How to Study the Bible - Lesson 18
Application
(Audio only) In this lesson, Dr. Guthrie explains how to apply the biblical text to everyday life. He emphasizes that hearing the word requires effort to find its specific application for our lives today, where we see God's transforming work. He guides us through the process of study and interpretation, suggesting steps like summarizing the text and its principles, then applying them to current situations. Dr. Guthrie concludes by stressing the importance of applying the text to your own life before others.
Application
(Audio only)
I. Introduction
II. Principles of application
A. Do the work of study and interpretation before application
B. Get the specific points of application from the passage being studied
1. Write a summary of original situation or problem
2. Write the general principles of the passage.
3. Apply principle to specific current situations similar to original context
4. Example of application: Philippians 2:4-11
C. Apply to your own life first
D. Lead others to make specific application of the text to life
III. Closing prayer
How to Study the Bible
George Guthrie, Ph.D.
Lesson 18: Application
I. Introduction
We are in the next to the last of our sessions in our How to Study the Bible seminar. Next week, we’re going to do an overview of the whole process and pull everything together. What I want to encourage you to do is to read the third and the fourth chapters in the book for next week. You may have already read the overview chapter, which is chapter 3, but read that again even if you’ve already read it because it really pulls everything together and gives you kind of a sense of the step-by-step development of the process of Bible study. And next week we’ll also make some suggestions about processes, how do you get into a rhythm in your life of Bible reading and Bible study.
What we want to do this week is to talk about application. It’s a very, very important part of Bible study or Bible reading, and interestingly it is one of the most difficult for us to do. We have a tendency to hear what the word says when we read it or we hear somebody preach or even if we study it. It’s pretty tough at times to bring it all the way down to specific application where we actually say, okay, I’m going to work this into my life. But that is one of the most – if not the most – dynamic aspects of Bible study and Bible reading because as we see God transform us that’s when things get really exciting. When we see God really changing us through our application of the word and we see that word as acting powerfully and transformatively in our lives, then it gets very, very exciting.
Let’s have a word of prayer. Father, thank You for Your mercy to us. Lord, I thank You for the chance to be together this morning as Your people and to talk about something that is very practical and very relevant to all of us. Lord, I pray that we would grow in being doers of the word, as Your word says. That we would not just hear it and let it stop with that, but that we would be thoughtful about how we can adjust our lives on the basis of Your word. Lord, I pray that You would give us the grace to do that, I pray that You would help us to think clearly about the steps and the process of application this morning. So, thank You for this time that we have together. In Christ’s name, Amen.
I like the story of two old guys – you may have heard me tell this before, but I like it so much I’m going to tell it again anyway. Two old guys were walking together beside a lake and they came upon a frog that was bigger than normal. They were curious about that and so they stopped. And all of a sudden, one of the men picked up the frog and looked it in the eyes and this frog said to this old guy, “I’m not really a frog. I’m a beautiful princess, and if you will kiss me, then I’ll turn into myself and we can live happily ever after.” And so, the old man looked at the frog and, after a few minutes, put the frog in his pocket and just went walking on down beside the lake. After a while, his buddy was curious, and he said, “Aren’t you going to kiss the frog and see what happens?” And the old man said, “Nah, at my age, I think it’d be more interesting to have a talking frog.”
Well, that story says something about follow through, and when we read or study the Bible, one thing that is a temptation to be passive as we hear or encounter the word. It's very easy to come and listen and sit back when we're hearing somebody preach, just kind of let the word hit us and then go on. It's very easy for me to read passively, if you will, even though that's an action, to read the word in such a way that I read it and I said, boy, you know, I got my Bible reading done. And even when we study, we may go through the process of study and say, "Well, I learned this and I learned this, and that's kind of a cool insight, or I didn't know that about the background."
