received, a lot of different factors. You know, there's so many things that I find it comical when someone gets up and says, and my opinion is this. That's not probably really your opinion. You might have heard it from a dozen other people, and you've made a few little adjustments here and there. But quite frankly, no one has any unique opinions. Solomon says, it's been around the block a few times. Others have had those opinions. And so there's nothing really quite original left. Okay? To be honest. And so, our interpretations can and do get influenced by different preconceived notions we might have. Now, Augustine will say, if you believe what you like in the Gospel and the Bible, and reject what you don't like, it's not the Gospel you believe, but yourself. And sadly, in our very humanistic mindset today, in modern day, we do tend to approach the Bible in this way. We look, okay, I think, and this is what we often say, and we sometimes make this mistake when we have Bible study, right? You have people get around and we do Bible study and we'll say like, what do you think, George, about this verse? How about you, Andrea? What's your thoughts? Well, that's not really important in the day. It doesn't really matter what she thinks or what he thinks. What really matters is what does Jeremiah think? What is he trying to say? What's God trying to say in this verse? Not what I make of it. or how I fancy it, or, and we make this mistake a lot, okay? Okay, so this is what Augustine is warning us against, okay? Now, good, the importance of good interpretation is the Bible bears it out itself. 2 Timothy 2 verse 15, if you take a moment to look at it, it talks about the workman that's approved by God, okay? And this is talking about ministers in particular, like young Timothy, who are going to be, again, we couldn't go be put through the ringer, it says in James, especially those who are teaching God's word. So he says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God, okay? As a workman, we're serving God in the ministry. And what is this one thing that he warns him about specifically? Accurately handle. the word of truth, okay? And it's quite an interesting phrase that he uses there when he talks about accurately handling the word of truth. He uses, he's talking about a workman, right? And the word of truth is in many ways an implement that you might use when you're working. If you're farming, you might have a hoe. serving in a different capacity, maybe something else, but it's all about using that implement, that tool, rightly, accurately. In this case, he uses this very interesting word in Greek which speaks about rightly dividing. Okay, orthotomeo has the idea of dividing it correctly or putting it in line. In fact, it's interesting because we have orthodontics and we have orthopedics. We have a whole lot of things and orthodoxy that has come from this same word. Orthodox has the whole idea of getting it right. If you are a dentist, my daughter is getting her braces done right now. And the whole point of the whole thing, some of, you know, putting on braces and all the rest, aside from inflicting pain on your poor patient and making them look rather ugly, it's really you're trying to get the teeth straight. You want the teeth to be straight. My poor kid has been going for two years now and they still can't seem to get them straight. But that's a different problem. The same thing is if you're talking about not just orthodontics, but orthopedics, which is going to be talking about bones. And when someone breaks a bone, what do you want to do? You want to make sure you get it straight, right? You don't want it crooked. You want it angled. You want to get it straight, fit, right. And it's the whole idea of when we are studying God's Word, we want it to be straight. We want it to be right. Okay? And later, of course, the Orthodox picked up on this. You know, when the Catholics were saying, we are, you know, we represent the universal church. And the Orthodox say, well, we are the right ones. We have it straight, right? And we call ourselves the Orthodox. So you have the universals on one side, which is what Catholic means, and the people who get it right on the other side. God will be the judge in another day. Okay. So the command to us is to get it right. Which implies that there is a right and a wrong. There is a right way to interpret God's Word. It's not hunky-dory. It's not willy-nilly. It's not whatever you think it might be and, you know, whatever you like is good for you, whatever I like is good for me. This is kind of post-modern mumbo-jumbo. Okay? You know, whatever you like is good for you. Whatever you want to believe in, that's good for you. No, it's not. We don't drive our cars that way, thank God. If we did, we'd be in deep trouble. I like to drive on this side. I like to go backwards. We drive according to we get it right. We go on the left side. We should be going on the right side, but that's a different debate. We do it the right way according to the society in which we live in. Okay, if the Brits have been around, you do it on the left. But at any rate, we wanna go right, because we don't wanna have accidents, okay? So there's a right way to do this, he says. There's a right way to interpret God's word, okay? And we know, we've seen this example. It's often, often abused. You've all run into the Mormon or the JW who takes out a verse, and man, they can really prove something. And they can really mess you up, too, if you're not sharp on your scripture, okay? Because they're using the same Bible. They're manipulating it in different ways, okay? And we've seen this abuse. We've seen even Islam abuse it. They'll take verses from John chapter 14, 15 about the paraclete, right? And how this actually refers to Muhammad. You heard that story, right? Okay, so you've got this from your friends, and how they got from Paracletos to Muhammad is a mystery to me. I mean, that's just a long shot. But they do, they kind of monkey around with the Greek, and then they convert it into the Arabic, and in the