All right, well thank you all for coming and coming to, I know you have a desire to study the word and to do it better. Hopefully I can be helpful in the way we walk through this. A lot of this material has been formed over kind of A little bit of my life and my study will kind of come out. And a few years ago, another pastor that I had met, who's a retired pastor, a lot of this curriculum comes from some of the things that he taught, the way he taught them. Because when we're talking about Bible study and we're talking about engaging with the word, it's hard because it's a very deep well. And so trying to think through in over 12 weeks is the goal, in a way that is most helpful for kind of a broad group, where you really have no background in Bible study, but not going so deep. And honestly, what you'll find, and I found, is that the more you're in the Word, and I love study Bibles, I love my commentaries. But the more you fight to understand the word as God delivered it to us, yes, there is a cultural gap. Yes, there is a time gap. But the more you're in the word and you fight to understand, I think the more blessed and the more confident you're going to be when you read God's word. This is what God said. And that's really the goal of this is that you have confidence when you read the scriptures that you're not going to be saying, this is what Josh says. You're not going to say this is what Terry says, but you're going to be confident to go. This is what God says. And when you're confident. This is what God says. It'll transform the way you interact with people. It'll transform the way you give advice because of that conviction. So this is kind of a general introduction to how to study your Bible, but also with the goal over the coming weeks to have a system in place for you to study the scriptures. The phrase If you give a man, you know, fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime. That's the goal of this class, is to help you learn to fish. The pond, obviously, is the scriptures, and teach you confidently to identify what God is saying in his word. And the issue often beyond that, I like this quote by Mark Twain, who is not a believer, is, in Mark Twain fashion, My kids seem to love ain't. Ain't's not a word, but Mark Twain liked it. And he said, it ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me. It is the parts that I do understand. And so even though you will find parts of scripture difficult, you'll find difficult parts, most of it is more understandable. And those really, I think the clarity of scripture absolutely is there. And if we study the word, we're gonna be able to find and know what God wants us to understand. I think for the most part, when we come to study our Bibles, and you have all been there at some point, a lot of you have started a new Bible reading plan. which is a good way to get started and a good way to systematically start approaching things. Having a plan is step one. But what I have found is, and I've been there myself, especially when I was a young believer, is that I read fairly randomly. And as I read the scripture randomly, sometimes it impacted me, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it was just checking the box, and you get into genealogies, and I didn't know what I was reading, but doggone it, I was gonna read through the Bible in a year, and so next, next, next. But if you commit to reading more intentionally, which I will argue a little bit later, that's the difference, I think, distinctively between study and reading. And I think we want to be students of the word ultimately. What it's going to do is sharpen your aim. The way I think of it is, the best illustration I have is the book of Colossians. So some of you have spent time with me in Bible studies and things. And if I asked you what the book of Colossians was about, And you said, which most commentaries are going to say in some way, shape or form, that it's about Jesus. You are right. Colossians is about Jesus. And so is the Gospel of John, and so is Matthew, and so is Mark, and so is Luke. Obviously, it's distinctly about Jesus and the supremacy of Christ. A lot of times you'll see that title in your study Bibles. But if we start getting through, how is it distinctive? How is Colossians specifically or particularly commenting on Christ? It's those kinds of questions that I think we can take deeper. And what you'll find and be surprised by is a lot of The study Bibles and commentaries give broad, unhelpful answers. And I'm going to encourage you to fight to try to sharpen that and use the text to say, hey, if you answer, broadly speaking, Colossians is about Jesus, you're not wrong, but I think there's a more helpful way to understand what Paul's writing about, particularly about Christ. Another one would be Philippians. When you come to Philippians, most people I probably have heard at some point, when you think of Philippians, I know growing up, I may not have paid a lot of attention, but it's like, yeah, Philippians joy, Philippians joy, Philippians joy. And joy is a huge topic in Philippians. but I think as we'll get into things, you start to go, is that really what you would argue Philippians is about? Is that what he's really trying to write