How to: Study Your Bible (Part 2 - Ask Questions)

Hello. My name is Joel Hastings. I'm the pastor here at community church in Brooksville, Florida, if you're anywhere in the local area. I, when I invite you out to a wonderful church here in Brooksville, Florida, but we are in a series about how to study your Bible and so today's going to be part two of that series before we get started.

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If we know that people are watching it and enjoying it and learning from it. And so we want to do that for you as well, but so just let us know, but we are now starting our second video in this series. The first video was all about prayer and about how important is just this. Start before you even opened up your Bible just to start with prayer.

And that's the supernatural connection that we have with God. And he is the one that's ultimately going to help illuminate his Holy spirit is going to be the one that illuminates,  that scripture for us. And so if you haven't watched it, you can find it on our YouTube page [email protected] under our blog page as well.

But today we're going to actually discuss. Cover or look at what do we do whenever we finally open up the Bible? Because for so many of us, we have, some point whether it's when we're brand new Christian, or even later in life, we just said, man, I really need to read my Bible. You just open it up, you read a random passage and you're saying like, okay, I didn't really get anything out of it.

And that's just. It's such a shame because scripture promises and it tells us that everything that we need to live a godly life has already been written down for us. There, there isn't anything that you need as far as with your connection with God that isn't already written down. Okay. In scripture. And so I want to just encourage you in this, the number one, just make it a habit.

Go ahead. Because number one, if you're going to get discouraged sometimes and say, well, I didn't get anything out of it. Is it really even any yeah. Points, um, and trying any more, yes, there is. And just make it that habit, even if it's just a little bit of time each day, that you make sure that you are spending time with your word, just like with the exercising and you got to work yourself into that.

Um, oftentimes that is what it is with scripture that we got to just make time for it and put in the effort there. But now let's go ahead and talk about how to actually study our Bible now. Generally speaking, there would be three major steps in studying your Bible three major steps here, and they are to observe, interpret and apply.

We need to observe what the Bible says. To interpret what the Bible means and then apply what it's trying to teach us, observe it, interpret it and apply it. Those three steps are the three key, major steps. Now I say that and you're probably, you're like, okay, well, how do I do that? And that is. A good question.

So what we're going to do now for this video and at least the next one as well, um, is really talk about that first point up there, which is to observe what the text is saying here. Because so many times we get in trouble or churches get in trouble. Pastors get in trouble because we go ahead and we just try to sell.

Skip down to that last point of applying the text. But if you try to apply the text before you actually even observed what it says or interpret what it means, then you're always going to apply it in the wrong way. And you're going to try to put things in scripture that shouldn't be there and you're going to really mess up your life because you're applying something then which God never actually said.

And so we first need to start with how to observe the text and then we can learn how to interpret it. And then we can. Finally get to the point of applying it to our life. And that's where really life transformation happens. But the observing is just the foundation for everything. So let's talk about what that means here.

And so. Quick, a quick story here. Whenever I was in Bible college, even before I went to seminary, it got my doctors or anything. Um, I went to a class called inductive Bible study, and this is where a lot of the stuff that I'll be, um, talking about in these videos kind of came out of that college level course here.

And I remember going down there and then it was one of the. First classes. I sat down and the professor came in Dr. O'Brien and he pulled out a Bible and he gave us a passage. And I don't even remember what specific passage it was anymore, but he gave us like, I think about five verses there. And he said, all right, here's what I want you to do the very first assignment of the class.

As he said, read through these first five verses and come up with 20 questions by in two more days when our next. His classes. And I looked at that and I was like, what in the world? How in the world am I going to come up with 20 questions? Are you kidding me? But then, so what I did is I went home and I started to like a couple of them were easy and I was like, okay.

But then it got harder and harder and harder. And by the end of it, I was just like, you know, what is paper? Like? I was like, I'll just try to throw something on there just to focus. Fill that requirement there. So I finally came in, I was pretty proud of myself because I was able to get all 20 questions and I was thinking, there's just no way, like I've asked every single question I can possibly think of.

And you know, what happened on the next time that I went in, I went in, turned the paper in and he's like, all right, how many of you were able to come up with 20 questions? About half of us raised our hand, half of us. So he came up a little bit short. He's like, all right, well, this time I want you to read through that same five verses and ask another 20 questions about it.

And I was like, are you kidding me? I can't imagine, like, I, I already exhausted it, but the point of the. Exercise was this is that to study the Bible. The very first thing we must do is to ask questions and they don't even have to be good questions. Honestly, we just need to start asking questions because we can't understand what's happening without asking good questions.