Arabic it means Ahmed, which is close to Mehmet, which is close to Muhammad, and there you got it, right? And you can come up with whatever you want. Okay, if you twist enough and finagle your way through Scripture. So we've seen it, we can see it abused all the time. On the positive side, the Bible gives us a beautiful promise again in 2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse 7 where He gives them a number of illustrations and then He says this, consider what I say. For the Lord will give you insight into everything. That's a beautiful promise. And we find this promise later on given to the apostles in Revelation. It talks about those who will have insight. Sorry, Daniel chapter 12. Those who will have insight will shine like the stars of the firmament. That's beautiful. There is a promise that we can have insight. In fact, Jesus goes on those words of Daniel in Matthew 24 and says, let the reader understand. Little parenthesis there. You can understand. You can get it. You can have insight. if you genuinely are seeking what God is wanting to say, and to interpret it correctly, and to apply it into your life, okay? So there is a promise of God's help in doing this. So what's the essence of good interpretation? It's called, it's a big word, hermeneutics, okay? Hermeneutics is a great old word, and it simply means the art and science of interpreting the Bible correctly. Okay, it's an art, it has certain guidelines and principles that are well established, that's why it's called a science as well, and it has everything to do with interpreting, getting it right, getting it right. Now, here's an interesting question. How many meanings can a verse have? Now you can, lots of verses in here, you can pick up any one of these verses, and you can hear a dozen different sermons about it. and very, very different interpretations and idea about what it means. The question is, how many meanings does this verse actually have? Is it really up to whoever's preaching? Or whoever's writing the book about it? Anybody care to say? Well, I gave you the answer there, right? Any one verse actually only has one meaning. Now, it can have many different applications, and I think it's, you might think it's splitting hairs, but I think it's an important point to make. What is the meaning of any one of these verses? The meaning is what God intends it to mean. It's that simple. If God is the ultimate author of this book, every verse has a particular meaning. And this meaning is established by its context. We can, and that's our goal as interpreters, is to ascertain what's the meaning. What is God trying to say in this verse? Now we might then take that meaning and apply it to different circumstances. We might even find some spiritual meanings. These are different layers of meanings. But this is only and if we have established the original contextual historical meaning of what's going on there. This is important, and we need to do this faithfully. Otherwise, we do great injustice to God's Word. Now, suppose you pick up some great book that you enjoy, say John Grisham's novel, and you start reading it, and you go on to Facebook, and you begin to write your own ideas of what John Grisham was trying to say. And you write your own commentary about his book and take some of the characters that he has and you take it, you know, quite far afield. You can come up with all kinds of great, you know, kind of subplots. That's kind of not, that's really cheap. And I'm sure if John Grisham is on Facebook, he'd take you to court for it. That's not what I meant and that's not at all what was going on there. You completely missed the point. What I tried to write is quite obvious, it's right there. Stay with it, right? This is not a platform for you to take it and reinterpret it however you want. This, again, is a very post-modern way of approaching reality, sadly. You have people going today into an art gallery, and there is some paint splattered on this canvas, and the little title on the bottom will say it's whatever you want it to mean. And there's that kind of art today. That's really quite pitiful. It's not art, actually. It's just some lazy guy who doesn't know what to do with his time anymore, and he just throws it out there, and he calls it art. Okay? And that's, again, a very postmodern way of approaching reality, which is actually ultimately harmful and insulting to our brain, I think. So there's one meaning, many applications. And one way that, one of the great ways that we can understand the Bible is by taking our example from the Bible. So notice, for example, the way that Jesus or Paul or Peter will often quote the Old Testament. When they quote the Old Testament, how do they do it? Well, they will often make reference to the fact that it was written by some individual, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Take, for example, Matthew chapter 22, where Jesus will talk about his quoting Psalm 119, and he says, David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says this, and he quotes it verbatim. And then he asks a simple question. Okay, how can David be, how can the Messiah be the son of David and also the Messiah, or whoever this is, the Lord of David at the same time? When you look at the way Jesus quotes scripture, one, you see the respect he has for scriptures. He's not treating the scriptures as, you know, that's kind of old, passe, and be careful, a lot of that stuff's, you know, it's really getting quite rusty anymore. You don't have to worry about that. I'm bringing something new, no. The Scripture is authoritative. It's God's Word, and it stands, and not one tittle will be lost, he says, until it's all fulfilled. So again, a deep respect for God's Word and the authority of God's Word. But secondly, you have this very straightforward understanding of God's Word. He doesn't take God's Word and then stretch it. He expects what is said and what is evident to be what is really its target and its interpretation. Okay, so if you have time and want to understand more about this idea of interpretation, look