about? And trying to say, is there a topic that is more central, or as I said, that kind of musical analogy, the melodic line that's more particular in that. And so, we wanna come and we wanna sharpen our aim, and really, like I said, have the conviction that, 2 Timothy 2.15, that there's a right way. So 2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. The literal translation is a fun one here. It says literally accurately handling is the idea of cutting it straight, making a straight line, making a perfect cut. And we want to be a workman who's making a perfect line, a perfect cut. If you've done any woodworking, and especially if you've worked with any trim, You know, I'm not very good at making a perfect cut. My work would not be approved. But you want to hire someone who does it accurately, who does it approved, and that's why we want to be as workmen, students of the word. So this is really a metaphor of a workman. It's a picture to say you're like the craftsman when it comes to scripture, desiring to be accurate, cutting it straight. Now what that means on the flip side is there's a right way to put on trim. And there's a wrong way to put on trim. And there's a right way to interpret scripture. There's a right way to handle scripture. And there's a wrong way to interpret scripture. And that, in a more pluralistic, postmodern world, is difficult for people. And you have to have conviction to say, no, this is the way language works. We didn't invent the rules. God invented language. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that and get into those definitions. But having a conviction there's a right way. We want to do it the right way. Some simple definitions, looking at this so you guys kind of know what I'm talking about. When I say hermeneutics, I won't use that term much, but it's important when you come to the study of scripture. If you look for how to study the Bible, you're going to be looking in that general section that's called hermeneutics, which is simply the art and science of interpreting the Bible. Exegesis, which is looking at the act of ascertaining the original meaning of the text, which is what we're going to try to engage in. The main thing, and we're going to emphasize this over the coming weeks, is we're going to look at exegesis, which is really going to be observation for the most part. We're going to look at observing the text. What does the text say? Well, what does the author mean? We're not going to be looking as much at the implication. And I will eventually argue next week there's a reason for that. And I think if you spend the right amount of time observing the text, the context of the text, then the implication or the application will fall into place. It's not going to be the hard part when it comes to that. The hard part is getting it right. If you skip the observation, if you skip right to the application, That's where people get in trouble. We get to then not just studying what it's saying, but to let me tell you what it means. That's when you're moving into the realm of exposition. And so you're going to hear that word a lot around church expositional preaching. And all I mean by that, this isn't a academic definition, but the one I typically give, which is to say the goal of any exposition. So any good expositional sermon is going to say, what is Revelation 7 about? And although I may not have what some would call an exegetical outline, and maybe a little bit more of an applicational outline or something like that, ultimately, if you broke apart the sermon, you're gonna find that the main point that I believe the Holy Spirit, through John, is trying to make in Revelation 7, that's the same main point I'm gonna try to make this morning. And that's, the main point of the passage is the main point of the message. That's a good one to remember, especially as you look for things, because we're going to see in some of what I would consider errors of Bible study, you start to understand how sermons get made and how the end product, the issue happened up front, because someone approached the text, found a word that was preachable, I've been there, it's a temptation, and decides that'll preach, and then they, you know, it's like, you got a topic, like love, like reconciliation, like forgiveness, and you go, I got it, and they can close it. They got a verse that talks about forgiveness, and then they'll preach an entire sermon on forgiveness. Their experience in forgiveness, an illustration of how they forgave someone, or an illustration of, you know, some story and they won't really give the context or what is the passage saying about forgiveness because I believe there's a reason God communicates to us through his word in those specific ways and that goes back to having that conviction to say there's something here that we need to understand. So just some simple definitions. The commitment here that, 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, that you and I, when we engage Scripture, we want to have it impact us. And if that's what you want, hopefully you're in the right class. That you want to look to Scripture and be impacted. And when you aren't impacted, or you find Scripture boring, that you intuitively go, The