But it's quite another thing to go all the way through the process and say, "Okay, what are the principles here that apply to me this week?" When I'm reading 1 Corinthians 13, I may say, "This is cool. This is about love. I'm supposed to love everybody. That's okay. Let's go on to chapter 14." But it's quite different if I say, "Okay, what are the implications of this. What does active love look like in my life this week?" And so, I come down to an application that says, I need to do this for my wife this week. I need to do this with my children this week. And it becomes measurable. It becomes something that I can say I have acted on, I was obedient in response to the word. That becomes quite a different thing when we begin taking seriously applying the word in very specific kinds of ways.
I will give another illustration of this. Imagine you came over to our house. My wife’s a great cook and great hostess. As you came in, you smelled blueberry pie cooking and pork chops being grilled. And, boy, you were getting excited because you were hungry and you came into a beautifully set table. And as we moved from having some conversation in the gathering room to the table, you looked over as Pat was preparing all the plates.
But instead of bringing the plates to the table, she just started scraping the plates off in the wastebasket. And you’re puzzled by that. She came over and sat down and after a few more minutes of conversation, you said, “What’s going on? Why did you dump the food into the wastebasket?” And Pat and I said, “We feel like the preparation and the initial presentation is the thing. What we really enjoy about meals is the initial preparation bringing it up to this moment. It’s not about the eating of the food.” Well, you would think we were crazy if we did that. And you would be very disappointed because your experience had been truncated. It had been cut short.
Well, we don’t do that in those kinds of situations in life. We need to think through how we carry Bible reading and Bible study all the way through to the process of application in our own lives in very specific ways.
Now let me say something before we get into the actual points here. Sometimes application is going to be a specific action where I can say this is measurable, this is something that I’m going to go do this week. Sometimes, though, we may learn a theological truth and the application may be our affirmation that God is a God of goodness, for instance. And my application for the week might be for me to reflect and meditate on that and let that enter into my prayer time as I pray to God and praise Him for being such a God of grace and goodness. There are times that it may not be a very specific kind of action; it may be something that I am affirming as a truth that I may not go act on.
But what I want to press you to do is to think more about making your application something that is active. We’re not ruling out this other side of it where I’m just holding to a belief or I’m entering into worship. Those may be the applications. But I want you to think about as you hear the word preached today, as you read the word this next week, maybe as you study it yourself, think about how you can, in a concrete, specific way, put that truth into action in your life, even if it is in a small way. That becomes something that can really help you in your life. That's when the Word gets exciting.
II. Principles of application
In this whole idea of going on this trip, this is the time when we get what we came for and we’re heading back home with it. So, let’s talk about the souvenirs, if you will, the principles of application. How do you bring the word back home in a way that really changes your life?
A. Do the work of study and interpretation before application
Well, the first thing is we’ve got to do the work of study and interpretation before application. If you think again about that illustration of the foundation of a home. When we built our home, we dug the footing for the house prior to building the house itself. And when you dig that footing to the house, you want to make sure that that footing is as solid as it can be. It’s got to be on earth that’s not going to move. That earth needs to have been packed down very well. The footing has got to be the right size and the right depth. You’ve got to have the right consistency of the concrete that goes in there. In many situations, you’ve got to have reinforcements put into the concrete. The reason is if you don’t get the foundation properly laid, then you’re not going to be able to build on it in a stable way. You can have the most wonderful well-built structure and frame for your house, but if the footing is faulty, then what’s going to happen is that the structure is going to crack and sag and maybe even collapse eventually.
My tendency, and I’m guessing for many of us, our tendency is that we want to read and study and we want to get on to application right away. But we really do need to take it through that step, the process of interpretation, at times digging a little bit deeper to really try to understand what the word says, because we don’t want to merely build our spiritual lives on impressions that are not based on is actually being communicated in the word.
Now again, our goal is to hear the word. It’s to hear the word and to respond to it. It’s not just to analyze it and slice it up and get it under us. It’s to hear it. But we want to be sure that we are hearing it well. Just like in interpersonal communication. If my son Joshua wants to talk to me about something, it may take me a little while to tune into exactly what he’s talking about and I have to work at hearing him if I’m going to respond in the right way and really give him some help there.
