How to Study the Bible - Week 3 Session 2

There was also a question during the break about the book. Somebody didn't pick up their book last week. I have two more copies up here, so by the end of the night, if you want to pick up your book when we're done, you can do that.

How do we actually access last week's resources or worksheets? I will put those up on my website, pastormiles.com. I think that's it. Remember to text in your questions if you have any.

One more thing that I want to do here is to help you as you study through the Scriptures and try to see a snapshot of how the Scriptures lay out. If you go to pastormiles.com/NT-timeline, you will find the New Testament timeline. This is the timeline of the Book of Acts that I created a number of years ago when we were going through the Book of Acts.

We have the timeline from about 30 to 70 A.D. This shows you where each of the New Testament letters aligns with the timeline of the Book of Acts and the various events that were happening in the Book of Acts. Along the top are the books of the New Testament, and along the bottom, there are also some books from the New Testament.

There are key events occurring in the Book of Acts, such as the journeys of Paul. This helps you see when Paul was on his second missionary journey. That is during the period of time when Galatians, First Thessalonians, and Second Thessalonians were written. At the end of his third missionary journey, that is when First and Second Corinthians and Romans were written, and it shows where they were written from. This kind of information will help you.

If you just go to pastormiles.com/NT-timeline, you can access that. The other one is pastormiles.com/OT-timeline. This one is a little more complex, and I will recognize now that this one may require some zooming in. What this does is break down the timeline from the Book of Genesis.

Through till the end of Malachi, the different kings and the various books of the Bible were written, along with some contemporary history about what was happening in different parts of the world. You can download this; I created it a few years ago. This will give you a snapshot of where various events are happening in the Old Testament timeline.

Understanding that the Old Testament goes from the time of Abraham, we can find Abraham on the left side of the timeline. Abraham was born around 2166 BC to 1991 BC. We have the call of Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, the establishing of the Covenant in Genesis chapter 15, and the birth of Ishmael in Genesis chapter 16. All these events lead us through his son Isaac, then Isaac's son Jacob, and so forth. You can follow through the text of the Scriptures up to the time of Moses.

Here is the time of Moses, when he was born, and the Exodus of the children of Israel around 1446 BC. The wilderness wanderings are documented, and the book of Deuteronomy would have been written right as they were getting ready to enter the conquest of Canaan, which Joshua leads them into. This shows the time of the judges, which is covered in the Book of Judges, and eventually, we will be studying through that.

The books of First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, and First and Second Chronicles all fall into this area of the United Monarchy and the Divided Monarchy. There is King Saul, King David, and King Solomon, followed by the divided monarchy. These are the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel, which are detailed in the books of First and Second Kings. While it can be hard to understand, you can grasp it as you go through it systematically, as it provides all the little details about the events that are occurring.

Both the Old Testament timeline and the New Testament timeline are available for free on my website, pastormiles.com. These resources may help you see how the Scriptures map out, giving you the overarching story of what is happening in the text.

This is where we left off. In this purposeful Study Bible session, what we are going to cover over the next 20 or so minutes is all the information that I will provide to you on this piece of paper at the end.

Of this class tonight, you're going to feel compelled to write everything down. No, you don't need to. Everything that I'm going to show you on the screen is on this piece of paper. I have a stack of them up here. When we're done with what we're going through tonight, you can have this piece of paper, and this will help you. I will also make another one available that has even more sample questions that I got from another individual and another website online to help you go through all this.

So, how do we study the Bible with purpose? As I said, we want to use comprehension questions as we go through the text of Scripture to understand what the Bible teaches about specific things. Reading the Bible with purpose involves having comprehension questions that you start with before you read the text. Remember, we have two phases: phase one is to determine what kind of literature you are reading, and phase two is to determine how you are going to study that passage and what questions you are going to ask about the text.

The next thing you do is read the text carefully, repeatedly, slowly, and meditatively, looking for the answers to specific questions. What kind of questions? For example, how does this passage that I'm reading describe God? What names for God are used? What are God's character traits or attributes? What does this reveal about Him? Does the passage describe any aspect of God's emotions or other personality traits? You're simply looking at what the text says to reveal something about God.

What are God's motivations or objectives? What is He doing? How does this passage describe God's relationship with mankind? What is God's attitude toward mankind? How does God describe Himself? What does God want us to do? These questions work best with Job, Psalms, and the prophets.