problem's not with Scripture, the problem is with you and me. Because we believe, 2 Timothy 3.16, that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work. So we really believe that all of Scripture, even the genealogies, even the 144,000, which at first glance you're just going, What am I going to preach on? 4,000, 12 tribes. This is even a unique today, this morning, listing of the 12 tribes. Dan gets kicked out of the tribes. Ephraim's kicked out. Joseph's put back in. You're going, what's going on? And you just have to be committed up front. There's prophethood. This was put in the scripture for a reason. And even if we don't understand on the first take and in a culture where we have microwaves, we don't like to work through that. But I think as we work hard and diligent, you'll see that equipping be consistent and happen. So I want to give that intentional commitment. I want to share that with you guys to the study of scripture. I don't know if you guys have experienced this or not, but for me, as I said earlier, reading randomly, I'll admit it, I just, I was a believer, but I did not get much out of scripture. And so my personal experience was 18 years old. I knew I was missing something. Where I went to church, we were doing, at that time, the purpose-driven life stuff. The previous year, it was a different church, actually, but we had done wild at heart. I remember he preached wild at heart, and even I knew, like, this isn't right. Like, I think you should preach the Bible. If that's God's word, you should preach the Bible. And so I knew there was something missing, especially when it came to spiritual growth. And what I noticed was I had this hunger, desire, I don't think I was specifically praying about it, but in God's providence, I had to travel. And so my senior year of high school, mom and dad were moving, and I needed to play baseball somewhere, and so I chose to play baseball in Kearney, Nebraska, and we lived in basically Marquette, Aurora, Nebraska. So it was an hour and a half to Kearney, an hour and a half back. So tried out for the team, made that team. So I'm playing for Kearney. So April, May, and June, until they move every day, five days a week to go to practice, I had to drive to Kearney, hour and a half there, drive back. And so I had asked about listening to things. And so for me, I asked dad, hey, do you have anything I can listen to? And he said, well, I have this big case of tapes. So, good news, I still had a tape deck, so it worked out. I said, okay, these are sermons, and I, again, I didn't know much at the time, but I knew, like, that seems like what a Christian ought to do. And so, there was a number of different guys, and I can vividly remember, particularly, and so this is kind of my story, how'd you get to the Master's Seminary, the impact of Grace to You, it was, and that can be a bit of a classic story around Masters, but I heard a Grace to You tape. I heard MacArthur preach 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and put that tape in there, and it was, for the first time, someone opened the Bible and I felt like what he just said That was what God said. And there was a confidence. And it wasn't anything flashy. It wasn't anything creative. He was simply walking through the text. And that, for me, completely blew me away. And that conviction still lives with me, that I need to be reading the Word in a way that impacts me. And I can say that. I feel like now, as I study, I am impacted by the Word because I believe that there's truth in the text itself. But let's begin, and this will be mostly all we have for grammar, and it's basic, so I know we're in a classroom and you're sitting there going, this feels too much like school, I know. But hopefully this is somewhat helpful, and it has a point, so bear with me. You think back to your earliest education, and you were taught letters. So I have little boys, they're homeschooled, so there's a lot of this going on in our house. It is so much easier with the third and fourth than it was with the first, I can tell you that much. But they're learning letters, they're learning to put letters together, they're learning how to write their name. And then eventually, they're kind of going from those letters to names to words to building out a sentence. And so you're taught to write that way. And eventually, I don't know if that's first grade, second grade, you're starting to teach some level of writing. And you were probably asked some question in the fall of, so we have different writing assignments with our curriculum. And in the fall, here's a pumpkin. Write a sentence about the pumpkin. And so you would write something to the effect, the pumpkin is round. in orange. And the teacher would give you the gold star and say, excellent! That's exactly right. The pumpkin is round and the pumpkin is orange. Now if you said something like the pumpkin is purple, no. Right? The pumpkin is orange. The pumpkin's not square. The pumpkin's round. And eventually we get into forming paragraphs and the sentence is about one thing, right? It's about the pumpkin. and you get into a paragraph, the paragraph is still, it's multiple sentences, but it's about one topic. This is basic, but trust me, it's