging the answers out of the text. As we look at our text as a whole, we are arriving at a big idea. We are arriving at a tree, at one big, cohesive idea. We have been framing it in the sense of saying, okay, if somebody asked you about your Bible reading, what did you read today? Or if you are thinking back on yesterday’s devotions, or if you are preparing for a sermon or a Sunday school lesson and you are thinking, what am I teaching on today? What am I preaching on today? What did I read about today? Then you are taking home a rock rather than a handful of sand. Not a bunch of ideas, but you are trying to take home an idea to meditate on, to allow to get into your soul. So when we boil it down to one big idea, we want not to stop there. Step number 10 is apply the truth. So today we will talk all about application. We have said that we started big with observation, and then interpretation is finding the meaning of the text, figuring out what God said and what God is saying, and then we want to come down to the point: what is God saying to me?
The Most Important and Most Dangerous Step
Now, application is probably the most important step, but it is also the most dangerous. I say it is the most important because it is what makes the Bible real and what brings faith to your own life, but it is dangerous because it can be applied incorrectly. Remember our example about the guy who flopped open his Bible and read, “Judas went and hanged himself”? If that was an application to his own life, he would have some tough neck burns. There need to be scriptural guidelines for applying the truth of the Scriptures to ourselves. We need to actually apply what God is actually saying. So it is very, very important, because we have to not just view the Bible like it is an ancient book, like it is just an old book of myths or stories or fairy tales. Part one and part two were talking about the language of the Bible and the terms of the Bible, but many people know a lot about that. They will look at the Bible and just study it from a literature standpoint. They will think it is just another collection, you know, it is a King James Bible and it came out in the 1600s, so it is this kind of medieval collection of myths and stories. And we are saying, well, no, it is not just a book of literature to be studied from the literature standpoint. But many people stop right there. Many people are good people, and they have studied the Bible. They have memorized the Bible. They can recite lots of verses. They know all the Bible stories. They know all about David. They know all about Jesus. They might even be very sincere people. I have met a lot of them, who have grown up in church, read the Bible many times, studied the Bible. They can rattle off verses. They know theology. They know all about the Bible stories. And yet they have never actually taken the scriptural truths and applied them to their own lives. They know the Bible, but they do not obey God. What a shame, to know all about the Bible, to know all about God, but to not know God. I think application is the most important step because it is helping us take this Bible, and take the stories and the highlights and the big points of Scripture, and actually make it mean something to us, and actually bring it home to us. I mean, you can know about the disciples of Jesus, but are you a disciple of Jesus? You can know about the faith of Daniel that shut the mouths of the lions, but do you have that kind of faith in God? He prayed, and we can read about the prayers of David and Solomon, but do you pray like that? We know Paul prayed, and the list of people he prayed for, but do I pray like Paul? We can know about the people who suffered for Jesus Christ, and Stephen being martyred for Jesus Christ, but would I be willing to suffer like that? Would I be willing to be thrown into prison and sing hymns like they did in the Bible? Would I be willing to stand for God like Noah when nobody else in my culture is standing for God? Those are when the questions get real. Those are when the Bible characters stop just being old mythological people, where we think, “Well, it is just mythology.” No, we need to think of them as real-life people who took real-life stands for God, and we have to say, am I willing to be like that? I know the Scriptures talk about these people, and we kind of lift them up on a higher plane sometimes, but wait a minute, they were just humans, just like you and me. So we need to study the Bible for what it is actually saying to us. We might know all about church, but the question is, do we study the Scriptures and learn to truly worship God? We might know all about music, but are we actually singing true praise to the Lord? We might be able to articulate and argue all kinds of fine doctrines, but are they changing our lives? We might know, yes, yes, God is omnipresent, but does that change what we do in private? I am just saying, man, we have got to make this Bible real, not just head knowledge, but actually apply it to our lives. We do not need to know just about the Philistines and the Egyptians and the Samaritans and the Jews, but we need to know how their lives interacted with one another and how faith in God plays into that. We might know all about holiness, but are we living holy? Man, those are the questions that get down to the real-life stuff that makes Christianity real. That is what Christianity is made of: application. So this final step of Bible study is what makes the Bible real. It is what gives the Bible, I guess we could say, effectiveness. This shows the power of God through application in Christians’ lives, when the Holy Spirit is in you and He is truly doing a work in you, and you want to know God more, and you want to draw nigh to God, like we talked about at the close of the last lesson. As close as you want to get to God, well, you search the Scriptures for what He is saying to you, and then you actually obey the Scriptures.
