 Good morning to all of us who are here in class and all of you have joined online. Welcome to the second semester for all of you who are doing the full program. So, before we begin, let's just open with a word of prayer and then we will get into some introductions and an overview of the course. I'll just open us in prayer. Father, we just thank you Lord as we begin the semester. Lord that you have brought us through this past year. You have brought us through the last semester and Lord we begin this semester just putting our trust in you that you will carry us through, that you will give us the grace, the strength, the wisdom, the understanding that we need for every course that we're going to be in, for everything else that we have apart from our classes Lord, everything else that we are responsible for Lord, that you will enable us Lord to be faithful in every aspect of our lives. We pray your blessings over our time together. We ask Lord that you would lead our time, that you would bless it and help it Lord to be fruitful, that we would absorb all the things that you want to teach us, that we would retain it and that it would bear fruit in our lives Lord. We pray for every student gathered here, your blessings upon each student, each one of us Lord, where we are personally with you. We pray that through these classes we will grow in our knowledge, in our understanding and in our intimacy with you Lord, that these classes would not only be about growing in knowledge, but it will be about growing in our relationship with you. We thank you for all your blessings towards us. We welcome you Lord to lead us through the semester, lead us through these classes. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So before we begin, I'll just introduce myself because I didn't have you all the previous semester. So my name is Smitha and I serve part time with All People's Church. So I teach at the Bible College and this semester I'll be teaching two classes for the first years. We'll be doing interpreting scripture together, which is what we're doing for this hour and the next hour. And in the third hour we'll be doing the New Testament survey. So I am teaching maybe for my fourth semester here or third semester here and kind of new to all of the online stuff as well. So bear with me as I figure all of that out. I'm married to Manohar who is on staff with All People's Church and we have a two-year-old daughter and another child on the way. So maybe it's due end of the semester. So yeah, I would also love to hear all your names. I've posted on the classroom and asked you all to introduce yourselves. But since we have a smaller group joining today, maybe all of us who are here can just share our name, where we are from, what we are doing if we are full-time students or if we are doing something apart from being at Bible College. And also maybe one thing you did during the break, something that you did during this December break that you were home or wherever you were, something that you did during your time off. So we can start maybe with the... Should we start with the online students and then go to the in-person students? If anyone online wants to begin, if you are not able to unmute and speak, please feel... just do that in the Google Classroom. But for all of you who are able to, we'd love to hear from you. Good morning, pastor. I am Parumita Poddar and I am from West Bengal. I am a part-time student because I am also studying for post-graduation. Okay. Thank you. And something that you did during your break between semesters? Ma'am, I was studying for my... Okay. So working hard even on your break. Well, good morning. Good morning. I'm Achila Miriam from Uganda. Welcome, Miriam. Miriam, would you like to share what you're doing? Are you a full-time student or are you also doing something on the side? I'm a full-time student. Okay. Thank you. And anything you did during this break between semesters? Oh, nothing, but I had a good time with God. I had full time with Him. I was talking more of the semester that I'm doing right now. And I believe that it will go well. Yeah. Amen. Thank you. Welcome to class. Good morning, Pastor. Good morning, Pastor. Good morning. My name is Pankaj Hazong from Assam. Before doing this class, I was ministering. And again, after this class also, I was still in ministry or two, ma'am. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So I'm sure December was a busy month then. Sure, ma'am. Yes, ma'am, it was. Okay. Thank you, Pankaj. Welcome. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Hi, this is Warren Sarau. So I'm in Paris, France at the moment. And it's 4.30 in the morning. So, yeah, I work full time. So this is my second semester, I'm doing the whole course. I mean, it's not very easy for me to attend all the lessons because I'm constantly working. But I made an effort. I said, let me see if I can wake up in the morning and do this. And yeah, the Lord helped me to do this. So I'm looking forward to the lesson. And yeah, I serve as a musician. I used to be a professional musician. So I serve as a worship leader in my church here in Paris. Thank you. Welcome, Warren. Thank you for the sacrifice you're making of sleep to be here. I'm sure it will be. You will be blessed through the sacrifice you're making. Amen. Praise the Lord, sister. I'm Mrs. Esther. I'm from Hyderabad. And I'm