So, the first thing we want to do is we want to do the work of study and interpretation before application.
B. Get specific points of application from the passage being studied
The second thing is to get the specific points of application from the passage on which you are focusing. If we’re not doing this then we’re doing what I would call “springboard study.” That means that I’m going to study and read the passage a little bit and then I’m going to spring off into whatever I want to think about in terms of what it says. There’s a lot of us preachers who preach this way. We read the passage and then we just dive off into whatever we want to talk about. Well, we need the points of application to come out of the passage itself. It needs to be organic in that sense.
Again, the blueberry bushes around our home. You’re not going to ever go out there and find blackberries on the blueberry bushes, because there’s something in the nature of those blueberry bushes that they produce blueberries. They’re not going to produce blackberries. You’re not going to go out there and find strawberries on those bushes. They are going to produce in accordance with what’s inside of them as blueberry bushes. And so, what we want to do is we want to draw our points of application from the passage on which we’re focusing. We want to let those points come out of that passage itself.
Now let’s look at some steps here in doing this.
1. Write a summary of original situation or problem
The first thing in doing application is we want to write a summary of the original situation or problem being addressed by the passage. Now we may do this in just one line, but we want to say, for example, when Paul was writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13, what was the original situation he was addressing? Given that context, what is Paul doing there in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14? He’s dealing with a specific topic and he’s doing it for a specific reason. But what are they?
Well, the whole context is really about spiritual gifts, isn’t it? So, when he’s talking about love in 1Corinthians 13, he has a very specific context in mind. What is the historical situation he’s addressing? Yes, they were abusing the gifts and saying unless you have this particular gift, then you’re not an insider with us. And they were becoming prideful, arrogant in their use of the gifts. And so, what would you say is the situation? Why was Paul bringing love to bear in 1 Corinthians 13? What is the original purpose of him bringing that up? How would you boil it down in essence?
Their situation was they were thinking of themselves as super-spiritual, but they were violating really the law of love in that process. And so, what Paul does is he brings this topic of love to bear and says, “You can speak with the tongues of angels, and if you don’t have love, you’re in bad, bad shape.”
So, what I would write in terms of a summary of the original situation if I were dealing with 1 Corinthians 13 is this: In the context in which they were abusing gifts and therefore hurting each other in the church, Paul says you need to make love paramount in that situation.
2. Write the general principles of the passage
Now the second thing we want to do is write down the general principles of the passage. The principle should be reflected in the text. It should be timeless. In other words, it’s not just going to be bound to the first century, it’s going to be something that’s applicable to all people at all times, so it should not be culturally bound. If it's a statement that is specific to that culture, then it’s not a universal principle.
The principle should correspond to the rest of scripture. If I start coming up with principles that nobody else in scripture ever thought of and nobody in the history of the church has thought of, then I’m probably coloring outside the lines there. The principle should be relevant to both the biblical and the contemporary audience.
Now how would you boil down and put it? How would you state a principle related to 1 Corinthians 13? How would you make it a statement of principle that would be applicable to them, to us, to Christians of any age? How would you state it? What would be a concise way of saying what’s the principle from 1 Corinthians 13?
One of you said: "When you deal with people, deal in love". That’s very broad and something that’s going to be applicable in just about any situation. Somebody want to state it another way? “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Picking up on another biblical passage there. Can you bring it down a little closer to their situation? That is a good principle, so I’m not backing up from that at all; is there a way to state it that maybe is more closely tied to the situation?
We could say something like – in the context of the church, love needs to be paramount over even spiritual gifts or the exercise of spiritual gifts in ministry. Now that brings it down to a little bit more specificity than the general principle of love, and that allows us to look at specific situations in which we might find ourselves.
3. Apply principle to specific current situations similar to original context
We have seen how the principle addressed the original situation. That’s pretty clear. Think of situations in the modern church that might parallel that situation. What might be a situation in our context in church?