actually very life transforming when it comes to being convicted that your paragraphs in your Bible are about something. And they're not about three things, they're about one thing, and it's made in a way that God has made language. Every paragraph is gonna deal with one subject, not two. And so you might eventually be asked to write a paragraph on jumping rope. So write paragraph two or three sentences on jumping rope. So you might say, jumping rope is fun, it is great exercise, and you can jump rope alone or with friends. And the teacher would go, great work, you got an A. It's funny to have all these transitions in here. Who knew? You get to this, and your fourth sentence is, jumping hurdles is fun too. The teacher would say, no. This is an assignment about jumping rope, not jumping hurdles. Again, every paragraph is supposed to, and scripture is written well, so it does, maybe not all of our sentences are, not all of our paragraphs are, but it's meant to have one thought, one idea. To give you the dictionary definition, you're looking at a paragraph, it is a subdivision of written composition that consists of one or more sentences and deals with Webster agrees, one point, or gives the words of one speaker and begins on a new, usually indented line. I just want to highlight the fact that it deals with a single point. A single point that you should be able to discern from the sentences what this paragraph is about. Well, we all grew up and you moved from letters to words to sentences to paragraphs to papers, right? Composition. where you would have some kind of composition like this. You're a little bit older. So my oldest is 10, 11. He's getting to this stage. And it's OK. You need to write this assignment. And you ask him the question, what did you do on your summer vacation? I had that as a kid coming back to school. And you could organize it chronologically. You could say, all right, paragraph one, what I did in June, paragraph two, what I did in July, number three, what I did in August. Or you could go and do it thematically if you went places, right? This is what I did at the beach, this is what I did at the mountains, this is what I did at the home. And you'd write that one-page paper that way. But if you added, fourthly, a paragraph that said what I did over Christmas vacation, Say no, right? Because it has nothing to do with your summer vacation. This paper is on your summer vacation. Now, this does have a point. And my point is this, that God writes the same way because he made the rules of language. He doesn't follow the rules or the rules of communication. He made them. Think of the nature of God, three in one, the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, in the beginning, the Word. He speaks the earth into existence. He designs the rules and we simply follow them. And the importance of this and the importance of having at least a basic understanding of the way language works is because what we have given to us is a composition, right? 66 books. that all have a particular theme that they're going after that's underneath a overarching theme that is written by a capital A author with other human authors as the Spirit carried them along. The work of exposition is to explain God's message, and so we have to have some grasp of, okay, we're looking for meaning in the text, and we're going to have to say there is a meaning, and then we're going to have to argue, if we're going to be approved workmen, that there is a right meaning. And so our first step is going to be, in the coming weeks, to identify simply the subject of each book. Our goal is to learn this as a system, that is, not to look at it randomly. But before we head there, all we want to do is spend a little bit more time on rules and some basic rules that almost as shocking, but I know, and I engaged in this in seminary for the first time, I think, when someone said it, and it almost hit me because of the kind of the culture we swim in is, I don't know if that's true or not. And then of course you went, no, no, that's absolutely true. And there's three rules I want to look at. Number one, and probably what you have to keep in the back of your mind at all times, and be committed to, is that scripture has only one meaning and should be taken literally. Scripture has only one meaning and should be taken literally. This goes back to if it means this, it doesn't mean that. And simply by when I say literally, all I mean by that is simply to say that we take it in its proper grammatical sense. We take figurative languages figuratively. When Jesus says, I am the door, No one goes, oh yeah, he's a three by six foot slab of wood. No, obviously, the grammar would say very clearly, no, he's using this as a picture. We are sheep, he is the shepherd. We're not saying take it in that sense of wooden literalism, but just think what it means in its plain sense. And so you kind of, when you look at more proper hermeneutics, the grammatical historical hermeneutic is what we are talking about there. But the Bible doesn't mean multiple things like any other composition. And so if I'm reading a passage, and I say it means this, and you say it means that, one of us is wrong. Or both of us is wrong. But we're not both right. Like