a full-time professional recruiter for Dunamis Global. And during the break, I had a blessed time with family. I enjoyed the festivities of Christmas New Year and being a blessing to many by going to, you know, outreach and helping the people who are in need, especially during the cold winters. So this is what I can say is my, what I did during the break. So looking forward for a blessed semester. And all glory to God. Thank you. Welcome, Esther. Thank you. Hi, Pastor. Good morning. Sorry, Sanjay, if you want to go first. No, please go ahead. I'll join later. Thank you. So I'm Angelin. And like I'd mentioned on the course page, I'm a working professional, but I've taken up the entire course as well. I'm looking forward to grow more in the Lord. I'm also a pastor's wife. So I wanted to complete my theology as well. So I can, it can be more helpful for me to minister to people around me. I also have a nine-month-old daughter. So this semester break was just a family time and more of a time with my daughter. Thank you. Welcome, Angelin. I did read your introduction. Thank you so much being here. And I'm sure it will be a time of blessing for all of us. Thank you, Pastor. Good morning, Pastor. And good morning to all my fellow students. So my name is Sanjay. I am besides the course which I'm doing here, I'm also a freelance guitar instructor. And this December was pretty quiet, just a little more reading, biblical related books and a bit of writing. That's it. Nothing much. Thank you. That's a great way to spend the end of the year. God bless you. Thank you, Sanjay. Good morning, sister. I'm Lucy from Bangalore. I'm a homemaker. And I'm doing my full term course. And during the month of December, it helped me a lot to grow in my spiritual life. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Lucy. That's great. Thank you. Good morning, sister. I am Marshekha Rambutwar. So I'm Raigad Maharashtra. I am Pastor in the church. Thank you. Thank you, Shekhar. I think you said you're pastoring the church, right? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. Hello. My name is... Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, my name is Jennifer. So I'm from Bangalore and I'm working in one BPO company. And I'm doing this as part time in online. I'm doing this class. Also, like this December break, I have attended this youth camp, machine camp from APC. Yeah. Also, like I was a part of the prayer group, inter-sensory prayer group in my church. And there was like a lot of back-to-back conferences, prayer conferences going on in the church. So it was full busy, like spiritually, it was so busy for me this month. Yeah, December tends to be that way. Thank you, Jennifer. It's good to have you here. Thank you. Yeah. So my name is Sam. I lead the youth ministry here at APC Bangalore. And also I do marketing at APC as well. Yeah. I think during the December break, yeah, it was very busy with a lot of potlucks, events. So now I'm trying to cut off all the food intake that I had in December. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this semester as well. Thank you, Sam. Welcome. Okay. Are there any others before we move to students present in class here? Okay. If you were not able to introduce yourself here, please do go into Google Classroom and you can post an introduction there. It just helps for us to have an idea of where each of our students are coming from and being able to also relate our classes to what you are doing in your everyday life is helpful. So we'll go to students here. So we'd like to share your name, whether you're a full-time student, where you're from, and what you did on your break. I think the mic is up here. So you're welcome to come up here. I'm Savita. I'm from Odisha. You're a full-time student. You're studying full-time, right? Yeah. Anything you did during December that you want to share? Visited home and family? I went for Christmas holiday. Everything was happening very well. And I can make... I'm happy. Thank you. Can you repeat your name again? Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Your name? Yeah. Savita. Okay, thank you. Good morning, everyone. This is Nelson Baghe from Odisha. And I'm studying full-time here. The month of December was quite busy for me. And I was able to celebrate my Christmas very well. Sorry. Thank you. Good to have you here, Nelson. Good morning, all of you. It's Sagar, a full-time student here. I'm from Agra. And the month of December, it is like so much busy for me. I'm from North and it was like roaming village to village to make the Christmas programs more special to the local churches. It was like that for me all December. Thank you, Sagar, right? Good morning, I'm Akhil. So I apparently run a cloud kitchen and catering unit. All of December was pretty much busy catering to quite a few people. Thank you. Welcome, Akhil. Good morning, ma'am. I'm Blessi from Andhra. So I'm a full-time student. Last month, it was like a very busy schedule for me. We used to roam all the villages. But we have a lot of local churches. So we distributed clothes and all the gifts for them. We celebrated very nice our Christmas. Thank you. Welcome, Blessi. So we're going to be spending the next three hours together. And I didn't want to be talking for that whole time. So I thought we'll just spend some time at least getting to know each other before we get into our course information. Let me just share with you a few things about what we can expect in this course. And then we'll get into the content. Okay, let me know what you're seeing. You can see the presentation as is, right? You can see the slide on presentation view for those online, especially. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we are going into this topic on interpreting scripture. And I'll just go over the course overview, which is a little paragraph just introducing what we're going to be looking at during this course. So we are going to be looking at God's Word in the life of a believer. That's what we're going to start with. I think each of you should have a copy of God's Word, the miracle seed. So this is an APC publication for all of you online. I've posted a link on Google Classrooms. You can download the book. So that's one way you can access it. Or if you can get a printed copy, especially for those within India, you can request a printed copy and we can send that out to you. So this is the first book that we'll be covering. And then we'll go into some lecture notes on how do we interpret scripture. So there we'll look at some of the challenges in interpreting scripture. What are some challenges that we face? Things like the culture that scripture is written in. It's written to a completely different culture. It's written in a different time period. And so historically in a religious, from a religious perspective, it comes to a Jewish people. So we are reading a word that is written to people from a Jewish background. And so how do we understand their background? How do we understand their history, their culture and interpret scripture in the light of all of those things playing a role in what is written in the Word of God. And then we will also look at some other difficult passages that are there in scripture. So why we think this course is important is because all of us are here to study for our own personal growth, but we also then will have opportunities to teach others, to teach the Word to others. And so we want to be correctly interpreting scripture because when we are understanding it for ourselves or teaching other people, we want to make sure that what we are teaching is accurate, right? Because if we misunderstand scripture, then we misapply scripture and then people start to live in accordance with what we've taught. And so if we have taught something that is wrong, then people start to follow something that is wrong. And so we want to be very careful to correctly understand what we are studying in scripture and then correctly interpret it to others so that when they are taking it and applying it to their lives, they are taking the truth of scripture and applying the truth of scripture to their lives. So there are two verses here in this course overview. Timothy 4.16 says, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. So this is the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy, right? Timothy is someone who was mentored by Paul and Paul is reminding him to watch his own life and to watch the teaching that he is passing on because as he's doing this, he's making sure that he's both protecting his own salvation and the salvation of the others to whom he is ministering. So that is the weight of interpreting scripture, right? That in these words is salvation. We are communicating the truth of salvation to people and so we want to be careful with what we are saying, what we are teaching. And Second Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God a worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth. And so that aspect of rightly dividing, rightly dissecting the word and from that dissection getting truth out of the word of God. We want to do that right. So these are some outcomes that I put down that at the end of this semester, these are the goals we are working towards, right? That each of us individually, students are able to learn to meditate on God's word. So that's mostly what we will look at in this book is how do you meditate on God's word and how do you take the truth of God's word and apply it to your own life to see it bear fruit in your own life. So we want each student to know how to meditate on God's word how to receive that truth from that time of meditation and how to apply it to their lives. The second goal is that students know what are the challenges when you're looking at the scripture passage what are the challenges you're facing in that passage what are the questions you should be asking and then how do you correctly interpret how do you answer those questions correctly and then the third thing is that you're able to use this process which we look at called observation interpretation and application. So you observe a passage you look at what is the passage saying then you interpret it to understand what is it what is the message it's trying to communicate and then to look at the application. So how do I take this message and apply it to my life and how do I encourage others to apply it to their lives. So that is the method of interpretation we're going to be looking at. That will be a little later after we finish this first book. So we'll have two assessments during the semester and this will be mostly just a multiple choice exam. So February 19th that will be a midterm and then April 8th we'll do a final exam. I've also