Well, it may be that sometimes people can be so oriented to driving home their particular point of theology that they’re not loving about it. They wind up really hurting people. That would be a theological parallel.
What about in ministry and the use of spiritual gifts? What would be a parallel there with our situation? Something we might find ourselves in or maybe even in our own personal ministries in our lives. What would be an example of a situation in which I may not be sensitive to the need to exercise love in a context. And I’m really excusing myself because what I’m doing is I’m exercising a spiritual gift, I’m doing ministry, and so I’m not tuned into how this is affecting other people.
There are lots of examples. If I am teaching or preaching in such a way, and I’m so intent in just communicating the message that I’m not sensitive to the timing, context, people’s specific situations. I’m not saying that I can’t preach and teach in a way that is authoritative and forceful, that God could use to bring conviction. I’m saying that in the context of my teaching, what am I getting at? What am I driving for? Is the motivation love? Is it to build other people up? Is it to help them in what is going on? Or is my carrying out of my specific gift actually hurting people in their context because I’m wrong-headed in the way that I’m approaching it and I’m not really oriented to love? So that might be a specific situation of church-wide context.
Maybe for you, you can think about your specific spiritual gifts and the specific ministries that God has given you and ask yourself at times is there fallout from the way that you go about this where you are not really acting in love toward certain people around you?
I think part of it is motivation. Now I think with the Corinthian situation, they were just wrong-headed about the nature of that particular spiritual gift and it was causing arrogance. But at times it is a motivational situation. Frankly, at times, when we get off with our gifts and off with our ministry where we’re hurting people, there could be a theological problem there - something's wrong with the way we think about God or about what are doing and why we are doing it.
So, you might think, okay, for me personally and in the way I exercise my spiritual gifts, is there fallout here because I’m not acting lovingly towards certain people?
And then you make the applications to your own life, or if you’re preaching or teaching, to your target audience. We need to work at being specific. Let me give you a situation and you help me think of how I may be specific in my application. Let’s say that I was dealing with someone who was a friend and I really rebuked him in a way that I may have been hitting on something that was true in his life but the way I went about it was harmful. I was too harsh; I did not extend grace. So, I may have been exercising a ministry there if you will, but I devastated that person. I was right. They’re wrong in that situation, but I’m studying 1 Corinthians 13, and God brings me to conviction and says, “You know what? Yes, you were right, but you were wrong because you did not act in love, and what you actually did with that person devastated him rather than putting him on a road to recovery from this problem in their life."
Now what would be specific action I could do at that point that would help me bring this down to something that I need to do? What would be a specific application? It might mean going to that person and asking for forgiveness. And I need to watch my attitude and the way I go about this. I need to be careful not to go and say, “Now I was right about everything I said about you." What I need to do is humble myself and say, "I was wrong for using these words in the situation. I could tell that it really hurt you and I want to ask your forgiveness. I was wrong.”
With our children, one of the things we’ve tried to teach them to do is not to say “I’m sorry,” because sorry may simply mean I got caught, and I’m sorry I got caught. When you say “I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” what you’re doing is you’re handing the ball to that other person for them to do something with it. And so it may be that that’s what I need to do. It may be I need to write a letter and I need to say “Here is how I should have gone about this and I just want you to know I’m here to support you and encourage you,” and that kind of thing.
Now if you broaden it out to the broader principle that (name of participant) mentioned a minute ago, then what would be some things for you this week? What would being driven by love look like for you? What would be a specific application for you this week? If you were dealing with this, who would be someone in your life, what would be something you could do for them this week that would be an expression of love for them? And when you get down to application in that sense, that’s when things really start happening. Because I think the Spirit of God honors us acting on his word. It’s an exciting thing when you see God begin to change your life on the basis of the word.
4. Example of application: Phil 2:5-11
Now let’s give it a try also with Philippians 2:5-11. This is a passage we’ve looked at before, and I want us to turn there. We’re going to back up and look at the whole context of the passage. I want us to walk through this process of application again and see what we can do with it here. And then we’ll wrap up with the last couple of points. Let’s look at the whole of chapter 2:1-11.
''Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from His love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and sympathetic? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one heart and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t think only about your own affairs but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing. Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though He was God, He did not demand and cling to His rights as God. He made himself nothing; He took a humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form He obediently humbled Himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on the cross. Because of this, God raised Him up to the heights of heaven and gave Him a name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.''
Now if you look at Philippians 2:5-11, it is a wonderful confession. Some people believe it’s a hymn that was written in the early church, and it is used beautifully to describe Christ, His coming to earth, His living-out-servanthood, dying for us, and then being exalted back to the right hand of God. But we have to take this in its context. Now in the context, why is Paul using it as he is? What would you say is the summary of the passage, first of all? And then what are the general principles?
Well, if you looked at a summary of the passage, you would say probably something like this: Paul is addressing the need for unity and servanthood among the Philippians and he is using Christ as an example. That’s the summary of the passage. That’s really the essence of what is going on here.
Now, what would you say are some general principles found in Christ’s example we have in Philippians 2:5-11? How would you bring it down to something that’s applicable back in the first century and applicable today?
Yes, the principle of humility. Christians need to have humility towards one another. That’s a good principle. What else? In situations of conflict or disunity, seek servanthood. Seek to be a servant. Now that is a great and powerful principle. Is there another way of stating it? Think about the implications of servanthood. If every time I found myself having friction with somebody else, if I stopped myself and said, “What would servanthood look like here?” Can you think of another principle? These are great; very well stated.
If you had been digging and studying this passage, what you would find is that in Philippians you find at the end of chapter 1 at the beginning of chapter 4 some real strong hints here that one of the main reasons why Paul was writing Philippians in the first place was because of disunity in the church. In fact, he is so focused on that topic that when he gets to chapter 4, he mentions a couple of ladies in the church who evidently were leaders in the church, Euodia and Syntyche, and he says to them – he actually says to a fellow worker, “Help these wonderful coworkers to get it together.” And so, it must have been a very, very serious problem. So, we would say that the principles applied to that original situation very directly by Paul saying, in this moment of conflict and disunity in the church, you need to follow the example of Christ who emptied himself and took on the role of a servant. So, that’s the original situation. Now again as we move to situations in the modern context, think about various areas of modern life to which this would apply. What we want to do is we want to start closest to a parallel with their situation. So, what would be some things that we have in common with them, some parallels that we have in common with them, that might tell us about the context in which we could apply this principle of humility and servanthood in the face of disunity? What would be the most immediate parallels for us in our situation?
Well, to be closer to the original situation Paul was addressing there, would it not be the context of the church again? How do our situations parallel theirs? The most immediate application is going to be in the context of the church. When we are facing situations of friction or disunity or whatever, then we need to again think about how would humility and servanthood manifest itself.
We need to remember that this has to be taken in the broader context of scripture. It doesn’t mean in any situation that you’re not going to have times in the church when you really have to work hard to work through things and you’re going to be frustrated. It’s not always that everybody says, “Oh, well, let’s just serve each other.” Sometimes we have to do the hard work of working through problems.
But a lot of our problems, a lot of the friction where we are causing disunity in the church comes about because we want our agenda and we’re selfish and we're arrogant. The application there is for us to say, okay, what is humility, what does sacrificial service look like? And once we turn that corner and begin serving other people, then we start seeing that friction and disunity dissolve. So, the church would be the most immediate situation, but I think we can have application going out from there to the family, for example. Say, if I’m in my family, and I have disunity and friction taking place there. My tendency when I get mad at Pat about something is I get frustrated with her and I want to say, “I am right about this. She’s just flat wrong and she ought to get it together.” Sometimes I respond that way. What I need to do is in those moments I need to be confronted by this word that says what would it look at this moment to meet your wife’s need. What would humility look like? What would servanthood look like? And you know, when I’m confronted with that, when I’m in the midst of my emotion of being angry, I don’t want to do that. But I need to be confronted by the word and respond in that way so that I am humbling myself in order to meet her need.