Step Ten: Apply the Truth
So now we are asking the question not just what is God saying, but what is God saying to me? We have already said what God is saying here. As long as we are careful about what God said in the past, His Word is timeless, and we are able to bridge that to today’s world and bring it to what God is saying to me. This is what God said, and truly He is still saying those things today through the Scriptures. So step number 10 is just that application stage. When we have tried to be careful with the words of God and find the interpretation of the Scriptures, then we can bridge those two worlds, the biblical world with our world, and apply God’s truth to our lives. Now, there is the truth here, but the application is going to be so different. I mean, we are going to have a pretty narrow focus on the truth here, but the way it looks in your life is going to be way different than it looks in my life, and it is going to look way different than it looked 500 years ago. So the application is where this changes, where this is a little bit different. When we are coming to the application stage, we want to just stop and say, okay, what did I learn from my Bible reading today? What did I learn from that sermon yesterday? What am I learning from the Scriptures today? How am I allowing it to change me? It can be from one word of a study that you have done. It can be from a phrase of Scripture. It can be from a topic you have been dwelling on and meditating on, or it could be from the big idea that we have been learning how to study and mine out of the Scriptures. Whatever it is, you stop and say, “God, what are You trying to say to me from this? What do You want me to do differently? How do You want me to grow from this? God, this has really challenged me in this area.” And you start to get specific about certain things God has done, and man, this is where the hard work begins. This is where it gets really difficult, because you have to be honest before God, and He knows if you are being dishonest. You cannot hide anything from Him. You actually have to just say what is really on your heart, because it is just between you and God, and there is no hiding things from Him anymore. So you have got to come to God, and it is a laying open of your heart. It is starting with prayer and asking God to change your life, or to expose things in your life that are not supposed to be there. It is asking God to lead you and to change you, and if He exposes something wrong in you, some sin in you, to give you the strength from the Holy Spirit to be able to change that, whatever it is. So the application phase is, I mean, a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching thing. It is a difficult phase, but that is where true spiritual growth happens, when we have this openness before God to just do whatever He wants with us. That is such a precious place to come to. That is such a wonderful place to come, where I have studied the Scriptures, but I want the Scriptures to change me.
Doers of the Word, Not Self-Deceived
James 1:22 says, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” So it is interesting that he connects not doing with deception, right? “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” It is almost like he is saying, when I hear the Word of God, I have got to figure out a way to do the Word of God, or else I am being deceived. And that is a scary concept, because nobody likes to be tricked, right? Nobody likes to be deceived. I hate finding out later that I was tricked: “Oh, man, somebody was talking behind my back,” or “They tricked me into thinking this, and I feel so embarrassed. I cannot believe that happened to me. I should have seen that coming.” All these things we say when we find out later that we had been deceived. Well, let me ask you a question: are you deceived right now? And if you say, “Well, no, I am not deceived,” how do you know you are not deceived? Oh, man, that is a tough question. How do I know I am not deceived? Because if you knew you were deceived, you would not be deceived. So the question is, are you deceived right now? Do you believe you are tricked? In some ways you go, “Well, I am just not sure.” But then we look at the Scriptures, and it says, “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” So the way to make sure we are not self-deceived, which is sometimes the worst kind of deception, when you are blinding yourself to your own problems, the way to expose self-deception, is what? To be a doer of the word. When the Scriptures expose something in you, when the Bible exposes something in you, we actually say, okay, how can I do that? How can I put that into practice? I have heard the sermon. I have heard the Scriptures. I have studied the Bible, and it has exposed something in me. Now what do I do differently? Now how can I put this into practice? I do not want to be self-deceived, so I want to be a doer of the word today. I am actually going to change something.
An Example from 1 Thessalonians 2
For instance, if you are reading 1 Thessalonians, and one of the men from our church was just preaching 1 Thessalonians, I will skip down to verse 9 for you: “For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe: As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory.” So we can look at a text like that. Maybe we would do some Bible study on that and say, okay, I see his labour and travail, and not wanting to be chargeable unto them, and he is holy and just and unblameable in front of them, and he exhorted and comforted and charged them. So he is giving of himself. He is sacrificing. He is working. He is doing so much. Why? Verse 12: “That ye would walk worthy of God.” So Paul is saying, “Man, I am sacrificing for you so that you would walk worthy of God.” If we are looking at this and trying to boil it down and put it into our own words, in a sense, we might say Paul’s desire to see the Thessalonians walk worthy drove him to self-sacrifice. Now, we might look at a text, do our Bible reading, and notice all the things: boy, he worked really hard. He did not want to charge them. He wanted to work so that they would not get the excuse that he was just trying to take money from them. He was holy and just and unblameable. He worked really hard on his personal character while he was there. He worked really hard on relationships. He exhorted and comforted and charged them while he was there. And we can look at that and say, “Oh, boy, he really cared. He wanted them to walk worthy of the Lord, so he sacrificed like crazy for them. That is nice. Okay, going on with my day now.” We can do a Bible study on all those words and learn about the sacrifice of the Apostle Paul and learn about labour and travail and working hard and all of that, but if you stop there in Bible study and just set that aside and say, “That is nice for the Apostle Paul, but I am going to go on in my day and just do my own thing. I am not going to change anything about my own life,” then we are missing the point of Bible study. We want to do Bible study that changes us, that we can apply to our own lives. So instead of just stopping there and saying, “Wow, look at all these great things the Apostle Paul did,” we want to look at some of these things in our own life and say, where have I sacrificed lately? I know Paul is really good at sacrificing, but what about me? Have I sacrificed lately? I mean, he is working extra jobs so that he is not chargeable unto them. I wonder, even in my finances, have I sacrificed in my finances lately? Man, I should really lean into that, and I should use some of my finances to benefit other people. If I could do that, so that others could walk worthy, and expand His kingdom and glory, like it says in verse 12, then I am going to lean into that. I want to sacrifice in the same way Paul did. Maybe it is like when I was a youth pastor: we said, “Let’s give a dollar a week for church planting,” and as a youth group we started raising funds all year that we took to a conference for church planting at the end of the year. It was something simple, but it was some way to say, “I do not want to just be a hearer of the word and not a doer. I actually want to be a doer of the word, so I am not self-deceived.” So you say, “I want to sacrifice my money.” Or, it shows the amount of time the Apostle Paul gave, and we can look at our own time and say, where is my time going? If he sacrificed his time for people, then what am I spending my time on this week? If he laboured and travailed for the sake of other people, then I want to look at myself and say, okay, where am I working? Where am I labouring and travailing for the benefit of other people? We have to make the Bible mean something to our lives, not just a Bible study about Paul. If he worked, and he gave, and he sacrificed for other people so that they would walk worthy of God, well, again, how can we do that?