put down a rough schedule on Google classroom for what we'll be covering each week just so that we make sure we cover all the content we need to cover and if we don't follow it exactly it's okay but just for us to have a guideline of what to expect during the semester. Yes, I might give you all some other assignments apart from these but those will be unmarked assignments like something to practice meditating on the word of God and kind of sharing what you've learned through your time of meditation. We might do some things like that but those will not be marked for your final score. So you all have all been here one semester so you know the other aspects of what is required to pass. I think you need a minimum of 35% and all that information is on Google classroom. This is one verse that we look at in this book but I just put it down here, 2nd Timothy 316. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. So scripture is so foundational to our lives as believers so for us personally teaching us how to walk teaching us the way in which we should walk and then once we are able to walk in line with scripture to be able to also help others walk in line with scripture. So this is just a verse reminder of how foundational scripture is to the life of a believer. So for today I didn't create a power point for what all will be covering. We'll just go into God's word the miracle seed and we'll start to look at some of that content before we take a break. So I hope everyone has the book. Yes, yeah. Any questions on anything that I shared so far? No? Okay. So why we are actually looking at God's word like spending a whole semester looking at God's word and then spending this initial part of looking at what is God's word have to do with an individual believer's life is because God works powerfully through his word. What are some examples you all can think of of how God has used his word to do something? Any examples from scripture? Why do we say that God's word is powerful? Anyone online or in person feel free to share? Because in the beginning there was the word and the word was with God and God created the world and everything that existed through the word. Yes, thank you Warren. So right at Genesis, right at the beginning of all creation we see the importance that the word played. It was through the word of God that creation came into being. There was nothing that existed and God spoke and things came to life. Things that were not there began to be formed. So life and just material things came to being just from God's word. And so we see just at the start of scripture how powerful God's word is. So we want to look at how do we first recognize the power of God's word. And then how do we apply or receive that power in our own lives? So we always hear at least a lot in some of our churches about miracles, about healing, about all of these very physical ways in which God is moving. But God also moves in quiet ways. He moves through the reading of his word, through the memorization of his word, through the speaking of his word. And those things sometimes are forgotten because we want to see the big supernatural things. And so when we are looking at this subject we want to say we need to go back to that simple aspect of reading God's word, receiving God's word for ourselves, investing time personally in studying God's word. Because there are miracles that happen through God's word just as we see in creation. And so if we want to see God bringing transformation into our lives, if we want to see things manifested in our lives, then we need to be going back to God's word. We need to know what his word says and then we need to receive that for ourselves. We need to be declaring that over our lives. We need to be believing that for ourselves, believing that God is a God who says things and things happen, right? And so when we look at his word we want to, we want to claim that for ourselves. So if God has said that healing is, that he is our healer then we declare that over our lives. We declare that over the lives of our loved ones. We declare that over people we are ministering to. If God has said that he will prosper us and he will not harm us then we speak that over difficult situations that we're in. If we are facing challenges in our careers, if we are facing challenges in our, whether it's ministry or our finances or our families to believe that God has good plans for us. Like God wants to prosper us. God has every day of our lives written down and he knows what he wants to do for our future. He's not just a blind person leading us blindly, right? That we can just step into anything in the future. We don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't have to live life that way. So knowing those promises, declaring those promises, believing it for ourselves and believing that when we take God's word and receive it for ourselves, that it will bear fruit in our lives. So that is the main goal of this book and we look at how do we receive it for ourselves? How do we really meditate on God's word and see it bear fruit in our lives? So chapter one, we look at God's word, which is the foundation for our faith. So here we are just encouraging people that if you want to grow in your faith, you should be investing time in studying the Bible. That is something that we have to develop as a discipline, right? That we are going back to