Well, this is the final video of our 20-part series on Bible study, and today we are going to go through five Bible passages using the steps we have been talking about in our series. Hello, church. Thank you for a wonderful time of Bible study together. If you are new here, go back and catch up on the other videos to see what this BIBS process means. My name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and we have been recording videos to try to help our church grow in knowing Jesus. This is the 20th video of a 20-part series on Bible study. Next week we will get back to some of our other book reviews and other things from our resource desk, things I have been excited to teach through. But with that, here is the final video. Enjoy this week’s video.
The Final Lesson
Well, folks, this is it. This is our final lesson together. I have really, really enjoyed this series, and this is exactly the way I study the Scriptures, and I am trying to help the church I am a part of to study the Scriptures. This is one of those things that, if we can get it down, if we can get Bible study down, will change our whole life. It will change the life of your church. It will change the life of your family, if you can study the Scriptures and learn to love the Scriptures as the Word of God, and if you can take the Scriptures home to yourself. I have spent a lot of my ministry, in youth ministry and now pastoring a church, just trying to help people bring the Bible home and understand the Scriptures for themselves. I love the Bible. I love what it does in people’s lives. I love the change it brings to people’s lives. I just trust the Bible so deeply. I want everybody to know the Scriptures and to base their life on the Bible, and I just believe that when people do that, everything will pretty much fall into place. I am not talking about circumstances being better. I am talking about understanding our life from God’s perspective, and that can only come through a diligent and faithful study of the Scriptures. So welcome to our 20th and final class. We have already gone through the process. We have looked at several different processes, but these past few lessons have been a step-by-step process of how to study and arrive at a rock, a truth, and then apply that truth to our life. So I want to spend this final class just looking at a few examples that I wrote out in the book as I was teaching it in a Christian school locally, and teaching it to our youth group, and now teaching it to our church on Wednesday nights in our midweek Bible study. I want to take you through just the final chapter. There is an appendix at the end, but chapter 11 in this book is all solid examples, and we will go through as many of them as we can. I have it digitally. I am going to put that up on the screen, and then we will go basically line by line through a few of the texts we have visited already, and then a couple of new texts as well, if we have time. Some of them we will just breeze over really, really quickly, and I will try to get them up on the screen so that you can see them clearly.
Psalm 117
Let’s look at a few of the examples here. Let’s start with a new passage. This is Psalm 117, as we see here in chapter 11, on one of these pages. I am sorry, this is not a new passage. This has been the passage we have been using as our example all along: “O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.” So we have been coming back to this as our example passage over and over. If we start with observation, well, if you look up some information on it, you will not find too much, but as a psalm we are already kind of narrowing that down. Then in the interpretation phase, what we are doing is flagging words. We might flag the word great. We might flag “endureth for ever,” and we have looked at other words before, “merciful kindness.” So that is steps one and two, and then flagging words was step three. If we look at step four, we are looking at a general word that this is talking about, and we have already said praise. Then step five is a phrase: this is a psalm about praising the Lord. And we would just say, we should praise the Lord. That is what this psalm is about. Well, why should we praise the Lord? That is answered in the text by the verses themselves: because His merciful kindness is great toward us, and His truth endureth to all generations. So those are the answers. The big idea, in your own words, could be something like this: we should praise the Lord because His mercy is great toward us and His truth endures forever. Looking at that, we want to apply it to our lives. So we stop and think, how is God merciful to me? How does God choose to be merciful toward me? Ultimately, we understand that I am saved, and His greatest mercy was in taking the punishment for my sin, and yet He does not stop there. He shows His mercy new every day. So I am so thankful that not only did He take the ultimate penalty for my sin, but He is longsuffering toward my sin even still today, and He allows me chances to repent and forsake my sin, and He puts people in my life to call me back from my sin. So boy, His merciful kindness is great toward me. And not only mercy, but kindness; that is the other word in the text. His kindness is toward us. Not only does He not give me what I deserve, but He also gives me things I do not deserve, and that is a kind thing for God to do. And not only that, but His merciful kindness is great toward me. It is abundant toward me, and that is a wonderful thing to meditate on, God’s merciful kindness being great toward me. So that was the first branch, the first aspect of the answer to why should we praise the Lord. The second branch was about the truth of God. So I am thankful for His Word, and I dwell on the truth that God has revealed to me. We have the truth of creation, according to Romans 1. We have so much truth just looking all around us; we can learn about God. And then there is the truth through Jesus Christ, whom He sent to this world, and then the truth through the Word, the Scriptures, that it will endure, that it will last forever, that nothing can destroy the Word of God. What a wonderful thing, that we can study the Bible, and even have a class like this to study the Bible. So that is reason to praise the Lord. His merciful kindness is great toward us, and His truth endureth. When I am thinking about His mercy and His truth and all of that, it is like I cannot help but express thanks to God. I cannot be silent about this. I have got to express that to Him. So I would say my response is that I would praise the Lord because His merciful kindness is great toward me and His truth endureth. And if I am looking at something like a plan: okay, God, now that I have studied the Scriptures on Your truth and Your mercy and Your kindness, what am I going to do about that, so I am not deceived, so I am not just acting like these are nice things? What am I going to do differently? Well, maybe I will attend church this morning, and I am really going to take part in praising the Lord. I want to sing praises to Him like I have never sung before. I want to let it show on my face. I am going to choose to smile while I am praising the Lord. These are examples of ways I can say, based on the things I have studied from the Scriptures, here is how I want to actually do it. So that is a good example from Psalm 117 of how to make the Bible relevant, how to make it real today.
