Assignment 4 - The Response

Due date: upload to loveintruth.com by the end of Friday

Part 4: Response

4.1 The Response Required from the Original Hearers and Required Today

In order to answer this you must understand the kind of people to whom the book was written. Given all you have studied up till now—the purpose of the book, the purpose of this passage and the arguments and points that have been made, what response would the author have wanted to have seen in the original hearers?

If you were to preach from these verses, or teach them in a cell group, or explain them to another person, how would you apply them? Be as specific as you can with examples of how this might apply today. Is the primary application to believers or unbelievers?

4.2 Personal Response

How should I respond to these verses now? If we never ask ourselves this question then we are doing a terrible thing—treating God’s Word as a textbook, or an object to be examined. We are not like some scientist examining God’s Word, but the Word is examining us. We should not approach it to judge and dissect it—but to let the Word judge and dissect us. So this final step is the climax and end point of exegesis: discovering and interpreting the message that God is communicating to ME, and obeying this message. Try and be as specific as you can here. (Your paper will not be shown to anyone else.) This should be answered in the first person (“God is saying to me...”).

Updated 2009-10-12 (build:15) by Andrew Fountain