So do you see how we move through the process where what we try to do is identify the situation, the principles used in that situation, how those principles might parallel common situations in our lives, and then bringing it down to very specific application. If I was dealing with this and we were in the moment of conflict and disunity, it might be that the application for me would be to say, you know, this afternoon I need to go home and I need to do this in order to serve my wife. So, bringing down to very specific applications.
What I want to challenge you to do as you think about this next week is as you read the word or even as you hear the message preached this morning to begin thinking along these tracks of saying, “What is one thing I could do this week to apply this word to my life? What’s one thing I could do this week to bring this down to where I’m following through on this, I’m acting on it?” I think that in some ways in the American church we have created a culture of being hearers of the word rather than doers. Because we have so many opportunities, we have so much of the word coming at us, that we can become passive on everything and just go through the motions of hearing it rather than really following through and doing it.
C. Apply to your own life first
Well, let me give you a couple more points here. The third point is to apply the text to your own life before you attempt to apply it to the lives of others. And this gets back to the key of authenticity, that at times we may study the word or read the word and say, “Boy, he really needs to hear that. You know, I’m going to make sure that he gets this.” So, you leave big posters with that scripture around so your friend or your spouse or whoever will get it. Jesus came at the Pharisees and said the Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and inside it’s full of greed and wickedness, and there’s just a real danger that we have the word skirt around the outsides of our lives and we’re throwing it out at other people, and we’re not embracing it very deeply ourselves. And I think that authenticity means that we have got to embrace the word very personally, very authentically before we try to share it with somebody else. It’s got to be something that is real in our lives and that we are seeking to apply to our lives.
A guy wrote a letter to the I.R.S. (Internal Revenue Service) and said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to sleep at night because I didn’t pay my taxes like I should, so here is a check for $200. And if I still can’t sleep, then I’ll send you the rest.” That's not motivated by authenticity. It's just trying to relieve the tension of the moment. But we really need to seek to apply the text in our own lives. In fact, I would say that needs to be about 95 percent of what we do, and then share it with other people in whatever context God gives us the opportunity.
D. Lead others to make specific application of the text to life
The fourth thing is lead others to make specific application of the text to life. I’m thinking here specifically in our roles as teachers and parents, and in other kinds of situations like that. If we will get into a rhythm of life in which we are specifically applying the word to our own lives, then we can authentically be used of God to help others apply the word in their lives.
When I talk to my students about this, I talk about staying away from VIGs. I think at some time I’m going to have a t-shirt made that has VIG on it and with a big “no” sign through it. And what is VIG? It is a Vague Idealistic Gas. C.S. Lewis said something to the effect that Jesus never dealt in vague idealistic gasses. He wasn’t just throwing philosophy around. Jesus brought it down to where the rubber meets the road of our lives. It’s so easy for us to get in a trap when we’re trying to deal with application. A vague idealist gas is, “Oh, okay, I need to love people more. That’s great. Hey, we need unity in the church.” But what we need to do is we need to bring it down again to specifics.
When I was a graduate student in seminary, I was grading for a man named Tommy Lee. He went to be with the Lord a number of years ago. He died of cancer. He was teaching hermeneutics or Bible study, and he had the students do a study of Ephesians chapter 5, and it’s about the husband-wife relationship. And a student was sharing in his paper this illustration that came out of his relationship with his wife. He said, “I went home to my wife and I told my wife, ‘I just want you to know I’ve been studying this passage and I’m willing to lay my life down for you as Christ did for the church.’ And his wife says, “Why don’t you just do the dishes a few times on your way to laying down your life for me?” His point was that you can say you’re going to lay down your life, you’re willing to die for somebody, but you’re not willing to die for somebody if you’re not willing to live for them. Really that’s the point that Paul is making in that passage.
So, we need to help people come to specific applications, that really wind up helping us in our lives in terms of adjusting our lives to bring them in line with the truth of God’s Word.