through the Bible and see how the authors of the Bible actually interpret the Bible itself. And it gives us, I think, in many ways, a good cue. Now, two quite different ways of approaching the Bible, and you can summarize them in these two words. One is eisegesis, one is exegesis, and these are two Greek words, okay, and it has to do with interpretation. Eisegesis means to interpret into or to read into, we would say in English, okay. Exegesis is the idea of read out or to take out of something. And again, it has to do with this idea of when we read a text, are we reading a meaning into it, or are we taking the meaning out from it? And this, at the end of the day, makes all the difference in the world, okay? Whatever is being said, are we reading into it, that would be eisegesis, infusing meaning, giving it our own meaning, trying to understand it in our own way, or are we allowing the text to speak for itself and take that meaning for what it is? The first is a very arrogant way of reading. I know better, and I'm gonna tell you what you're saying. The second way is a very humble approach to scripture, saying, God, this is your word. I want to understand what you are saying. See, they're completely opposite, one from the other. And we, sadly, we often do the first. We are looking for some verse that is gonna prove something that we want to show to our roommate, right? And so we'll find out some verse that's a great pretext for our certain conclusions. We're not actually taking its original meaning, we're often infusing a certain meaning onto it, what we want it to say. So these are two ways of approaching scriptures and you can see it in the way people, the respect they have for God's Word and the way they interact with it. Hopefully, we can stick with exegesis, the idea of taking its message out, seeking to understand what its original intent and meaning is. The first, I think, big rule that we're gonna have that's important for basic interpretation is allowing the Bible to interpret itself. Assuming that the Bible knows what it's saying. Seems like it would be obvious, right? Yes, the Bible, God doesn't have a speech impediment. He knows how to communicate. And the Bible is, in fact, the best interpreter of itself. You often find people that will pick a verse here, pick a verse there, or read a few chapters and come up with outlandish conclusions and crazy questions. And I've had this, you know, I had a guy in Turkey who he in fact went to, he'd gotten kind of tired of Islam in Turkey. And so he thought, you know, maybe Sunni's got it wrong. If I go to Iran and check out the Shia side of things, I'll get it right. So he took his family to this big city in What's it? Homs. Homs in Iran, where the big university of Shia is. And he studied Islam, and he asked all his hard questions, and at the end he got himself kicked out of school because too many questions doesn't work well in Islam. So he left there. He went to northern Iraq. where he decided to become all political and follow the whole Kurdish thing. And he found out that was real great disillusionment. And so he ended up back in Diyarbakir. Shows up in church one day with a couple of his kids. And Hakim, he's Haji Hakim because he had been to Mecca. Haji means he's pilgrim now. So Haji Hakim shows up and he comes a couple of times and he says, I'd like to study the Bible. And I said, I'd love to teach you the Bible. So I gave him the Bible. I said, listen, start from Matthew and if you have questions, jot them down and we'll meet in a week or so and discuss them. So sure enough, two or three days later, he calls me up and Haji Hakim says, I have some questions. I said, oh, that's great. And he said, I got two pages full of questions. I said, Hakeem, wow, how much have you read? I'm about a page and a half. You have two pages of questions out of a page and a half? And he said, yeah, lots of questions. I said, no, listen, Hakeem, this is not what I meant, OK? Why don't we do this? Just read through it one time, and then start asking questions. Because what you'll find is that the Bible will actually answer most of these questions that you're writing down. Because he's writing down questions like, what is the Pharisee? Who's David? Just keep reading. These things are going to become evident as you go on. And sure enough, by the time he finished the New Testament, he only had a few questions left. And we got things sorted out. So the Bible is its own best interpreter. We have to allow it to interpret itself. Now what are we gonna do? We're gonna take, sometimes we'll come across passages that are rather unclear, okay? And what do we do? If there's something you've read, a particular passage or verse, and you're like, what's going on here? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, most likely there's another passage in the scripture that will give us, shed more light on that passage. This is the beauty of the Gospels, for example. There'll be often times that, say Mark is gonna, run very quickly through a lot of things in Jesus' life. You're just gonna write it down real shorthand, but then you can find the same incident in Mark, in Matthew, or in Luke, and that's gonna give you a whole lot more detail, a lot more information about what that passage is detailing. So comparing and contrasting with other passages are gonna give you the fuller meaning, okay? Oftentimes what people will show us as contradictory verses, when you combine them, when you bring that information together, you'll often find that they're not contradictory at all. They're actually complementary, okay? What do I mean by this? You know, one classic verse that people will like to show us is in Matthew, for example, when it talks about Judas who had betrayed Jesus. What does he do? It says, he went and he hanged himself. Seems pretty straightforward. And then you open up Luke chapter 1 and he says, he actually fell off a cliff and his gut spilled out. It's pretty gory. And then people will say, well, see, contradiction. Matthew says he hanged himself. Luke says he