Make a Plan
So saying, okay, I want to make the Bible real, means making a plan, actually coming up with specific ideas, so that you say, “So that I am not self-deceived, here is what I am going to do. Here is how I am going to be a doer of the word.” It talks about labour and travail. If Paul laboured and travailed, then man, I want to work. I want to work to bless others. Maybe my work is simple yard work, or simple assembly, maybe of gift bags or baskets that can be taken to people who need the gospel, or working might be some project going on to help somebody, some kind of repair work. What is it that you can do to work to bless other people? Maybe it is the time commitment. We saw the time in the Scriptures. Boy, Paul must have spent a lot of time helping people. You analyze your own time and say, okay, what am I putting the most time into? Is it some kind of entertainment? Is it some kind of hobby? Is it something I am just pouring so much time into compared to the time I am putting into spiritual things? Well, maybe I need to spend more time on spiritual things, so I am going to limit the time on this thing to maybe an hour, and I am going to spend more time labouring and travailing in spiritual things. I am going to put a greater emphasis tomorrow in my schedule on these things. In my time, I am going to actually write encouraging notes, or I am going to spend my time reading this book, and name the book that you are going to read as a beneficial thing for you, in place of the time you were spending on self. Maybe what you are challenged on from the Scriptures is time in exercising and helping your body, or in working for your family, or in blessing other people. Whatever it is, actually make a plan and say, I am going to do this. I am going to work. I am going to spend time. I am going to give in this area. And that is how we make the Bible real. Application is that final stage of bringing the Bible home, of making the Bible relevant to our lives. It cannot just be a book about past Christians, past believers who have done so much for God. I want to be included in that list of believers who are doing things for God, and application helps that. So in your Bible study, in a sermon, any time we are trying to make the Bible mean something to us, we will start with prayer. We will ask the Lord to expose something, or give us something, or help us believe something. We will study the Scriptures, and then we will apply the Scriptures to our own life, and then it helps to conclude in prayer by asking for God’s strength. Bringing the Lord into every step of Bible study is crucial to Bible study: “God, help me to be a doer of the word, and not a hearer only.” That is the point of Bible study: to know God, to know God’s will, to know how to help people, to know how to take the Scriptures from an old, dry, boring book and make it come alive in my own life. That is the wonderful, wonderful potential of what Bible study is. I said all the way back at the beginning of the class, maybe in lesson one or two, that I think this is one of the most important topics you could ever study, because the Bible applies to every aspect of life. It is the thing that drives all of the other classes you might take, and we have to be accurate with the Scriptures, and this is how we know God. The Holy Spirit’s power working through His Word is what helps us draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. So in our next class we will end by looking at a few more examples of bringing the Bible home, of studying the Scriptures looking for ways that we can actually apply them to our own lives. Hopefully, through the examples and through the training of this whole lesson series, it has been a way to say, “I am so thankful that I understand the Bible. I am confident that I can open up the Scriptures, and wherever I turn, I can hear God’s voice to me accurately and clearly.” God bless you in your Bible study. I am looking forward to the next and final lesson in our series. We will see you then. Well, thank you for watching this video from our 20-part series on Bible study. I realize this kind of content, or our Baptist perspective, might not be for everyone, and I do not want to waste your time, but if you did find it helpful or enjoyable, would you subscribe to our channel? We are releasing videos every Monday at noon Pacific Standard Time, and I just want to help you bring the Bible home. So we will see you maybe in person this Sunday at our church. That is it for now. God bless you, church. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