When you're reading through the book of Isaiah, which has 66 chapters and covers a long period of time—about 60 years of history in Israel—it can be really hard to grasp what is going on and what is being revealed in the text. There are some amazing things happening in the book of Isaiah, and I have studied and taught through it probably about eight times at Calvary Chapel Bible College. It is a book that you could really spend a lot of time getting into.

If you're going to read through the Bible purposefully, one of the things you could do is ask, "What does this passage reveal to me about God?" This is what you would call a theocentric focus. Several years ago, back in 2012, I took a class at a local Bible university on the Book of Job. One of the homework assignments required us to go through every single chapter of the Book of Job with a theocentric study, simply looking at what each chapter tells us about God. At the end of it, I had about 40 pages of notes answering that simple question: "What does the Book of Job reveal to me about God?"

As you read through the text, focus on that single question or the questions that are presented to try and figure out what you learn about God in the text. Here are some sample questions that will be helpful for studying the Gospels. Remember, last week I mentioned that devotional Bible study works best in the Epistles, but it can also be applied to the Gospels.

Consider the question: Who is Jesus? Is He divine? Is He human? We already have theological answers to these questions. If you've been around the church for a long time, you might say, "Jesus is both human and divine; He is fully God and fully man." However, where do we get that idea from? This is what we call Systematic Theology, but that Systematic Theology is built on Biblical theology. We find things in the text that tell us about His divinity.

For instance, in the Gospels, Jesus is able to read people's thoughts. Is that a human or divine characteristic? I know your spouse might think you can read their mind, but you can't. Obviously, that ability is a divine characteristic. We see certain traits of Jesus's divinity in the Scriptures, but we also see His humanity. There were times when He was hungry, thirsty, and tired, which reveals His human side.

We can also ask questions like: Is He equal to or inferior to the Father? What does the text reveal about that? Was He created? What do we find in the Scriptures about that? What kind of man was Jesus? Was He outgoing or private? What emotions did He display? What were His personality traits? What sort of things come out about Christ just by reading the Scriptures?

If you're taking the time to read through the Gospel of Matthew, focusing on what it reveals about Jesus, you'll find that the Gospel of Matthew presents some aspects of Jesus differently than the Gospel of John. This is not to say that they contradict each other, but rather that they offer unique perspectives.

You'll discover that the author Matthew was writing for one audience, whereas John was writing for a different audience. Matthew was writing predominantly for a very Hebrew audience, while John was writing more for a Greek audience. You can see different characteristics coming through as they reveal who Jesus is. As you read through the Gospels, you will start to discover who Jesus is according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In doing a Christocentric study of the Gospels, you might ask yourself, "What do I learn about Jesus in the text?" Answering these kinds of questions does take time. Yes, it does take time. You could spend an entire year just going through the Gospels, trying to discover what you learn about Jesus. As you do this, I would recommend that you get a journal, like the ones I handed out tonight, and keep everything in one journal that you can call your Jesus Journal. Reflect on what you are learning about Jesus from the Scriptures in the Gospels. By the end of that year, your understanding of who Jesus is will grow in ways you could never imagine if you take the time for a purposeful study of the Bible.

Next, consider some interesting questions: How did Jesus treat women? How did He relate to men? How did He interact with religious leaders? How did He interact with Gentiles, sinners, or tax collectors? All of these are Gospel questions. As you look at the Gospels, try to answer various questions as you go through. Remember, I will provide all of these questions, so if you're taking pictures of the screen, I have them on a piece of paper. You don't have to take a picture of the screen unless you can't read it and are zooming in on your phone to see what it says.

Here are some sample questions for the Epistles: How does the passage describe the unsaved? What words are used for sin or the power of sin? How does it describe the relationship that unsaved people have with God? What is the consequence of sin for the unsaved individual?

As you study through the Epistles, there are basic questions that you can bring to the text to try to figure out what the passage is teaching about these topics. It's not necessarily about the saved or the unsaved, but rather how does the passage describe the saved? What are the different words used to describe believers? How does it describe the relationship that a saved person has with God? How is someone saved? This is part of the soteriological study, where you look at what the Bible says about salvation and what the results are.