fell off a cliff. Clear contradiction in the Bible. Well, really, is it? Well, let's first ask the question. Are both of them clear on who Judas was? Yes, Judas was a disciple of Jesus, who betrayed Jesus, who took money to do so, and at the end, chose to commit suicide. And both accounts are clear on that. Okay? So we're not talking about two different Judas's. We're not talking about one Judas who became the great leading apostle of the church and the other one who betrayed Jesus. They're both the same Judas and they both did the same thing. Now the details about how he died, although they might seem to contradict themselves, when you bring it together they actually complement each other and give us further information about what's actually happening. What likely happened is that Judas hung himself or tried to and botched it and fell off the cliff. And ended up spilling his guts everywhere. In both cases, Judas did a horrendous thing and he took his life. And so there's ultimately no contradiction, really. And these two come together beautifully. So a lot of examples, I can give you other examples. There's examples of Jesus, for example, when he comes to heal blind Bartimaeus in Jericho. One of them, one of the accounts say that as he was leaving Jericho, he healed Bartimaeus. Another one will say, as he was entering Jericho, he healed Bartimaeus. Another one will say that He actually healed two men. Now are these contradictions? No, they're just giving us more information about what's happening, okay? In fact, if you know a little bit about geography, you'll know that there's two Jerichos. There was the old Jericho that was condemned by Joshua, never to be lived in again. And then there was a new city of Jericho, and so He was leaving one, entering the other, most likely. So there's an answer to every one of these questions, right? But we need to again ask the question of what is a contradiction? Contradiction is going to be something that is genuinely incompatible. Not just different details. Genuinely incompatible information would be, as I said, if Matthew says that Judas betrayed Jesus and hanged himself, and yet Luke shows up and says, no, he was a great patron saint of the early church. That would be a real serious contradiction. And there is no such thing in the scriptures. Another thing we do as we interpret scriptures is we look at verses within the fuller picture. We look at verses within the picture of the whole of the Bible. If we come upon a verse where Jesus is praising those who have chosen to be celibate, meaning they've chosen not to be married for the sake of the kingdom of God. And if you just stop right there, then well, we should all probably just give up getting married, right? Or if you read what 1st Paul said in 1st Corinthians chapter 7, what Paul says, again, he's encouraging us to be celibate. Does that mean that marriage is a waste of time? That marriage is really for the wimpy Christians? Is that the conclusion we should reach? Well, no. We look at the broader picture and we know that marriage from the beginning of time immemorial was something that God designed as a beautiful thing. That's normal. And yet there are times and places when celibacy also has a place and we should not treat them as abnormal either. There's a place for each of this and we take it within the broader scope and context of scripture. So taking verses within the fuller picture are important. Again, just like we do in any exercise, we treat the Bible as we would any other book and allow it to speak for itself and to give us the fuller information, okay? Now, a second important principle is gonna be to interpret the Bible in a straightforward manner. Now I don't say literally, because when we say, I interpret the Bible literally, people sometimes nowadays get freaked out. What? You mean we should cut our hands off and we should go around? And again, they take some verses almost hyper-literally. That's not what we're talking about, okay? Straightforward manner, what I mean by this is we interpret it in many ways as we would read any other book. If you were to pick up Shakespeare's Macbeth or Hamlet, you have to read it quite carefully. You have to work your way through it, understand the characters, and it's not up to you to decide who Hamlet is. It's not up to you to decide why Macbeth did one thing or another. There's a storyline. There's a plot. It might be difficult to follow. You might need to bring out, you know, an antiquated English dictionary. But if you work at it, you can get to the bottom of what's happening. There is a genuine plot and logic behind everything that's going on, and it all does come together. Now, for you to then take any chapter or any phrase from Macbeth or any way, and use it for your own intents, which we often do, we like to take quotes, right? We'll take a quote from here, a quote from there, often without complete ignorance of what is actually happening in that context. And people do this all the time with regard to scripture, but it's the kind of stuff that would make Shakespeare very upset. And I would suggest that it probably makes God similarly upset when we take his word and we abuse it for our own interests. Okay, so interpreting it, reading it in a straightforward manner, in other words, allowing it to speak for itself. Now, people will often say, oh, if you interpret the Bible literally and you get all kinds of weird ideas. Well, when we interpret straightforwardly, as I said, we allow, obviously, for metaphors. When we're speaking with people on a daily basis, we understand when we say to someone, you know, take a hike. That's a metaphor. You know, when we say to someone, you know, we have all kinds of phrases that we use all the time in regular daily language, and we understand. We don't take that literally. You understand? So metaphors, figurative language, are all part of a straightforward reading. It doesn't all have to be hyper-literal. So we prefer the more normal meanings of words. As we're reading through the Bible and we read words, we understand that