Luke 10: The Good Samaritan
We looked at Luke chapter 10 as well. Luke chapter 10 was the story of the Good Samaritan, and we read that in a previous lesson. We highlighted the phrase where the lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” and He tells the story of the Good Samaritan and then comes back at the lawyer and says, well, not who is my neighbor, but who was neighbour unto him? Who is being neighborly? That is the real question. So the real question is love. “Go, and do thou likewise,” was what Jesus told this lawyer. If we are doing the process of observation, then we are looking at the chapters before this story in the book of Luke, the chapters that led up to this point. We are looking at the whole book in general and at the context of that, and then we dive into the actual interpretation. So verse by verse we will flag certain words throughout this, and we might learn a little bit about lawyers. He obviously was not looking for real answers to questions. He was just trying to trick Jesus and trip Him up. And we see in verse 26 that Jesus does not even answer. He asks him a question in return. The lawyer knows the Bible; he answers; and so Jesus just responds with biblical truth over and over. As we are picking up on some of these things from these verses, the question gets asked, “Who is my neighbour?” and then the story of the Good Samaritan happens, and the key phrase in verse number 36 is, which one was being the neighbor? So the story of the Good Samaritan is couched as an answer to the question this lawyer asked Jesus, and the meaning of the Good Samaritan story, in the flow of the context of the Scripture, is not necessarily about meeting people’s needs, or about caring for the wounded, or about not being a racist, or not being a hypocrite. Those are all aspects of the story, but when you look at the story in its context, Jesus Himself was answering a question from this lawyer. So we look at the whole picture of what is going on, and we are learning a big picture about Christianity, real Christianity. This lawyer, in a sense, was asking, “Well, what is real Christianity?” and Jesus explains real Christianity by the story of the Good Samaritan, showing that that story is a picture of what Christians do. He was saying that true love for God overflows into a love for others, and the one who actually showed care for others is what the real meaning of that text is about. So if we arrive at a big idea, true love for God should transform the way that we treat others, well, then the application of that is different from what the lawyer asked: “Well, who is my neighbor? You define for me who I am supposed to be nice to, and then I can figure out how to be a good person.” Jesus is saying, “Well, no, it is not about this definition. You be kind to everybody, even the ones who cannot do anything for you in return.” So the application of that is that we can have all the right things to say on the outside, like this lawyer did, but true faith in Christ is going to change what you do for the people who cannot do anything for you in return. The love should overflow toward everybody in your life. So the question is, well, wait a minute, is there somebody that I hate? I mean, someone who has done me very wrong, stolen something from me, hurt me? Is there an aspect of hate in my life? Well, that is not the way Jesus was teaching me to be, and so I have to guard against that. If I am ever unkind to somebody, that is being the opposite of what Jesus was trying to teach here. So application of this text shows up in questions like, man, how patient am I with others? How compassionate am I being in dealing with other people? How much do I care about people’s souls? How much would I sacrifice for somebody? The applications get unpacked from the story of the Good Samaritan, but couched in the bigger picture, which is what we want to make sure we are not missing. We ask, when was the last time I did something nice for someone who annoyed me? That is a real-life question. That is a real-life application, saying, this is how I want to make the Bible real to me: by what you do for others. Would people say that you are a Christian? Would they be able to look at your life and say, “That is a loving person, somebody who is being loving to his neighbor even when they could do nothing in return”? That is sort of what Jesus was getting at.
