Passage: Hebrews 9:6-14
An inductive bible study is split into 3 parts: Observation, Interpretation, Application.
- in the Observation section, we will read the passage and observe what we see. Gather the facts of what is happening or being said. Ask ourselves some basic questions like Who? What? Where? When? How? We also analysis the passage through literary lenses.
- Interpretation section focuses on the meaning of the text. Try to discover what the author is trying to communicate. What was the author’s intended meaning to the original audience? Use the context to make sure you fully understand what is going on and what is being said.
- Application – Using the information we distilled in the first 2 sections, we then apply this information to actively respond in our relationship with God, ourselves and each other.
Let’s pray to invite God reveal himself to us through the passage.
Notes (from The Bible Project)
Early in the story of the Bible, we’re introduced to this practice of animal sacrifice. For the Israelites, it was a very powerful symbol of God’s justice and of his grace. Sinners deserved to die, but God is allowing this animal’s life to be a substitute. And the biblical word for this is “atonement,” which means to cover over someone’s debt.
But there’s a second part to this ritual. Remember, evil also causes this relational vandalism. And in the Bible, this idea is described as polluting or defiling the land and making it “unclean.” So the priests would symbolically wash away the vandalism by sprinkling the animal’s blood in different parts of the temple.
The blood represents life, and the sprinkling of the blood is this representation of how God is cleaning away these indirect consequences of evil in their community. In the Bible, this process is called purification. And so the temple and the land now become a clean space where God and his people can live together in peace. This ritual makes things right between Israel and God, and more than that, the Israelites experienced God’s love and his grace through these symbols. And by being forgiven, ideally, this would compel them to become people of love and grace too. That’s the ideal, but it wasn’t always happening.
The Prophets and Israel’s Sacrifices
The prophet Isaiah, for example, opens his book by saying that the continual sacrifices of the Israelites had become meaningless because they were also allowing great evil in their midst, ignoring the poor and the oppressed. Even the Israelite kings were distorting justice. But Isaiah looked forward to a day when a new king from the line of David would come and deal with evil, but in a surprising way. The king would become a servant, and not just serve but also suffer and die for the evil committed by his own people. And his life would be offered as a sacrifice.
And this is the promise Jesus believed he was fulfilling. He’s the king of Israel, suffering and dying on the cross. In fact, Jesus himself used Isaiah’s words when he said that he came “to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” [Mark 10:45] And that word “ransom” refers to a sacrifice of atonement, and so all over the New Testament, we hear about how Jesus’ death was an atoning sacrifice for us. It covered the debt that humans owe God for contributing to all of the evil and death in this world.
But the New Testament authors also talk about his death as providing purification. And so we hear about Jesus’ blood, as a symbol of his life, having this ability to wash away the vandalism that evil has caused in us and around us, so we can now live at peace with God. The New Testament makes this powerful claim that Jesus’ death was not final. He rose from the dead. And so he’s the sacrifice who broke the power of death and evil, which means he lives on to offer his life to anyone who will accept it. He is the perfect sacrifice to which all the previous sacrifices were pointing all along.
Observation [15 mins]
In the observation section, our goal is to get as much information out of the passage as possible and organize them by category. We will independently read the passage slowly and dissect it by asking:
- Who are the characters?
- What is happening?
- How are the characters interacting with each other?
- Where is this happening?
- When is this happening?
- What literary devices are present?
- Compare and contrasting ideas
- repeated ideas
- Similes
- Study the text as a whole
- How would you summarize/paraphrase the events in the passage ?
Some pitfalls to avoid:
- Avoid asking why (that’s for the next section)
- Avoid pulling information from outside the passage
Interpretation [20 mins]
For Interpretation, let’s focus on these questions:
- What does this reveal about God’s nature?
- What does this reveal about our nature?
Let’s review our observations and see how God and us fit into this story.
- Why was this written?
- What is the main purpose of this passage?
- Why was this significant in the biblical redemptive story?
- Does this passage remind you of another story in the bible?
Application [25 mins]
Now that we have reviewed the observations and interpretation of the passage, we will move onto the application section.
In this section, we want to focus on taking the information from the first 2 section and discern God’s will for your life through it. Here are some guiding questions:
- Why does this passage matter to me?
- What does this passage mean to me?
- How has this passage informed God’s nature to me?
- How has this passage revealed God’s will for me?
- What is my active response to this passage?
Let’s go around and share.