it's probably saying what it obviously is saying. If it's using a word that is difficult for us to understand in our language, yeah, we might go back to the Hebrew, to the Greek and try to understand what is it saying. You know, I never forget my study on, I was studying at one point this whole idea of demons and them influencing believers and came across this verse in 1 John chapter 5 where it's talking about the evil one does not touch them. I was thinking, well, what does it mean as I'm looking at the Greek and I'm looking at here and At the end of the day, whatever I'm looking at is telling me, yes, the evil one does not touch them. That's what it says, and that's what it means. I keep trying to find another thing, another meaning for that. That's actually what it says. And we often kind of do this to ourselves. Let's just take it for what it says. And it might be difficult to understand. But allow the scriptures to speak for themselves. And we do this all the time. We'll do this, for example. People have great debates about the days of creation. How many days did God create the world? What does it say? He created it in six days. Here's the great little comment, says, all this in six days? Yep. Are you sure it's six days? Yes, six days. God created the universe in six days? Yes, the Bible says six days. And six Earth rotation days? Yes, six normal days. If you just allow the scriptures to speak for themselves, That's the obvious meaning. Now, you can monkey with that. You know, you can say, well, listen, you know, days is, you know, that can mean a lot of different things. Yes, I understand. And we can, couldn't God do it in one day? Yes, He could do it in one second. What's the point then? The point is obvious. If you read the chapter in its context, God is establishing the week. The reason God rests on the seventh day is not because He got tired or worn out or needed a break, okay? He stopped then to give us an example. Guys, see what I'm doing? You work six days, seventh day, take a break. And this is universally attested to be a good way to survive, to live. In fact, in Cambodia, years ago, they decided, you know, six days, that's too short. And so their despot there, named Pol Pot, he decided, we're going to work 10 days and take a day off. Well, it didn't take long for them to figure out, this is not working. Okay? This is not work. Human beings are designed to work six days and take a break. Right? So again, God is establishing, setting up a week. And he does it, six days, takes a break. And then he says, guys, do the same thing. Seventh day, Sabbath day, rest. That's the whole point. Okay, yet we wanna debate. Why are we debating again? Well, it's because we have this idea that everything actually happened by chance over a long period of time, and for that we need a lot of time. And six days just doesn't cut it. And so we have to make these into long ages, elongate it, maybe something happened before that. Behind all this interpretation is actually a whole load of preconceived notions. And we are imposing this on what the Bible is clearly stating. Okay. And I think this is not a fair way of approaching Bible. This is not exegesis anymore. We're talking about eisegesis. The Bible says six days. In fact, it says that, you know, it talks about morning and evening, right? Pretty clear that we're talking about 24 hour days. And if it wasn't, I think God could probably tell us that it was more than six days or something else. God doesn't have problems communicating. So let's take words for what they mean. Now, Part of this, again, is the second one is refrain from opposing your own opinions. And when we do, we have opinions. We'll come to certain passages and we think. No, Paul, God forbid, that's not what you mean, right? What I'm reading there is not what you're trying to say, right? Well, it probably is. And the problem is probably not with Paul, it's probably with you. And then again, this has to do sometimes with our culture, with our society, maybe with our education. We live in a society that's very, very influenced by post-modernism. We don't often realize it or appreciate just how deeply this has influenced us. Take feminism, modern thing, and there's some good things in it that it's allowed women's rights to come to the fore, but a lot of part of it has gone quite farther, and to the point of being very critical and abusive of God's scripture, you know, saying, well, it can't be this, what Paul is saying here, this is crazy. What do you mean, Paul, that women should be silent in church? What's wrong with you, you know? Grow up and get into the 21st century. Wait a second. Now this is not about Paul's day and Paul's culture and somehow assuming that he was completely out of touch with reality. We're talking about God's Word. And when you look carefully at the kind of arguments that Paul establishes for whether it's speaking in church or order in marriage, he doesn't talk about his culture. He doesn't say, we in Tarsus, that's the way we did it. He gives examples and his key underpinning proofs is from Genesis, chapter two. He says, that's the way God did it. That's the way he designed human beings. This is the way marriage works. And this is why it's in scripture. Not because I think so, not because this is how we did it in the good old days, or not because this is the way my mama taught me. This is God's Word and God's design and we abide by that. Now we might not like it at first. It might not be what our society is telling us. It might be completely contrary to what we presume should be the right way. But are we going to allow God to speak? Are we going to allow His Word to be authoritative? That's really where the rubber meets the road. So refraining from imposing our opinions, it can be difficult. We need to be fair and objective. When we come upon verses, it's easy for people to take certain verses and completely go somewhere else with them. Fair and objective with what the scripture is saying. So people will take verses so completely out of the ballpark, it's quite strange. People