The consequences of salvation and what happens when a person is saved are important questions. What does that exactly mean? For a lot of people, they probably couldn't answer that question. However, if you take the time to go through just the Epistle of Ephesians, you'll learn an awful lot about salvation, as that is one of the major themes of the book. This theme is also present in other places in the Epistles.

These are some of the ways I want you to begin to look at the text, focusing on a specific question. Perhaps just one question, as we will do in an exercise in just a few minutes. This is again the soteriological question: What is salvation? What does being saved mean? Saved from what? Is salvation permanent? How does one get saved? What is the role of the law? What role, if any, do good works play? Why did Jesus have to die? What is the role of Christ's death? What is faith? What does it mean exactly? What is the importance of the resurrection of Christ?

I guarantee there are probably a few of you here tonight who might think, "I would kind of like to know the answer to some of those questions." Or maybe you would say, "If someone asked me that, I don't think I could answer." I want to suggest that if you pray and ask God to open your eyes so that you can behold wonders from His word, and then ask God, by His Holy Spirit, to direct you in your study, you will find answers to many of these questions. If you systematically study through the books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, you will answer a lot of these questions as you go through, and no doubt it will open up other questions that you have along the way.

In all honesty, this is how I learned the Bible. I did not go through an entire Bible college program. I attended one semester at Bible college after I graduated from high school, and then I left to come on staff at this church. Over the next 10 or 15 years, I learned everything I know about the Bible by studying it on my own—by reading commentaries, by reading books, by listening to Bible teaching, and by teaching others the Bible. The amazing thing about teaching others is that it forces you to try and find answers to the questions they will ask.

I predominantly learned everything I know about the Bible through my own study, with God directing me. It wasn't until 2018, just a few years ago, that I went and got a seminary degree. I mention this not to boast, but to emphasize the importance of personal study and seeking understanding through God's guidance.

I don't feel that I learned very many new things in seminary because I had spent the previous 20 years studying the Bible every single week for hours. I spent a lot of time with really good friends like Charles Spurgeon, D.L. Moody, and Matthew Henry. These are commentators who are long dead, so I became very good friends with old, dead commentators who wrote a lot of information about the most studied book in all of human history: the Bible. I read them constantly and listened to Bible teachers, guys that you would know if you listen to the radio.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of the greatest Bible teachers of the 20th century, has a lot of his material online for people to listen to. David Guzik's content is also available online, and Skip Heitzig is a great Bible teacher who goes through the Bible very systematically. At our church, one of our brothers is on the board for a ministry that features a beloved Bible teacher. My mind just went blank for a moment, but it's J. Vernon McGee.

J. Vernon McGee has been dead for a long time, yet people still think he's alive because they hear him on the radio all around the world every single day. One of the board members of Through the Bible goes to our church, and the president of the Through the Bible Ministry lives in Fallbrook. I have had the privilege of getting to know him over the last few years. These ministries have a huge impact around the world, and you have the ability to go on the internet and listen on your phone to these teachers who will take you through the Scriptures and teach you things that you can't even imagine about what the Bible says.

So much of it comes down to just reading the Bible systematically, slowly, and carefully, asking questions, and discovering new questions as you go. When you can't find an answer to a question, just keep reading until you find the answer. You can even text in a question to Pastor Mark and me for the Questions Podcast, and we'll answer it if we can figure out an answer.

Some other questions to consider are: Why and when do people pray? How do they pray? How does God respond to their prayers? What habits sustain godly living? What are the early warning signs of trouble brewing for individuals? What mistakes do the characters of the Bible make? The Bible is filled with insights on these topics.

With all the mistakes of guys like Abraham, Isaac, and David, you learn all kinds of things about God and how He works in people's lives through their mistakes. What are the consequences of their failures? If the character remains faithful, what tips do they have for us? What are the consequences of their faithfulness? These are great questions for the historical and prophetic books. As you read through Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, and First and Second Kings, you can answer many of these questions as you go through the text of the Bible.

All of this is for reading the Bible purposefully, which leads us now to an activity. Here’s what we’re going to do: I have a stack of papers here, and I’d like some people to help pass these out. Just take the paper; don’t begin to read it yet. Don’t read anything on it yet; just take the paper and pass it to a neighbor. Take whatever color it is; it doesn’t matter. There are four different colors. I want everybody to take one of these, and when you get it, I’m going to explain what we’re going to do.

