Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There we go. Hello everybody, and welcome
back to another episode of Brains, Bibles and beyond.
Beyond, beyond. I have Nate Day and this is Joe
Willoughby and we are here todayand we are so excited that
you're here with us to come alongside of us and then and
explore worldview apologetics. So today we have our final spoke
(00:24):
of the Seven Spokes in the the will of the steering.
This the the helm of Bible study.
Yes. Why don't Christians get along?
Why do Christians disagree? Also hermeneutics.
It's all kind of the same study for us.
Yep, as long as you've listen toall the other episodes leading
(00:44):
up to this, that all makes sense.
So there's 6-7 prior episodes going through six different
spokes of the helm of Bible study.
And these are just some tools that we can use and implement in
studying our Bible to make sure we have good rules of
interpretation. And so that if we do disagree on
things, we can study the Bible together and try to come to a
(01:05):
conclusion of what the author's original intent is.
And with interpretation, then isin leading to the application
for our lives. So without any further ado, grab
your theological receptacle and let's get started.
(01:28):
Yeah, like a fresh hot cup that burns the lips.
Piping. All right, all right.
Mr. Joel Willoughby introduce spoke #7 to us.
We had the last three are the biblical theology, systematic
theology, and now it's practicaltheology.
So theology just means study of God or you know, knowing God
(01:51):
kind of a thing. That's what it's all about.
It's about relationship. Theology will come out of your
mouth and fingertips. You know, it's everything about
who you are, the foundation. So it's super important.
So with good theology, imagine athree legged stool and I have
this picture, maybe we can throwit in the description and but
it's a stool on the seats is theology that has these three
(02:13):
legs, the center 1's practical theology, but then the other two
balancing it is systematic and biblical theology.
So that kind of a thing. And so we see that the the
practical theology is the the climax of it all.
It's actually, this is not actually the Bible study part.
We're actually done secretly now.
This is just application really.How does this?
(02:35):
Apply. Yeah, so.
That's because ultimately, that's what matters.
Right. Yeah, what's the whole point of
doing everything? It's not just head knowledge,
right? Right, right.
It's actually do. Stuff it's heart, knowledge and
then change. Think, do speak.
Different. Knowing what your Bible says and
doing it are two different things.
Yeah, what? What's the the whole point of
the Bible study all together? You know the whole point was
(02:58):
that shining horizon of an application and but you have to
make sure you take application from the proper interpretation.
And and this and this can be a huge danger.
So many people study to just puff themselves up.
Yeah. And you've missed everything,
completely missed the whole point, so.
So a good way to remember, you know, what is practical
(03:20):
theology, it is practicing theology, you know, easier to
remember that way communicating theology.
So that's, that's still part of it applying theology.
So it kind of goes together. I was just using slightly
different words to kind of get the whole picture, practicing,
communicating, applying. So then.
Theology. Again, the definition is that
basically just what I know aboutGod.
(03:40):
It's the. Truth of God, basically OK.
So as we study the Word of God, we find out more truths of God.
And then we. Know him and we put them into
practice, yes. So if we know God, for instance,
we're studying his attributes. If we're studying God's
attributes and we know God is love, then hey, we should be
loving, right? I mean, is that just?
That's that's, yeah. Extremely simplifying it.
Simple. Yeah.
(04:00):
But yeah, yeah, exactly that. That's the idea.
And so you would know, like evengoing through all the study of
working through the exact of what's going on in, you know,
the book of Daniel or something,all of that, then you can see
how God works through that real life scenario, which can really
help you understand how he may be working through something
(04:22):
even right now or whatever. And so it, it becomes, you know,
really important in that sense. So then, you know, with, with
anything, I may read through allthe prophets and get the same
message. God hates sin.
God judges sin. Everyone will be destroyed, you
know, But then, but then I can do the study and actually start
(04:44):
to see that the struggles that they had are struggles that I
have and that God's still the same God no matter what, and he
always still shows mercy and grace.
Yeah, even in those proclamations of doom to come,
yes, there were so many invitations to hey, just repent,
turn back to me, right? And he did often save some, you
(05:06):
know. Yeah, all together.
And so it's, you know, you don'thear about them as much because
that's not the main message that's going on there anyways.