any other thing that you write. Psalm 18.2 is a good example, just a figurative language under what I mean by literal. It says, Yahweh is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. So you go, is Yahweh a rock? No. Is Yahweh a fortress? No. But it is to say, He's strong. He is my strength. He is where I can hide. He's my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield. And probably my favorite one in this, Psalm 18.2, is that He is the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I use this real quickly to say because we have fortresses today, so you guys for the most part have a visual when I say fortress. You go, God is my fortress. I get that picture. I don't know if God is my rock, if we totally think about that. Strong, immovable, probably, because we have big rocks. You've been to Colorado. You've seen big boulders. You go, OK, God is the rock. I understand the meaning of that. He's my shield. We're like, OK, I've seen a shield. I know what that is. He protects me. But that last one, the horn of my salvation, because we have less and less of an agrarian culture, you go, I don't know if everyone would go, what do you mean he's the horn? Well, it's poetic and he's saying the same thing over and over again. And it simply means that he is my strength. When you see strong horns, you see strength. That's the nature of animals with horns. And so that's just a good example of you might have to do work in different places. And this is where, especially the commentaries in the, they call manners and custom books become very helpful because you go, I don't know what that means. And that helps kind of illustrate that fact. Why is this meaning a hard concept? I'd say it's because where the culture is gone and where education is gone. I'm trying to think, who's probably, was anyone in college in the 60s? Everyone's probably 70s, right? Is the youngest, oldest 70s? 70s, 80s? Does anyone remember their, if you took any literary composition, Did they talk about what the author meant? Feel free to speak. This should be more interactive than it is currently. I'm just trying to blow through stuff right now. Does anyone remember that? If they wrote about papers, was it about what the author meant? Was it about the text, what you thought it meant? I'm just curious. Yeah. The medical and the businessmen are going, I didn't do any of those classes. Right. Well, there was pretty much a consensus at one point, if you follow this trace in language and philosophy is part of this, where the culture for the most part, even in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, although you can find the philosophers that already started to make headway, that, for the most part, the culture still believed in authorial intent. Probably the classic illustration is the Constitution, right? Everyone's going like, what did the framers mean when they wrote this, right? And that's still a huge thing when it comes to the Supreme Court today. But the movement was away from the author and it kind of moved in to the text. And everyone, now the meaning starts to reside inside of not the author, what does he mean, but well, let's take the text. And I actually think this is probably something that's more common. People don't realize it in the church today. Because like I said, it ends up being where I've seen sermons built this way, where they see something in the text that is biblical, and then someone says, ooh, I saw that, I read that, and that meant this to me. And they skipped over, what did that mean in the context? What did God mean that to say? And they just jumped on, well, this made me think of this situation. And it could be an entire sermon that nothing necessarily is heretical about it, but They didn't ever ask the question, what did the author intend? They simply jumped right to, I saw the text, and I decided the text means this. Probably the theological illustration for this is, if you're familiar at all with liberation theology. And so you think of Galatians, it's for freedom that Christ set us free. And they grabbed freedom, and we're Americans, and we love freedom. And so he said, well, that means that Christ is setting us free from all strongholds. He's setting us free from all people, from all oppressors. There's a popular term today. And so you saw that movement start to take hold and people started to use the scriptures. In fact, oh, Where are we at now? 14, 15 years ago. I know some of you are old enough to remember this. Does anyone remember when President Obama first became president and the big stink about where he went to church in Chicago? Does anyone remember that? They actually brought his pastor on, because it was a really radical church. And if you watch that interview, the pastor actually tells the interview, don't worry about us. We believe in liberation theology. And that was his code to say, don't worry, we don't take the Bible literally. We just believe this. And then they saw Christ set us free and they take that and they apply it to everything else. And so all of a sudden you take the scriptures and everything becomes about that thing. Same thing if you look at kind of the Christian side of the feminist movement, same deal. God wants to liberate you