As those are being handed out, are there any questions? We’ll take a few minutes to hand those out. If you have a question, raise your hand, and we will bring a microphone around. Questions? Lift up your hand really high if you have any.

As for asking questions, do you do that beforehand, or are you coming up with questions as you read, or is it both? You’re going to see as we get this piece of paper that this question is going to be answered. There are times when I like to give you an example. Let’s say I’m doing a teaching on the peace of God. I’m going to be looking for specific questions having to do with the peace of God. We’re going to look at this even more next week when we get into inductive Bible study. If there’s a topic or a theme that I’m going to be looking for, then I’m going to identify some questions ahead of time and start to look at the text through those questions.

But the ones that I put up on the screen, which I’m going to give you a paper with these questions, at the end of the night, a lot of times I’m just going to go through a passage. I want to see what this passage teaches me about Jesus. I’m only looking for the answer to that question. So, a lot of times, I’m just starting with a question and then going to the text. Does anybody not have a paper? You only need one. Here’s what we’re going to do with these papers.

You have different passages of Scripture on them. Some of you have a passage from Colossians, and some of you have a passage from the Gospel of Mark. What I want you to do is notice that at the top of the page, not only is there a passage, but there is also a question.

You're going to spend the next ten minutes by yourself reading through this, trying to answer that question. Circle, underline, highlight—whatever it is. Write down wherever you can in the margins or on the back answers to that question from the text. Do not go outside of this piece of paper that I've given to you. You are only using this piece of paper; you're not using a concordance, your phone, or a Bible to try and go anywhere else. You're only using this piece of paper and that single question at the top.

You have ten minutes to go through this text as many times as you can. Just answer that single question. Do we have any questions? It's not that hard, I promise you. One question with this one text, whether it's the pink—or as my good friend John would say, this salmon-colored piece of paper—or this somewhat orangish-yellow color, and this green and blue.

If you have a salmon-colored piece of paper, I want you to stand up and go around to find one or two other people who have the same color as you do. If you've got green, go around to find one or two people who have the same color as you do and get into groups with people who have the same color. We're going to segregate you, so find one, two, or three people who have the same color as you and get together with them.

Okay, listen. When you find those people, get together with them and go through together for about five to seven minutes. Share with one another what you found and compare notes. See if they found anything you did not find. Some people, just like at the Tower of Babel, find the people who speak the same language as you.

You have the same color paper. All right, can I have everybody's attention, please? Take a seat and look this way. It is likely that by this point, some of you have noticed that everyone with the blue or yellowish color paper has the same passage: Mark chapter 10. However, you have two different questions.

Everybody who has the salmon color and the green paper, you have the same passage from Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 to 23, but you also have two different questions.

Here’s what I want to do: all the people with blue pieces of paper, would you stand up real quick? The blue pieces of paper correspond to Mark chapter 10. The question is, how did people react to Jesus? Does someone want to share with us three things that you found regarding how people reacted to Jesus from the group in the back?

Maggie, what are three answers to the question of how people reacted to Jesus from Mark 10?

One of the things we found was that the Pharisees wanted to test Him based on what He was saying. Because multitudes of people were gathering to Him, it was obviously attention-grabbing, and the attention wasn't on them. They wanted to test Him and see what was going on.

You can make Jacob speak too if you want to.

Okay, how did people react to Jesus, Jacob?

We saw a lot of passages where the multitudes would gather, follow, or run after Him. This was kind of juxtaposed with how, after He would give a teaching, they would be sad, confused, sorrowful, or perplexed, depending on the particular teaching.

Perfect.

Okay, Nick, bring the mic over here to Paul. I want to ask you the same question about Mark chapter 10. What are some different things that you saw regarding how people reacted to Jesus in Mark chapter 10?

I underlined "astonished," "frayed," and "greatly displeased." There are people who were displeased with Jesus. It seems like they came to Him asking Him to affirm their beliefs or to tell them how to answer a question, and He didn't really do that.

Okay, all the blue paper people can sit down. The yellowish-colored paper people, please stand up. Your question, from the same passage of Scripture, is: How did Jesus treat people? Mark Vacher, we're going to bring you a microphone. Tell us, how did Jesus treat people from Mark chapter 10?