Well, we're, we're, we're getting a little to the weeds
here, but it still applies. Well, maybe we'll bring it back.
We're looking for application. You know if your if theology's
wrong, your practice will be wrong.
That's that's why it matters. OK.
(05:27):
And that's why it matters. So let's see first, you know, if
I want to give a kind of order to this theology must be applied
to ourselves first, right? So first you, you, you, you
understand what it means. You go, OK, how should I change
because of this? Be more like Christ or you know,
whatever in in some way or something, you'll be encouraged.
(05:48):
So then after theology has changed us, then we help others.
It's like the whole airplane philosophy.
You're going down. You put the the bag around your
face first before helping others.
Because you can't help anyone else if you pass out, right?
Right. That's the idea.
Some people look at it and say, are you being selfish?
No. Yeah.
No. You're actually helping more
people by staying the life. Yeah, because then then you're
(06:10):
the bird next. Yeah.
Anyways, so yeah, that it's there.
There is some truth there. For us, I was kind of like
sitting to a sermon and thinking, you know what, I wish
so and so was here to hear this.It's tempting, isn't it?
Some days, some days it can be. It's true.
It's true, yeah. But yeah.
And it's all part of discipleship too, you know,
(06:31):
because you're not just because once you apply it to yourself,
then you're, you're passing it on.
You're helping to train others to live like Christ.
Yeah, essentially as you make disciples.
And so it's, it's a big part of that and we're all responsible,
you know, we're going to meet Christ face to face one day.
We're responsible for everythingwe've done, what we've learned
and how we've, you know, managedthat, you know, even that
(06:52):
knowledge of of God anyways. So then kind of a, a, a finale
verse here, second Timothy 2:15.And this is a, a verse I use a
lot for even some of my ministrypresentation, things like that.
So the ESV says, do your best topresent yourself to God as one
approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly
(07:14):
handling the word of truth. And so, you know, the first
thing I noticed is, you know, this is one of some of the last
words Paul is pouring out there.They're, you know, inspired
Scripture to young Pastor Timothy, knowing his end is
near. And he's talking about the
judgment, you know, having to meet Christ face to face, being
ready. And so a couple of things it
mentions is being approved and not needing to be ashamed.
(07:37):
And so that I think to myself, well, man, yeah, I want to live
my life so that I'm approved. You know, it's not talking
about, like, a loss of salvation, just simply the idea
of, you know, my sinful parts ofmy life.
God hasn't approved that, you know?
So yeah. So you present your life and you
don't want to? Shamefully, you know, I did do
this. Yeah.
(07:57):
Romans 12/1 Present. Your body is a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable unto God. Yeah, he's got some standards.
Now, ultimately, God is the one who makes this acceptable to
himself, right? But practically speaking.
But we submit to that work too. Practically speaking, you're
submitting to that work and that's where you're presenting
your, your, your body to them and not, you know, don't just
(08:20):
keep living an open sin, right? You have to whatever it is you
have to submit. So then, you know, if I want to
be approved, OK, I don't have any shame.
So what do I do? And the first thing it says is
do your best or whatever your translation is.
But that's the idea of it. And so try, you know, super
hard. And so then it's like, well, at,
at what, you know, being a worker mentions being a worker.
(08:42):
So then there's some blood, sweat and tears involved here.
So when I'm clocking in, there'sreally no clocking out, you
know, but when you're clocking in for the day, so to speak,
then what is the work that you're doing your best with?
And that's at the end there, rightly handling the word of
truth. And so rightly handling the word
of truth is not just being exposed to it, not just
understanding it, but then also living it out, sharing it kind
(09:05):
of a thing, all that's involved.And so that's, you know, rightly
handling. And that's why it's a big deal
to learn all these things, because you're just trying to do
God justice. You know, I don't want to
misrepresent the creator of the universe.
You know, this is the God. How dare I miscommunicate on his
behalf. You know, you can't take those
(09:26):
sort of things very seriously. Well, you know, and, and I mean,
just to, to put this in a nutshell, I mean, this is
really, isn't this really the purpose of your whole ministry?
Your ministry is to teach peoplehow to study the Bible better.
Why? Because of this.
Right, all of life's answers, Yeah.