First, whenever an investigator goes to a murder crime scene or some type of crime scene there, they're going to go ahead and. I start to ask those questions. All right. Where did it happen? How did it happen? Are there any, um, murder weapons laying around here? What are the clues? And they start to ask questions so that they can piece all of that together in the same way.

Whenever we come to the Bible, we're reading a portion of scripture that was written by somebody inspired by God 2000 years ago. But we're going to have to ask questions to really start, to try to understand what is actually written down. For us here. And so what I'm going to do now, um, is. I do that kind of the same thing that when my professor did for me, several years ago but we're going to go ahead and turn over to the book of Jude, the book of Jude.

Now you might say, I didn't even know there was a book of Jude. I knew about the Beatles song. I don't know about the book there, but it's actually the second to last book in the Bible. So if you can find the last one. Book, which is revelation. And then just turn over a, you have to be careful. It's only about one page long.

It's a very short little book there, and we're going to spend a little bit of time in that book of Jude. Now you might say why Jude out of all the little books there, out of all the things that we could say, well, I'm guessing you probably aren't as familiar with the book of Jude as you are with other books.

And so I don't want you just to, um, just to come at it with. Things that you've already heard. Some other preachers say or some other Bible study that you've ever done. Like, I want to get into a portion of scripture that many of you probably haven't actually spent a lot of time studying so we can actually put these principles into practice and that whenever you come to a portion of scripture, you're not going to be relying on what I say or in any other pastor says, but you can actually dig deep into the word of God.

For yourself and find those life transforming truths. And so let's go ahead now and go over to Jude one, Jude one. Now notice two. I'm going to say Jude one and not Jude one, one, because there's no chapter breaks. That's how short the book of Jude is. There's only verses there's no chapters here. And so that's why I'm going to just say Jude one, Jude one.

So if you don't have your Bible, go ahead. Pause the video, go grab it and then come back here because you're going to want to either grab a Bible with a big enough margin. Also actions. Like I have a Bible here that kind of has big margins on the side. I haven't written this one. This is a new Bible here, but, you can write, yeah.

In the side of it is a great resource there. Or you can just always grab a notebook and write in that notebook. And. State as well, but we are going to go ahead and try to start marking up and start to write out questions here. And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and open up Jude one. Let's go ahead and get started here.

I want us to start to read through, I want us to start to read through and start to ask questions, but I'll go ahead and show you a verse one. Here you might say, let's go ahead and read it first. Actually, that's always a good place to start. So is Jude a servant of Jesus Christ in brother James, to those who are called beloved and God, the father and kept for Jesus Christ.

Now you might say that seems pretty simple. It's from a guy named Jude and it's a two people who are called whatever that means. Like yeah, like I got this, normally I just skip over those first few verses anyway but an actuality, I think there's a lot of questions in here whether you know, the answer to or not.

I want us to go ahead. Here's your homework assignment before our next video next Wednesday. Are you ready for it? I want you to come up with 20 questions from versus one. Through verse four, come up with as many as you possibly can. Okay. This is your Bible college experience. All right, this is how we're going to study the Bible.

This is how we're going to learn. Come up with as many questions. Hopefully you can come up with 20. If he can't come up with 20, come up with as many as he can from verses one through verse. Four of the book of Jude. And then next week we're going to come back here and we are going to answer some of those questions.

So do me a favor, write down some of these questions and either in your Bible and a notebook. And then also if you would be so kind about comment below here on our YouTube page. And so then I can see what questions I'm going to see. Who's actually doing it. And then I can also see some of those questions that you have, and then the next.

Time will actually answer some of those questions here as well. So make sure you do that. Yes, but let's go ahead and do verse one together. Do verse one to gather here. So it starts out with Jude. Jude know who's Jude that's question number one, who is Jude? Because you might not know, even if you do, you can go ahead and list off because that's a good question here.

And we're going to talk a little bit more about him and, and coming videos and about, the author of each individual book and how important it is to know those sorts of things. But the very first question that you need to ask is the very first word is. Who is Jude, who is the guy that actually wrote it.

All right. So there's question number one, in my opinion. Um, as we go on there, it says, and a servant of Jesus Christ, a servant of Jesus Christ. And we say, why did he call himself a servant? Why did he do that? There's all sorts of terms that he could have called himself. Why did he call himself a servant and next week, I'm going to reveal why that is actually extremely important, extremely interesting, and extremely insightful.

So you're going to have to come back next week to see exactly why that is important. But right now that's a good question to ask there. So I've already gotten you the first one. Two questions that you can put down in their list here. So who's June. Why did he call himself a servant and Jesus Christ?