have taken verses like where it talks about David is moaning the death of his friend Jonathan. He says, I think he says, my love for you was more than that for women. He goes, ah, see, David, he had something for Jonathan. There's something else going on there. Yeah, you see, homosexuality is good. The Bible teaches that homosexuality is the right thing to do. You know, King David, what a great example, right? Inspiration for all of us, right? Wait a second, that is so far removed from what David is trying to say there. And again, we have to take this in the broader context of Scripture. There's very clear teachings in Scripture, it's about homosexuality. Now that, of course, does not mean we hate homosexuals, just like we don't hate murderers, or we don't hate people who have committed adultery, which is probably more than half the people out there, okay? We love people, we embrace people, we share the gospel with them. Their choices may have been very poor choices. So we do, we embrace these people. We don't make the mistake of somehow saying that, well, it's okay. And the Bible actually says so. And we have great examples. We've gone way afield when we start going there. That is bringing to the Bible our own prejudices. And that's not being objective or fair at all to what scripture is teaching. So as much as possible, we interpret what the Bible says literally. Now, clearly when we come to certain books, especially books that are, that deal a lot with metaphorical language, the text itself is going to give us certain clues that, you know, what you're seeing here actually means this. Take the chapters in Daniel where he's seeing all these visions and he's seeing these rabid animals and, The angel comes and explains to him, this represents this, and this represents that. You get into the book of Revelation and it's easy for people to go quite far afield in the book of Revelation. And obviously there's metaphors. Obviously there is all kinds of symbolism in there. But what you'll often find, and I think it's important to notice this, take Revelations chapter one, for example, when it talks about Jesus having the seven candles, okay? And people all of a sudden start making great interpretations about what the seven candles are. And yet, if we just look at the text, the very end of the chapter 1, it's going to say, the seven lampstands are the seven churches. Oh. You mean we didn't have to do all that? No, you didn't. You didn't have to make up all your interpretations. Take another one, Revelations chapter 17. It talks about this woman, this harlot who is riding this beast. Obviously it's a symbol, it's a metaphor, similar to what we've seen in Daniel. But just because it's a symbolism or it's a metaphor doesn't give us permission to then determine whatever we want it is. Okay, just because something is couched in metaphorical language doesn't make it now our prerogative to make of it whatever we like. Just like when we're talking to anyone, or reading any book, there's gonna be metaphors, there's gonna be symbolic language. We don't just then decide whatever we want to make of it, right? We try to understand what's going on in that context, what's being said in the larger picture here. Revelation chapter 17 is gonna tell us who the woman is. Now there's lots of books written about the harlot in chapter 17 of Revelation. Read the last bit of the chapter. It says, it's a city. It's a city. Now it may represent more than just a city, granted. But let's start with that. It's a city. That's what the text says. And we can often go very, very far afield. So as much as possible, as we're reading through scriptures, let's allow it to say what it's trying to say. Let's try to determine if there's metaphorical language, is there spiritual language? What's it saying in the context? It's not difficult to find the connections oftentimes. Revelation chapter 12 talks about this woman with the stars around her head and the moon and the sun under her feet. You can read all kinds of different ideas of what that might be. If you know your Bible, you'll remember that Joseph saw a very similar dream. And the connections are very, very obvious. Again, the Bible is interpreting itself. And you make those connections, it's quite easy to come with the reality. Okay, so we need to watch over again also over spiritualizing. Now some passages might be quite difficult. Okay, especially when you get into verses like the kinds you find in the Song of Solomon. I assume most of you have not read Song of Solomon. Because you're not above 30, right? According to Jewish tradition, until you were 30, you were not allowed to read Song of Solomons. Have you read Song of Solomons? Okay. Well... No, I would encourage you to read Song of Solomons, okay? But it's a difficult book, especially if you come at it from this frame of mindset that, you know, marriage is good, but, you know, sexual stuff, oh, we don't talk about that in church. I mean, that's just no-no. Well, who said? The Bible's full of it. And God came up with it. It was His idea anyways. It's not like Adam and Eve discovered this somehow in the backwaters of the Garden of Eden. God came up with it from the beginning. And it's sacred and it's beautiful in His eyes in the context of marriage. And what you have in the book of Psalm and Solomon is you have the first few chapters preparing for marriage. A young gal and a young man, probably Solomon himself is kind of, it seems like a picture of him, fall in love, and they realize the dangers of that. And they're constantly warning each other, be careful, don't go too far. And then chapter four, they get married. And what do you do when you get married? Well, you know what you do when you get married. Okay, you have a honeymoon. And it's a good time, okay? Now, after that, they have issues in their marriage, and they learn how to resolve these issues. There's nothing sacrilegious at all about this book. In fact, it's really helpful if you're engaged and wanting to know how do you deal with some of these temptations that come up, some