the word. We are spending time studying the word for ourselves personally, not only when we have to minister, not only when we have to teach. And it's very easy to start to do that, right? Because when I'm ministering, I feel like, okay, I'm learning so much when I'm studying the word. So I'm actually receiving a lot. Do I need to have my own personal time? Do I need to be studying the Bible for myself apart from the ministry that I'm doing or the teaching that I'm doing? But that personal time is what we are investing in relationship with God. So I want to encourage that people are spending time studying the word of God and all of us are probably doing that. All of us probably know it, but just to remind us of the importance of doing it and why we do it as well. So how much we will grow in intimacy with God? How much we will grow in maturity in our faith is dependent on how much time we are willing to invest in the word of God because the word of God reveals so much about who God is and it is through that revelation of who God is that we can grow in intimacy with Him, right? That's how we grow in relationship with someone. We know them and then we grow in relationship with them. So apart from growing in relationship, it's also that we want to grow in our confidence in who God is and in His word so that no matter what challenges we are facing in our lives we can stand strong on the word of God. It doesn't matter what is coming our way even if it looks completely contrary to what God has promised us. We don't shake, we don't fall, we don't lose our faith because of those challenges. We hold on to the word of God because we know that behind the word of God is God Himself and God is someone who can be trusted. We look at a few passages in scripture that talk about that. So let's just begin by reading a few scripture passages. Luke 24-27 says, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So the whole of scripture points to Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of the word of God, right? He's the manifest word of God. And so when Jesus was teaching about himself when he wanted others to understand who he was and what his purpose was in coming to earth he pointed back to the scriptures. We'll read a few other passages and I'm going to ask like one of y'all to read. I'll just give you the passage and you can find it in your Bible and read. So John 1-1-4, if someone can read that for us. Can I read, sister? Yes, please. Thank you. John 1-1 in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness did not comprehend it. Thank you. And if you can also read John 1-14, please. Yes. And the word became flesh and wealth among us and we beheld his glory. The glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. Okay, so we see Jesus as Warren also shared before the word was with God, the word was God and he was there in the beginning, right? So that word that brought all creation into existence then became part of creation, became flesh, right? So Jesus himself who is the word of God in flesh handled the word of God in certain ways. So we look at his example. How did Jesus use the word of God and learn from his example about what us, how has he given it the value or the respect or the honor that is due to the word of God and how can we take some lessons from that, okay? Let's look at Luke 2, 46 to 47, if someone can read that for us. Sorry, Luke 2, 46. Now so it was that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers both listening to them and asking them questions and all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. Thank you. So we see Jesus at a very young age had a deep understanding of scripture, of scriptural truth and he was able to engage with the teachers and scribes. He wasn't only engaging with them in terms of debating, but he was also learning from them, right? So we see here that he was learning and he was asking questions. So he went there with humility that he didn't need to have, but he received from them their knowledge, their understanding. He was learning from them, he was asking them questions and people could see that he himself had studied the scriptures. So that is one thing for us to take away that Jesus engaged in studying and learning the scriptures. If Jesus had to do that, then we most definitely should be doing it. Let's look at Matthew 4, 1 to 10 and you know everyone knows this passage but we'll still read it. Matthew 4 verses 1 to 10. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said if you are the son of God command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up into the holy city set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him if you are the son of God throw yourself down for it is written he shall give his angels charge over you and in their hands they shall bear you up lest you dash a foot against the stone. Jesus said to him it is written again you shall not tempt the Lord your God again the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to him all these things I will give you if you would fall down and worship me then Jesus said to him away with you Satan for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God only you shall serve. Thank you. So I think we are at break time so we will come back and look at what we can take away from this passage. We will just take a 10 minute break and we will be back. Thank you.