from male domination and all those things. And you're going, well, okay, well, irrespective of those things, is that what Galatians is saying? Galatians 5.1, it was for freedom that Christ set us free. Is that what he's actually saying? And the answer is, no, that's not what he's saying at all. If you look at the whole context there, what he's saying is you're set free from the law. And particularly in Galatians, he's talking about, you know, you're no longer under the Jewish Mosaic law. And so that has a context, and that means one thing. It doesn't mean you're free from everything. It just means you're free from the Mosaic law. And you need to have the context to understand that. But there's a couple ways that that has moved again from author to the text to eventually you kind of have the reader response movement where the meaning is now in you and so it means whatever you think it means and so again with the church if we're talking about application I can see a place where I understand maybe I don't like the wording but someone might go what does it mean to you? okay, like I kind of get where you're going, like how does this impact my life? That's a good question. But if you skipped over what does it mean and now you've said what it means is what I think it means, that's where you get in trouble and that's when you get into the Bible studies where it's scripture means whatever they want it to mean and it gets pretty wild pretty quick and I'm sure you've all been in those classes before. And it goes back to not having the conviction over rule one that there is a single meaning. Are there implications? Yes. Is it going to have different application for people's lives? Sure. But it is to say what means this and God meant this and we need to work hard to discover what that single meaning is. Second rule that is extremely important here is, let's see here. I have that mislabeled. This is rule two. Let's see here. Am I right about that? No, this is rule two. Rule two, we're okay. A scripture has only one meaning, and it's the meaning intended by the author and the author. That is to say, which we just talked about, I guess I got ahead of myself, but going back to the first rule, that it has only one meaning, it should be taken literally, rule number one. Number two, that it should be understood as meaning intended by the author, author, and so just capital A versus little a, understanding, 1 Peter 1 20 verse 20 through 21, that know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. That is to say, we understand that Scripture comes through humans, through writers, but there is a divine author behind all of that, which if you get into more advanced, I guess is the word I might use, hermeneutics. A lot of these questions over New Testament use of the Old Testament and things start to come into play and I don't ever think they're at odds. I'll put it that way for now. Some people put them at odds and I don't think that's right. I think Does the author always know as much as we think he knows? I think he probably knows more than we think, but clearly he doesn't know everything. But he does know when you get to prophetic passages, I think, trajectory. But that's a little bit down that road. Thirdly, though, looking at this is simply look at context. So context, context, context, context is king to interpret words in harmony with their meaning in the times of the author. So we're gonna use a lot of illustrations here with the rest of our time and look at this because this is where people use God's words with God's authority and someone's going to hear something, and their conscience is going to be bound by it, because they're going to go, wow. Especially if someone with any authority like a pastor teaches it, they're going to say, this scripture means this for your life. And if it's wrong, they're going to still feel bound to it because their conscience is going to bind them. So we want to be careful. And the way to be careful in this is to not lift verses out of context. So don't take a single verse and lift it out of context. You can quote a single verse. I think that's fine. But again, make sure you know what's come before and what's come after. And really, there's a lot more, I think we'll see this over time, power when you really understand that. So a couple examples, 2 Thessalonians 2 15. So then brothers stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. And so what's the understanding of hold to the traditions? The verse has been used a lot of different ways, but church does things the way they've always done it. And you need to hold to the traditions. It's kind of an interesting world, because even just seeing generational divide, but I had an older couple that was actually, I thought it was so interesting, because for me, the last 10, 15 years, I've sung a lot of hymns. When I was at Grace Church, I was pretty involved with people who did a lot of writing in the modern hymn movement. I really love the Gettys. And so I have no... allergic reaction to hymnals. I like hymnals. I was in choir. I know how to read music. I like hymnals. And so we had bought the, you know, we have the Grace hymnals. I sing out of a hymnal with the kids, and I like hymnals. And I thought it was so