of these feelings. If you don't have those feelings, frankly, you're in trouble. You should. It's good to have those feelings. That's a part of nature, and God has given that and has created that in you. How do you deal with that? How do you prepare yourself for marriage? You got your honeymoon coming up. What should I be expecting? How should I go about this? There's some really good clues in there. Some really good clues. And it's not, again, it's not the kind of stuff you see in Hollywood. The stuff you see in Hollywood, it's, boy, she's ready to go and just jump right in. That's not the reality. And the Song of Solomon prepares us in a beautiful way. The young man who's just got married is so tender with his wife, so careful to preserve her dignity, to allow her to get ready. And this is God's manual for marriage. It's beautiful if you can appreciate it for what it is. But over the centuries, rabbis as well as priests and other commentators have had a really hard time. I can understand if you're some celibate priest, you know, you're trying to make some sense of this. And so, what do you do? Well, you begin to spiritualize. And boy, you get busy with the spiritualization. And so when you get into some passages and it's describing, you know, your breasts are like this and like that, like, oh, the breasts. Old Testament and New Testament. Yeah, okay, I got this. They come up with some really creative ideas. Now, we don't need to go there. Again, it's not so much that there's a problem with the text. There's a problem with their understanding of marriage, or misunderstanding thereof. There's a problem with our idea that somehow sex is dirty. And that, you know, we shouldn't talk about such things. I talk about it with my kids. Because I want them to hear it from me, not from the movies and from their friends and other stuff. I want them to know this is a beautiful thing. It's from marriage. Okay? There's nothing ugly or gross about it. We need to, as the Bible does, to a degree, talk about this openly, preserving what's sacred about it, but at the same time getting over our inhibitions, getting over what's been imposed on us in our society that, you know, that's the kind of stuff you just watch in a dark room when nobody else is around and it's called porn. No, there's a place to understand this rightly. Okay, so this is what has often brought about a lot of gross spiritualization of passages. Again, it goes back to our own misunderstandings and reflecting that on scripture. Okay, so understanding the Bible in a straightforward way. Another one that's very important if you're gonna study the Bible and you'll hear this over and over again is context. What is context? The Bible is best interpreted contextually. And context is basically the environment in which that verse lives, okay? Trying to understand what's happening in and around it, okay? So when you read a verse and you don't, you can't understand it, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, here's the first thing you do, read the verse before it. If you don't understand it, read the verse before that, right? Go back to the beginning of the chapter, read it all again. Try to catch the flow of thought. It happens all the time. You know, you're reading some book or novel or newspaper or textbook and all of a sudden you're like, well, I have no idea what's going on. What do you do? Well, you go back and you start reading that chapter again, right? There's obviously something you missed and you need to put it back into context, right? So again, this is what we do. If there's a verse that we don't understand, we look at the verses around it and we try to put it into context. We can look at the chapter and get the broader context of that verse, okay? Sometimes the book itself, maybe a very unique book, and understanding its context will be important. Let me give you an illustration. The book of, we talked about Song of Solomons. There's another one that's really tricky, and that is the book of Ecclesiastes. Now, you'll get into the book of Ecclesiastes, and if you're not ready, pretty soon you'll be, you know, you'll be flirting with atheism. And thinking, what is going on? What's wrong with this guy? You know, why is this in the Bible? This does not make sense. Right, he's talking about who knows if the spirit of the animal goes to heaven and the spirit of the man doesn't. You think, what's wrong with you, Solomon? Are you okay? You know, well, you need to remember the context of the book. Solomon, I believe, wrote it, as he's writing this, and if you understand his life, there's different periods of time in his life. There was a period of time when he walked away from the Lord. And this seems to be a journal of reflection of that period of time. When you live in a world where there's nothing above the sun, and everything is under the sun, and you're just analyzing life from a strictly humanistic perspective, that's a pretty depressing picture. And that's the picture he paints. And so he's constantly talking about life under the sun. And there's very little talk about God. But then every two chapters or so, he'll come to this little conclusion. He'll say, you know guys, let's put God back into the equation. Then things begin to make sense. Because when you take him out of the equation, it's just us and what we see around us. Boy, it's pretty depressing. The guy can work hard all his life and make a lot of money and then he doesn't know. who he's leaving it to, right? And he brings up all these very troubling scenarios, but then he keeps putting back God in, into the equation, right? And so, as he's going in those cycles, we need to remember, this is Solomon speaking as any atheist, as any agnostic would. Right? He's speaking for those that deal with these questions, that struggle with these issues. But then again, at the end of the book, he brings it all together and he puts God firmly back into the front and center of his thesis. So understanding the book and why it was written and what's going on there is really important. In fact, using