(09:48):
We it's, it's because of this, it's, we want people to be more
like Christ. Right.
And how do we do that? Well, we study our Bibles more
accurately, right? Yes.
More better. Yeah.
I know that's not proper grammar, but that's that's what
(10:08):
it is so. Thinking about practical
theology, everybody practices theology like.
We all have a. We all have a theology.
Right. So you're always practicing it.
And that's why I can kind of tell where someone's at based on
their, you know, how they speak,you know, how they communicate
different things, what they talkabout, whatever all those sort
(10:30):
of things in. Because it comes out of the, I
said this before the, you know, mouth and fingertips, you know,
your theology. So you think about the other way
too. If it's bad theology, it comes
out bad. Many people practice theology
without Bible study. And yeah, you might get it
right. You know, it's like, you know,
blindfolded, throwing a dart at a board.
Yeah. You know, and there's a reason,
(10:50):
you know, we, we try to have good preachers at our churches
so that you can be taught good theology.
Right. Correct.
Yep. But you can't just rely on that,
right? You have to actually stead the
Bible yourself. The body of the you know the
believers are supposed to work together to.
Yeah, you know, bring it. You need to be bringing
something to the body of Christ as well.
I mean, God's gifted you to to be a part of the body, to be a
(11:10):
blessing to the rest of us, right, right.
And, and what are you doing to to do that?
Are you just relying on everybody else to prop you up
and you just go along, or you studying the word of God to be
more like Christ yourself so youcan be the proper part of the
body that you're created to be? Even if you're not like, you
know, the gift as a teacher, then you still have teaching
(11:31):
that you're doing. You can't make disciples without
teaching. That's a big part of it, you
know? Yeah.
And, and every one of us have a family of some sort, whether
you're, you're, you have parents, obviously, yeah, you're
part of a family. And even if you don't have blood
(11:52):
relation family, you, you're part of a community of some in
some way. In some way, yeah.
And, and we're all teaching and,and reaching those people also.
What are you, what are you, whatare you sharing with those
people? Yep.
Good theology or bad theology? What kind of truth and hope are
you filling them up with wisdom and things?
Yeah, yeah. So study well, interpret well,
(12:15):
do well. That's that's that's what I say.
But so it's so more famous than me, though once it said do or do
not. There is no try.
Yeah. Yoda, Star Wars, he's got there
and do it. All right.
So I guess just to summarize this point, practical theology,
(12:42):
if we're going to summarize it, it's basically the truths we
know about God. How does that change your life
and how and how do we, how do welive that out and how do we
teach other people to live that out?
Yeah. Is that, is that really what
practical theology is? Yeah.
It's all about just. Us being.
Glorifying God together. Yeah, yeah.
(13:02):
Yeah, it's really it's, you know, it's just the the right
way to do it, yeah. It doesn't matter what you
study, what you know, if you don't let it, if you don't let
it change your life, you've missed everything.
Then you're not. You don't know completely
everything. And that, and that's, and that
is the reason really for both ofour ministries.
I mean that that is what we wantto encourage everyone to do.
(13:26):
Absolutely. That's why we do this podcast.
We don't do this podcast just because we want to help you and
have more information. We, we do this podcast because
the more you know about God and the attributes of God and the
character of God, the more you'll live like Christ.
And that's that's the whole goal.
(13:46):
Now, of course, thanks to this podcast, though I have trouble
dodging the paparazzi in there. So yeah, OK, it doesn't happen,
but. No, no, there's not been much
paparazzi. I think you've been recognized
but once. Yeah, maybe I got a couch.
I've I've had one weird encounter at Walmart one time.
(14:09):
I still don't know who the person was or why they were
being weird, but. A cool encounter.
We, we just chalked it up to being so YouTube famous where I
had somebody just walk up and say, can I shake your hand?
And I'm, I'm still to this day don't know why or who the person
was, but we, we decided it was because we're just so popular
with her, you know, 12 watchers and you know, it's famous here.
(14:36):
All right. So all right, hopefully you guys
found this study beneficial and encouraging and make sure don't
miss the point that the whole point of theology is that it
will change your life and that you will be more like Christ.
So you guys have a good day and we will see you on our next
episode. See.
You then.