Psalm 113
Now, Psalm 113 is another good psalm to use as an example. We have looked at a story from the Gospels; now let’s go back to another psalm: “Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD. Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’s name is to be praised.” I would say there is kind of a break there after verse 3. Now he goes into a new idea: “The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.” So he is not talking about praising as much anymore, but he is talking about this God who is to be praised: “Who is like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high, Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth! He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill; That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people. He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.” What a beautiful psalm. I love this psalm. It is packed with so much truth. If we are doing some observation, we would see that it is a post-exilic thanksgiving psalm. So it is a psalm thanking God after the exile. It is part of a set of psalms. If you do a little history reading on this psalm, you will see that it is part of a set of songs that were written as a big group of thanksgiving to God. We can divide this psalm up into a few different sections here, and as we go verse by verse, we realize that verse number 1 is about praising the Lord. I mean, it is a pretty simple, straightforward call to praise: “Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.” Just a simple call to praise, as the Lord is our focus. He is the One we are thanking. How long? Well, “from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same.” We are going to praise Him all day, and for all of eternity. This is an unending kind of praise that we are offering to the Lord. Now it goes into a description in verse number 4 of who the Lord is and how magnificent our Lord is. It is an incredible study of Scripture. I love this passage. His glory is above the heavens. As high as the skies as we can imagine, God’s glory is even above that. He is so high above all nations. As important as we make world leaders and political leaders, oh, God is so much higher than them. He is so much greater than them. So the first three verses are calling us to praise Him, and now it is time to set God against, as big as we can imagine this life being, well, compared to that, there is no comparison. He is so much higher. He is so much better than anything we can even imagine. “Who is like unto the LORD our God?” It is an easy question. There is nobody like Him. There is absolutely nobody like Him. “Who dwelleth on high.” Again, we think in terms of status and power, and people who are on high are the ones in control, and the psalmist is saying, well, there is nobody like Him. He is so much higher than the rest of this earth. It is a rhetorical question. When we think about who God is, He is so much higher than anything we can even imagine. Look at this in verse 6: “Who humbleth himself.” He humbleth Himself; He humiliates Himself, “to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!” I have done some hiking. I have seen some beautiful places in the earth. Some of you have done some studies of the skies, and you see the heavens, and you see how great things are out there, and how huge things are, and how beautiful this world is, and in certain parts of hiking across the world you see this magnificent landscape and think, wow, God created all of this. And Psalm 113:6 says that He humbleth Himself just to behold, just to look at this creation. That is incredible. I am not making this up. Humble here is talking about to abase, to be humbled, to become low, to humiliate. That is what this word means. If we flag the words “humbleth himself,” we realize it means to set in a lower place. There are aspects of the word that truly mean humiliate. Now, God, just to look at creation, has to lower Himself, has to almost humiliate Himself, just to behold His creation. As great as we make this life out to be, God says, “I am so much higher than this life that I have to humble Myself just to look at it.” That is how high and how separated He is from creation. That is incredible. To think of God in His proper place is wonderful. But then the psalmist goes on, and in verse number 7 says that God raiseth up the poor out of the dust. Wow. God, the Creator of the universe, who sits so high above all of creation, lowers Himself, humiliates Himself, humbleth Himself just to behold creation, and that same God reaches down into creation and lifts up the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the dunghill. You talk about humiliating Himself just to look at creation; what about humiliating Himself to, we could say, get His hands dirty in the dust and in the dunghill, the refuse pile? Now, the psalmist here is meditating on words from Hannah. We see this referenced in 1 Samuel chapter 2, and so he is quoting, not the exact wording, but he is saying, “Man, I have been reflecting on the story of Hannah,” and using some of the same words that she did. She was thankful to God for reaching down to this dunghill, this refuse heap, and she was thanking Him for that. But not only does He do that, from the lowest possible condition of mankind, verse 8 says, “That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.” So these are the nobles. God, the Creator of the world, takes somebody out of a dunghill and makes them princes. That is a remarkable change. That is an incredible thing that we may not see if we are just reading through the Scripture, but you do some flagging of words, and you see what these words mean, and it is like He is giving royal dignity and authority to people from the dust, from the dunghill. We look at that and say, that is an exaltation that only God can do for us. We cannot do that for ourselves. That is incredible. Verse number 9 goes a step further and says, “He maketh the barren woman to keep house.” Again, this is a reference to Hannah, and God’s extra-special care on somebody who was a barren woman, who in their culture might have seemed less than perfect. She was one who was