Well, the first thing that I saw is that Jesus came to the region, so He came to people. How did Jesus treat people? He came to people.

Okay, what else? He taught them. He taught them and He answered their questions. The one about the children was very easy; He took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them. He blessed the children. Jesus treated the children well.

Now, take the microphone to the very back group. I see Noah back there. Tell us, how did Jesus treat people?

We got some of the same ones from Mark there. We saw that He was authoritative and explanatory. He looked around, and when He was talking to people, He treated them with enough respect to tell them what the truth is and explain it. We also saw that He kind of treated people with a kind rebuke or a bluntness about what the truth was.

That's what it was. Awesome!

Okay, all of you can sit down. The next one was from Colossians, and there were two questions for Colossians chapter one: Who are we, and who is Jesus? So, the people with the green piece of paper, would you please stand up?

Green pieces of paper. Henry, will you share with us who Jesus is according to Colossians chapter one? What did you guys find? It says here, "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." That tells me that Jesus is the Son of God.

Moving down, it states that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn overall creation. Awesome! Then we move over to where it says He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Awesome! I think that's perfect.

Bobby, do you have any other thoughts? The microphone's coming to you. Who is Jesus in Colossians chapter one? Hold that mic close to you.

"Once we were alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and blameless." So, He's the reconciler we see in that passage.

Leo, do you have something from that passage? Who is Jesus?

I'm pretty concise. He's the Lord, He's the Son, He's the firstborn, He's the head of the body, and He's blameless. Awesome!

Okay, you guys can be seated. Now, the salmon-colored piece of paper people, please stand up. This was about who we are. Same passage of Scripture, but we're asking the question, "Who are we?" What does this passage reveal about us?

Mr. Blake, would you like to tell us something you found from that passage?

Sure! I love public speaking. We are brethren in Christ, we are fellow servants, we are redeemed, and we are reconciled. Perfect!

Sarah Springfield, what did you find in that passage? Who are we?

There was a little bit of a debate on whether or not we should question that. It wasn't me; it was Jason who threw me under the bus on whether we...

Could we actually determine from just this passage who we are? Since it is directed to the Colossians, I want to throw that out there. There is a bit of semantics involved. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Assuming that this is also directed at us, we are delivered from the power of darkness. We are conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of His love. We are redeemed through His blood. We are created by Him, through Him, and for Him.

You can all be seated. This was a pretty simple exercise. As you can see, you can take the same passage of Scripture with different questions, and you're going to discover more from the passage. You're not discovering any real contradiction; you're just uncovering something about Christ in Colossians and something about us in Colossians. Yes, we can take this as being directed at us. We have been redeemed; we have been saved and rescued from darkness. That is true for us, just as it was for the Colossians.

This brings us to the homework for this week. It involves doing this very same thing, which we will call a theocentric analysis of Isaiah 51. You are going to read Isaiah chapter 51 in whatever Bible version you prefer. However, as I have encouraged you previously, consider reading it in multiple versions. Read it in two or three different versions. Read the passage slowly, carefully, repeatedly, and purposefully, answering two questions. I want you to do this on two different days or at least two different times.

The first time you will look at it through one question, and on a different day, you will look at it through the second question. I don't want you to go through both questions together; I want you to take time to examine it through one lens at a time. Here are the two questions you will be looking at: In this passage, what is God like? How does God treat us?

On one day, as you go through Isaiah 51, you will ask, "What is God like?" Find everything you can in that passage about what God is like. Is He merciful? Is He just? Is He vengeful? What is God like from Isaiah chapter 51?

Go through it multiple times in different versions of the Bible. Find as many things as you can. Have a piece of paper or a notebook, and write down as many things as you can about what God is like.

Then, on another day over the next week, go through the text asking, "How does God treat us? What does this passage reveal about how God treats us?" I am going to ask you to turn this in, so it would be good for you to write this down on a piece of paper or in a notebook. You can also do it on a computer if you'd like to type it out. However you want to do it, write it as legibly as you can so that I can look at it and read it.

You are going to look at these two questions only on different days. Are there any questions about this? It's not terribly difficult. The aim here is to see what God is like and how He treats us. That's it. You don't have to look at Isaiah 50 or Isaiah 52. You don't have to look at some corresponding passage in Kings or Chronicles. You just have to read Isaiah 51 and find out what God is like and how He treats us.