interesting. This was a godly couple, and they were horrified at the idea of using hymnals. And I'm like, what's going on here? And they're going like, you have no idea. Like, our church split over this. Like, when we went to singing off the wall, which I'd never heard that phrase before. It's like, oh yeah, I guess we sing off the wall. They went to overheads, and they were like, no, this was a nightmare. Like, you don't want to go, like, the whole concept of singing from hymnals triggered. that kind of tradition, that kind of culture fight with them, and the churches they grew up in, and they're like, no, we don't want to be at a church that sings from hymnals. And I always remember thinking that was interesting, because they were older and godly, and I thought, well, this is weird. A young person is like, OK with this, but you're worried about it? But like, for example, I've seen this used in that way for people to not change. But then in the context of 2 Thessalonians 2.15, what he's really dealing with when you say, what is the tradition? Stand firm, hold to the traditions. He explains which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. And if you look at even the broader context, it's even clearer. This is doctrine. This is teaching. He's saying, stand firm, and hold to the doctrine that you were taught. And so that should be your concern. That's what this verse means. You should be concerned about holding to the orthodox faith of the church. You should be concerned if everyone's changing the doctoral statement every other minute. This verse would say that's what that means. Hold fast to them. Don't go around changing them. Paul is saying to hold to the traditions of Scripture. You have to read this in Paul's framework, not our own. Oh, think of another one. Second Corinthians 13, 12. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Right? I don't think anyone greeted. This is like the most anti-COVID thing ever. But you go, why not? Because we, I mean, I actually like people who are like, we should do that in the sense that they want to be obedient to scripture. But you start to go, OK, Is that a pattern? Is that telling you what happened in their culture when they greeted one another? Or is that telling you, this is how you should greet one another, period, all cultures, all time, all places. And I think most people are on the same side. They go, no, that's not one we're really tempted with. Another one that recently came up, looking at revelation, Oh, is it two or three? I think I'd know that, huh? I'm gonna say three. With Revelation 3, with the Church of Laodicea, I was trying to think of a couple that I've ran into recently that were really, really helpful of understanding what it meant. So, with the Church of Laodicea, Revelation 3, verse 16, it says, or 15, I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot, I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Well, I had always, up until the point where I taught that and actually had done some reading, I don't know why, I mean, I just read through it quickly and just thought, okay, don't be lukewarm, because it's a lukewarm church, and you want to be hot, not cold, right? And then you start reading it, and you're going, well, it's interesting, is he's saying, actually, I'd like you to be hot. I'd like you to be cold. And then I started reading different things, and you start reading, you go, some people argue that actually it's better to be, like the first Peter, better to be a believer or an unbeliever. In other words, God would rather have you reject him than be lukewarm, which it's like, well, I kind of get your point there, and you could maybe look at some other passages. But when you understand the background of the context of that verse in Laodicea, it makes a lot more sense. And so we looked at that in the sermon, but that Heropolis had hot springs that had medicinal purposes. They would understand hot water is a good thing. They had cold springs that came from Colossae, which would be a good thing. And in their city, by the time it got there, everything basically became lukewarm. And they tried to pipe water in, and it always got nasty. And it just became a complete gag reflex. So now you're reading this, and you're going like, OK, well, I understand what's going on in that city. And so we like hot things, like coffee. And we like cold things. But no one likes lukewarm things. And he's saying, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. I will spit you out of my mouth. And now it makes a lot of sense, because you're going, oh, if you had tasted their lukewarm, nasty water, you'd spit it out. He's still technically saying a very similar thing, but that's one of those where I didn't really understand the full context without some extra study and help, and made me understand, oh, this makes way more sense why that picture, and that's where you really get into the challenges when you start dealing with pictures in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians 5, 22 is another one of staying from every form of evil. That's a good memory verse. But if you filled in the blank, I'm curious, has anyone been taught this verse before and willing to share what they were taught? Chris, what