Because we know Jesus didn't actually have any servants, but then it says of Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ. Now, here's a question then I got, why did he say Jesus Christ and not just Jesus. Why do you think he did that? Surely we all know who Jesus is. Why didn't he just go ahead and say of Jesus?

Why did he add that term Christ there further all? Maybe you're actually wondering too.  what is Christ even mean? Is that just Jesus' last name? It's not. So what does Christ mean? Why did he include that in his title there? Why does he, why does he say Jesus Christ at all? All right. So there's a, we got one, two, three, four questions already, and we're only like a few words into it.

You can ask these questions, there's all sorts of things. And as you're going to see here, we're starting to think pretty deeply about this verse. We're starting to get a little bit deeper than you probably realized that the first siting here. So as we continue on, it says, brother of James, brother of James.

Who's James like there's actually, you might say, well, there's lots of chains. Aren't there and you're right. There are several Jane's. And so who actually is this particular, James? Why is he so important that he had to be mentioned in the Bible? Right? So this guy must be important. He must be one of the guns that people, everybody seemed to have known, but why did he mention his brother?

James here. All right. So that kind of is the very first section here of the book of Jude. All right. You see this little section, that part at the top is all the things that it says who it's from and in the, how they wrote in and that time is that they would often. And this is a smart thing to do.

They would introduce themselves at the top of the letter. We don't say our name until the very bottom of the letter when we say sincerely or best wishes, Joel Hastings, but in that, in that time, they'd put it at the top of the letter because you'd want to know who actually wrote you the letter. So you don't have to skim down to the bottom.

Right? And so this is where it starts. It starts out with him just introducing himself and he gave himself his name. And then he said the two most important things about him is that he's. The servant of Jesus Christ and that he's a brother of James and there's a lot of information packed in there. And so keep asking those questions.

So as we go on in verse one, still, it says to those who are called to those who are called, and we say, all right, who are the people that are called. That's another good question. Who are those people? This is to those who are called who, who is he writing to? Um, second of all, why did he use that phrase?

This is another good question. Why did he say called? Why didn't he just say to the people in Orlando? Like to the people in Miami, he didn't just like say somebody specific or to the Davis family or whatever. But he said a kind of, this, this title here to those who are called, so what is called mean? Who are these people?

Why did he say that? Three more questions right there. And you're saying I'm not even gonna get to verse four because there's so much in verse one who even knew. Right. Um, and so it says to those who are called beloved the beloved. Alright. What does beloved mean? That's not a term that we often use very often in art vernacular.

Right. And so what does it mean to be beloved? If it says beloved. In God in God, maybe even another question right there is not that you are beloved by God, but you are beloved in God. You actually in God. Why does he say in God and not by God beloved in God, God, the father and kept for Jesus Christ. All right.

So then here we go. What does it mean to be. Kept for Jesus Christ. How is it? That is it. Is it? God is God. The one that's keeping us kept for Jesus Christ. Are we keeping ourselves kept for Jesus Christ? What does it mean there? That we are being kept for Jesus Christ. Now there's a list of many different questions.

And honestly, you could find a lot more in here to tell you the truth. This is just me going off of it right now. I didn't preplan any of this. These are just questions that start to pop off the page as we start to just simply read it over here. And this is how I come across. For your if you're in my congregation or you with another pastor, but this is like how pastor we start to dig deep inside of the Bible.

And you might say, how in the world does this guy know so much? Or it can find out all of this? Well, this is what I do. This is how I dig deep. I just read it and I start to ask these questions and then I go out and about. Find the answers, which will be something that we'll discuss even in later videos here.

But today here is the homework assignment for you. All right to, Oh, go ahead. Go look at Jude verses one through four and try to come up with 20 questions. I gave you about 10 of them already in verse one. So you should be able hopefully to fill in some extra here but go ahead. Okay. Oh, read through that.

Try to write down some of those in your own pen and paper. And then also do me the favor of just commenting below, right? And then some of those questions that you might have come up with. There's no bad questions there. There really isn't. So if even you want to say, who is Jesus, that's probably the most important question that you could ever ask.

And so there's no bad questions. Go ahead and start to fill in as many questions if he can come up with 20. Great. If he can't, that's fine. If he come up with even more, even better. All right. And so that is what I'm going to ask you to do. This is so foundational and just trying to dig deep into God's word.

And so that's what I have here for you guys today. Thank you for watching. I'll see you again. Next Wednesday. As we pick up where we left off.