At this point, in week three, all we have used is a Bible, a pen or a pencil, and a piece of paper. That's all you need at this point. Next week, we're going to talk about tools for studying the Bible. We will look at all kinds of different tools that you can use for studying the Bible. Then, the following week, we will get into inductive Bible study, using those tools to break a passage of Scripture down into its component parts to try and find all the different things that are there.

But right now, we're not even going there. I don't want you to use a concordance. I don't want you to use Blue Letter Bible. I don't want you to use any other tool other than a Bible, a piece of paper, and a pen or a pencil. You can use whatever you want for your writing instrument, or you can type it up; that's perfectly fine. But I just want you to use those tools. Does that make sense?

Okay, don't break the rules. God is watching. It will be very hard for me to read if you're writing in crayon, so I would say please don't. Your questions, although if you do use orange, that is the proper color.

Jacob, hold on. Wait, there's a microphone coming to you. This kind of goes to the argument that they were having earlier about that argumentative group. I know them well. Avoid coming to wrong conclusions when...

We read bits and pieces of the Bible, and we're studying that in a multitude of counselors there is safety, as Proverbs says. This is where it becomes very important for us to be iron sharpening iron, spending time in Bible study with other people. Yes, you can come to wrong conclusions doctrinally and theologically about passages.

As we will discover when we talk about tools for studying the Bible next week, one of the checks we use to evaluate ourselves can be commentaries. We will discuss that a lot next week. So, will you come to wrong conclusions about passages of Scripture? Absolutely, 100 percent. Over my 25 years of studying and teaching the Bible, I have many times come to a certain idea or conclusion about something that, upon further investigation, I realized I might not entirely be right about. You have to adjust because you see in another passage of Scripture that what you concluded is not in line with the text.

That can happen, but we are going to rely upon the Holy Spirit. In the multitude of counselors, there is safety. One of those counselors is commentaries, and another is spending time with other people who challenge one another. They might ask, "Is that really what the text says? Is that really what it means?" Sometimes, people can come to a wrong conclusion.

On that point, I will say the text cannot mean what it does not say. Observation, as we will see when we get into inductive Bible study, becomes very important. I mention this because sometimes people take meaning from the text that is simply not there. We can become very bold in our stance and say, "Well, this is what it says," but then we have to recognize that it does not say that. It explicitly does not say that. At that point, we need to be humble in how we approach the Scriptures.

Yes, there will be times when you come to a wrong conclusion about a passage, but iron sharpening iron and a multitude of counselors provide safety.

Great question, though! I appreciate that a lot. Now, I realize I have dumped a ton of information upon you in this section. Here are the questions that I ran through really quickly. I have printed them out on my website. I will post these documents and some other documents. Just go to pastormiles.com and look for the section marked "blog." However, don't go there until tomorrow because it won't be there right now.

I will put these things up, including links to the timelines that I created, to this document and another questions document. There are lots of different Bible study resources on the internet that have similar questions to what I'm showing you here. Various questions, filters, or lenses have been put together for different books. For example, when you go through a Bible study with a group of people on the book of Jeremiah, it's a book study where you're filling things out. They have compiled application, interpretation, and observation questions for you, and you're just looking at the text and then answering the questions. This is exactly the same thing you're doing right here: What does this text say about X, Y, or Z? That's what you're doing.

Are there any other questions before we close? Next week, we're going to talk all about tools for studying the Bible, including concordances, Bible dictionaries, and word study tools. All those great, fantastic resources—some of them are free, and some of the free tools are absolutely astounding, as we'll see next week.

If you have any additional questions, I will stick around for as long as you would like to ask questions tonight. Make sure you pick up these papers if you'd like them for the questions so that you can go through them. For Isaiah 51, make sure you write down these two questions: What is God like? How does God treat us? Those are the purposeful questions that you're going to be using for the text this week.

Father God, I pray that you would open our eyes to behold wonders from Isaiah chapter 51. Lord, may we learn some great things about what You're like and how You treat us in this passage. Through that, may You bring us into a deeper fellowship and relationship with You. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

God bless you guys. You're dismissed. If you have questions, I'll stick around.