lowly, sort of an outcast, because she was not bearing children. So she was left to the side. She was discredited. She was shoved away. But when God honored her request to give her a son, she was just overjoyed in praise to the Lord for, in essence, reaching down to the dunghill and picking her up and choosing her for such a beautiful purpose. So we can look at a text like this and say, what an incredible God. He reaches down and takes Hannah out of her hopeless and helpless situation and lifts her up to a beautiful place. But is that not what God does for us at salvation too? So the psalm starts with praising, and it ends with praising, so if we are looking for a word, I would say the word here is praise. It is talking about God deserving our praise. Well, why? Because of who God is, and how high He is, and how low we are, contrasting the deity of God and our humanity, and the reality of what God does for His people. Sometimes your big idea might be taken from other people. Somebody said, “God’s majesty, contrasted with His condescension and gracious dealings toward the humble, furnish matter and a call to praise.” In other words, we could say, think on God and praise His name. If I think about what God has done for me, then, man, I want to praise God. That application of praising God might then show up in my prayers. If I am praying like the Lord taught His disciples to pray, He said, let’s start by saying, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” Hallowed, honored, reverenced, revered be thy name. So in prayer, if I am taking Psalm 113 and looking for application for my life, I might say something like, okay, this changes the way I pray to God. I should start by hallowing His name, lifting Him up to where He is: “Oh God, You humble Yourself just to behold Your creation, and so I want to start by recognizing how high You are, how magnificent You are.” Just like Jesus taught the disciples to pray by reverencing God, an application of Psalm 113 might be to say, I want to pray by starting with reverence for God, by recognizing that He is so high above this earth, and thank Him for that. The application might also overflow into worship of God, and it might change how we worship God. Worship is just acknowledging the worth of somebody, their worth-ship. So in changing the way I worship, especially on Sundays at a worship service with other believers, I want to come into a worship service truly lifting God up for who He is. I want my worship to be sincere and real, focusing on God, the Creator of the universe, and thanking Him for what He has done, and thinking great thoughts about Him, deep, rich truths about Him, and thanking the Lord for that. So Psalm 113 has many, many applications of how good God is to us and how He must be praised and honored and reverenced, and worship and prayer might be two examples of that.
Philippians 4 and Matthew 20
Philippians 4 you can read on your own. I am not going to take the time to do that, but verse by verse again, you might flag words along the way, and you might realize it is calling us to stand fast in the Lord. So again we are asking these questions: what is God saying? It might be something like, stand fast. I need to stand fast in the Lord. And then we look at the text and realize it is a how text: how do we stand fast in the Lord? Answer after answer might show up. If we summarized it, the text is talking about not only knowing what God says, but acting on it, and then there will be specific ways to act on that knowledge of what God wants us to stand for. So over and over the application might be, if I can take the Scriptures and actually stand on these things, actually stand for God, what is that going to look like in my context, in my life? Well, maybe it shows up in music. Maybe it shows up in attitudes, whatever the case. Then there is this passage we looked at before, Matthew chapter 20. Again, it might be about a servant’s greatness; we have looked at this one. Greatness is in serving others. Well, how can we be great? Not by power and authority, like they were looking for, but through service. So the big idea might be, well, Jesus’ example shows that only humble service brings greatness. And then we look: okay, God, how can I humbly serve? I do not want power and authority to be the focus of my life, but who can I serve today? And you apply that to your life. Humility: what does that look like in my life? What am I consumed with? What am I serving? What does greatness look like in my life? What do I think greatness is, and compared to Scripture, where am I wrong or right, or where can I be challenged or helped and grow in these areas?
Bring the Bible Home
Now, over and over, whatever passage you are going into, you can just study the Scriptures, study the Scriptures all the time, whether it is simple, like one verse, or a passage of three or four verses, or a whole chapter, and you are getting a big idea from this chapter, or this story, or this movement of Scripture. The point of the Bible study series is saying, how can I take the Bible and make it real life? Oh, I pray that this series has been a help to you. We have covered a whole lot of topics. We have been all over the place, and I would be eager to hear back from you. I would be eager to hear how God is working in your life, and how the Scriptures have helped you and transformed you, and how the study of the Scriptures, clearly, in their context, has helped you discern false teaching, or helped you grow in your walk with the Lord. I would love to hear from you, and it could be through the contact information connected to this course that you are watching, or just through contacting me directly and personally outside of this course, looking up some contact information that is available publicly. I would love to hear from you. Again, I appreciate you. I love you. I want the Scriptures to be a help to you, and God bless you as you study the Bible and bring the Bible home. Let it be something that changes you, and draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. God bless you as you study the Word. 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.
