Bite 48: Observing Ephesians 3:1-13

Preparing for Study

When I prepare to head out on a trail when I haven’t been on my mountain bike (her name is Joan) for a while, I get butterflies and thoughts of doubt. There’s even conversation that rolls around in my head.

“What if I crash?” The ground will catch you.

“What if I can’t lift the front end and get over the rock?” You can try again. Or walk over it.

“What if I’m not actually good at biking?” You’ll have to ride more to practice and learn.

According to Strava, and I haven’t used Strava for every ride, I’d ridden about 9000 miles while mountain biking in the last 5 years. And yet, I have trepidation before I ride on occasion. The same can be true when we sit down to something important like studying the Word of God.

We are Our Own Best Coach

When confronted with those doubts before a ride, I believe I am my own best coach. The words we say to ourselves are the ones that are the loudest and the ones we hear most often. Like the ones I say to myself in response to those doubts. Or these.

“You are a hard core mountain biker.”

“You’ve ridden a thousand times. This ride is no different than any other.”

I’m my own best coach. I don’t lie to myself, but I don’t minimize the truth either. Over and over I’ve ridden and been strong. Learning and practice has gotten me here and I need to believe the truth that I am a strong biker. Or I may be crippled by fear.

If we get butterflies about sitting down and studying the Word, we can apply the same principle. We are our own best coach. Telling ourselves the truth about our situation will help.

“What if I don’t understand?” There are experts to ask.

“What if I’m wrong?” Others have been wrong. Holy Spirit teaches and corrects. Being wrong sometimes teaches us more profoundly. Like crashing on a bike. Or getting submitted in jiu jitsu.

Overcome butterflies with action. Take action of coaching yourself. Get in here and get sweaty with effort. And the effort of Bible study is better than any other type because it is the concerted effort between you and the God of the universe. Together, we’ve got this.

Context

As we sit down with our sentence diagram and focus in on our passage, we want to remember what has come before and what comes next in the whole of the book. We’ve got the summary from the last passage that we can use to keep the past in mind. By way of reminder, here is mine:

Paul called his audience to remember their former identity and who they now are in Christ. As the catalyst for all people being reconciled to God, Jesus’ blood, his flesh, and his cross make all of God’s household at peace with one another.

Writing a summary of what comes after is a little more challenging in my mind because I haven’t studied it yet. However, I believe even if it isn’t perfectly on point, by doing this exercise, I have some inkling of what is ahead. Like we’ve discussed before, I write the “before” at the top of my diagram and “after” at the bottom. Here’s my “after” for this time:

Now that we’ve considered the context once again, let’s commence the list making.

Observation through List Making

If you remember, we’ve had some exposure to making a list about Paul from this passage when I was on vacation. (Remember this Basics here?) We will go ahead and make sure the list is with the rest of our study notes on our worksheet. Plus, I think I have some additional notes on this list, which doesn’t make the vacation effort wrong, just different.

The next list I made is one about the recipients.

These lists spawned questions that I also wrote down, but I think we will finish with the lists and then chat about the questions that came to my mind after. The next list is one of the obvious ones.

And like it is another obvious list.

As I read, there was one more topic I observed. Our listing exercise helps us to identify what Paul emphasized in particular passages. Reading through, I saw the gospel described in a few ways.

Observation through Asking Questions

As we walked through those lists, did you have anything that jumped out at you and made you say, “Wait. What?” I did. While we observe, we want to probe the text and see what is there. When we are looking for something, by default it is also possible to notice when something isn’t there. Like clarity. Asking questions defines what we don’t see. So far, these are the questions I wrote down.

These are the lists I see in the text. Do you see any others? Was there anything in the lists that surprised you? What looks like Paul’s point? In observation, we see what is in the text. What do you see?

Wrap Up

For our Bible Study Bite today, we want to remember that observation is merely the first step in a process of coming to an understanding of the author’s intent. It is important to recognize its place in the process and neither overlook it or place too much weight on it. Here is a quote from one of our expert friends, Dr. Zuck.

When many people approach the Bible, they jump from observation to application, skipping the essential step of interpretation. This is wrong because interpretation logically follows after observation. In observing what the Bible says, you probe; in interpretation, you mull. Observation is discovery; interpreting is digesting. Observation means depicting what is there, and interpretation is deciding what it means. The one is to explore, the other is to explain.¹

Therefore our objective in observing the text, according to Dr. Zuck, is to probe, discover, depict, explore. None of that needs to be daunting, right?

Just like biking, the first step is to keep pedaling. That’s not so hard, is it? Put your eyes where you want to go. Also not hard.

The Basics of Study

Observation is a vital step and will aid us in subsequent steps in study. If we want to avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed, remembering the basics will help.

• Observation
• Interpretation
• Application

See you next time when we hang out and start interpreting our passage.

1. Roy B. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 1991), p 12.