In the next session, we’re going to wrap things up. We will look at the overview of the whole process and try to tie all the strings together, and hopefully that will give us a good start.
III. Closing prayer
Let’s have a word of prayer. Father thanks for this time together. I pray that You would help us to be people who are real serious about working the word into our lives in practical ways. Lord, I pray that You would change us by Your word. Help us to apply the word in a way that is faithful to what You communicated through it. Help us to hear it in a way in which we will understand but help us not to stop there. Help us to really work and think through what it would mean for us to adjust our lives on the basis of it. We thank You for this time together, and we pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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- 0% CompleteBy embracing receptivity, you can overcome barriers and enhance your understanding of the Bible, ultimately leading to personal growth, stronger relationships, and deepened faith.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteBy entering the story when reading the Bible, you enrich your understanding, connect with biblical characters, and foster personal spiritual growth, Bible study, and teaching skills.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) This lesson introduces tools for understanding the Bible. Dr. Guthrie emphasizes the importance of using study Bibles, Bible dictionaries, maps, and concordances for interpretation. He explains their purpose, features, and examples, and discusses two major Bible translation approaches.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) This lesson discusses personal commitments, emphasizing reliance on the Holy Spirit and obedience to God's word, noting the importance of preparation for sharing with our community. Dr. Guthrie also covers background studies to enhance understanding and cautions against fallacies.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteIn this lesson, you learn about literary context's importance in interpreting the Bible, identifying literary genres and structures, and applying context for accurate exegesis and application.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) In this lesson, Dr. Guthrie emphasizes the importance of literary context in understanding text meaning. He explores immediate, book, and canonical contexts and reviews tools to navigate these layers. He also discusses approaches to different Biblical genres and provides examples of applying literary context in Bible study.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteBy understanding historical context, you can better interpret the Bible, considering cultural, social, and geographical backgrounds. Study Bibles, Bible dictionaries and commentaries can provide you with helpful information.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteDr. Guthrie will teach you how to identify and interpret various biblical genres. This will enhance your understanding of the Bible and help you apply its teachings more effectively in your life.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) Dr. Guthrie emphasizes careful observation in Bible study: “You cannot interpret, and therefore apply, what you never see.” He explains observation mechanics, the text's backbone and support material, and examines Psalm 1.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) Gain an understanding of word studies, including their definition, purpose, and limitations, the methods and tools used for conducting word studies, guidelines for conducting word studies, and examples of word studies in the New Testament.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteThis lesson provides you with knowledge on the importance of Bible translations, their types, and the criteria for selecting the most suitable one for your needs while also offering insights into their historical development.0% Complete
- 0% CompleteWhen you read your Bible, read rhythmically and meditatively, use the tools you need to understand the background and apply the Scripture to your life in specific ways.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) Dr. Guthrie teaches how to apply the Bible to everyday life, emphasizing the effort needed to understand and apply its teachings, guiding us through study and interpretation. He advises summarizing the text, extracting principles, and applying them.0% Complete
- 0% Complete(Audio only) Dr. Guthrie guides a Bible study on Colossians 2:6-15, starting with heart preparation. He reviews the steps: observations, word studies, general principles, and application. He ends with gratitude for the class's faithfulness and engagement with God's word.0% Complete
About BiblicalTraining.org
BiblicalTraining.org wants every Christian to experience a deep and loving relationship with Jesus by understanding the life-changing truths of Scripture. To that end, we provide a high-quality Bible education at three academic levels taught by a wide range of distinguished professors, pastors, authors, and ministry leaders that moves from content to spiritual growth, all at no charge. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit funded by gifts from our users. We currently have over 180 classes and seminars, 2,300 hours of instruction, registered users from every country in the world, and in the last two years 1.4 million people watched 257 terabytes of videos (11 million lectures).
Our goal is to provide a comprehensive biblical education governed by our Statement of Faith that leads people toward spiritual growth.