would you say off the top of your head? You're an extreme guy. Abstain from every form of evil. You could run wild. Right. But then you start listing every form of evil, and you don't even want to get close. And so typically, I've seen this first taught in a way where it becomes this almost chain, particularly, you know, pastors live in the fishbowl, the elders live in a fishbowl. It's not as big of a deal as it was probably, but it's like, I mean, abstain from every formula. You don't even want to be associated with it. So, you know, if you go and I see you at a movie theater, you don't know which movie I'm going to. What if you think I'm going to a movie I shouldn't go to? That's inappropriate. I should abstain from every form of evil, right? Same thing goes with you should never be associated with someone that you would think, man, why is he doing that? And there may be wisdom in those things, but when you actually look at the context, It's helpful here to go, what are we talking about? Like I said, you lift it out, and it can make all these things, which it might be wise or unwise to do or not do those things. But I don't want to bind someone's conscience. I don't want to tell them the Bible says you can't do X unless the Bible says you can't do X. There might be some wisdom in play, but I don't want to quote a verse, like abstain from every form of evil in a way that gets someone to where you're binding their conscience the way the scripture doesn't teach. Because in this case, when you see it, it's do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophecies, which i.e. teachings, but examine all things, hold the fast which is good, abstain from every form of evil. And so the context here is abstain from every form of false doctrine. Teaching is the context. That's what it means specifically. And you want to apply that with the way that you live your life. We'll just do one more here. and I know a lot of you guys have interacted with this one plenty, but that Philippians 4.13, that I can do all things through him who strengthens me. I grew up around Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I remember being in Estes Park with the power team and big, strong guys ripping phone books, and they loved this verse. And so they would, you know, lift more weight than you've ever seen. and then they would kind of do a little devotional and say, you know, I could do all things, and they'd add five more pounds, and you'd barely get it up, right? And then everyone would be like, try more, try more, you know, and they'd put five more pounds on, and they'd barely get it up, because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Of course, you know, if you're sitting in the audience wondering, it's like, well, put another plate on, right? I mean, if you can do all things, Let's see something really dramatic. But it's usually within that limit. And you know, I get it, they're trying to be, you know, encourage the kids, whatever, but I go, no, no, no, that's not what Philippians 4.13 is. It's not about physical feats. And so, like Tim Tebow, but you know, Philippians 4.13 is on the iBlock, and you're going, I know what he means, but this verse is not talking about athletics. Is there an implication for contentment in winning and losing? Absolutely. So you can learn from it. But if you look at the full context of Philippians 4, in light of Paul's poverty, being in prison, that it's very clear he's saying, I can be joyful and content with much, and I can be joyful and content with little, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." He can be joyful, He can be thankful to the Lord in ministry, even if it's in prison or if it's freedom about. So you go, that's what He means by that. And so you understand if you lift it out of context, you can make a verse almost say anything you want it to say. if you do that. And so we don't want to do that. We want to accurately divide the truth to make sure we're done on time, but we want to accurately divide the truth. So over the next few weeks, as I kind of wrap up here, we're going to get to the heart of the class and what we want to look at is really observation and we want to look at each book and hopefully my real goal is to encourage you that you can have confidence in scripture and that You can start to move, although I'm not saying looking at a verse, there's a lot of really good script for reference things out there that'll be topically, you know, here's verses on encouragement, here's verses on suffering, here's verses on joy, here's verses on persecution, and they'll be there. But I want to encourage you is you can look at topics and you can make it bigger than that. And you can start to look at the Bible in such a way that there is a book that is helpful. Not just a verse, but there is a book that is helpful. And there's a context to these things where someone can really see the truth of scripture and then its implication for life. That's my goal with that and I want to get in and hopefully show you that the value of spending more time doing the hard work of observation is going to equal more fruit on the back end as we do get to eventually implication for what it means for our lives and for the church today.