the book of Ecclesiastes to share the gospel. with the agnostic friends is quite brilliant. And you realize, you know, there's a place for this book. It's really quite unique. Okay? Understanding the book, the Bible, according to God, the Bible's general teaching is also important. There'll be some passages that, you know, will really confuse you if you just look at them the way they are. You know, you come across verses, say, Hebrews chapter 6, where it talks about someone who has once been enlightened and has fallen away from the faith. There's no chance of bringing them back to repentance. That's enough to give you nightmares. That's scary. What's going on? Can we just lose everything all of a sudden? Well, first we want to understand the context of that book. In the verses around there, look, the very next verses, he says, we're not saying this about you, we're talking about people who have not yet completely given themselves entirely to Christ. So it seems like he's talking about, as is the whole letter of Hebrews, not written just to believers, but to people who are in church or around church or in the sphere, but not completely committed to Christ. Okay, so he's warning them, you better make your decision and be sure you're in, because if you're not firmly in, you may fall away, okay? And then you take it in the broader context in Scripture. Is there this teaching in Scripture that you can suddenly, on a fluke, commit some sin and be out? No, the Bible gives us all kinds of teachings that express God's firm love for us, His commitment to us, His faithfulness to us, and that it's a gift, and that He will carry us through to the end. So we have those assurances all throughout Scripture. That being said, For those who blindly believe in assurance of salvation, that there's nothing you can do. I think there's a little warning when Paul will say in 2 Timothy, he says, even if we're not faithful, He remains faithful. But if we deny Him, He will deny us. What is he talking about? What Jesus himself said, whoever denies me, I will deny him before the angels. So I think there's still word for caution. We should never get to the point where we think we know everything about the Bible and we can grant people this kind of blind guarantee. No, no, don't worry. You're saved. The Bible makes it very clear. There are some lines. We may not know exactly what that might be, but it's enough to be aware. But salvation is not something that you're just gonna lose willy-nilly. You can be assured of that. So context is very, very important as we study scriptures. So to give you an idea, if you're looking for the meaning of that verse, our goal is always, okay, what was Paul trying to say then and there? Okay, what are the verses around? What's this chapter about? What's this book about? What's the whole Bible say about this subject? And that's very important, okay? Linked to this is this idea of understanding and interpreting the Bible in light of its historical background. Remember, we're reading a text that's been written over 2,000 years ago, some portions up to 3,500 years ago. And so understanding the culture, the times, the history, even the geography and the language it was written in, it is very, very important. And oftentimes, one of the reasons we might misunderstand a particular verse or particular phrase is because we're not really understanding what it's trying to say in its own context. So understanding the author is important. We use the example of Solomon. To understand the book of Ecclesiastes, you need to understand who Solomon is and what he was going through, why he was writing this book as he did at this particular time. Okay? To understand Job. You need to understand who Job was. Okay? The audience is also important. We talked about the book of Hebrew. It's important to understand the book of Hebrew is not written to a church. composed of majority believers. It's written to a community of Jewish people in which there might be any number of unbelievers as well. And so in his writing, he's writing not just to believers, but he's writing to people who are familiar with God's word, the Old Testament, but also assuming that there's many unbelievers among them or undecided fence sitters, if you will, among them. So understanding the audience is very important as well. Understanding the culture of that time is also critical. There's a lot of things in the Bible that are, not a lot, in fact, there's quite a few comparatively when you look at all the things, but there's some things that are very cultural, and it might not make a lot of sense to us. You know, when Paul writes off most of his letter, when he signs off, he's saying, greet one another with a holy kiss. Now, if you're not a kissing culture, that may sound really strange. I don't know how much they do kissing in Britain. In America, it's really strange. You don't kiss people. But in South America, where I grew up, guys will regularly kiss girls. But when I came to, not kiss them on the lips, kiss them on the cheeks. That's the way you greet one another. You kiss each other on one cheek and the other cheek. Then I came to Turkey and had to realize that, no, you don't touch the women. You don't kiss the women. But you kiss the guys, right? So that took a lot of getting used to, you know, kind of fuzzy and scratchy cheeks. And guys even go further holding your hand. They're like, whoa, that really feels strange. This is part of the culture, OK? Now, if you're in Russia 20 years ago, people would kiss you on the lips. But thankfully, that's, I think, going out of style. So different cultures would be different things. Paul's injunction there to kiss, give each other a holy kiss, is obviously part of their culture. And you interpret it understanding that this is the way we should greet each other in a loving, very healthy way. Okay? That doesn't mean we have to introduce it if it's not in our culture. We'll find other ways of interpreting and understanding what it means to be loving and hospitable. So culture is important, understanding that culture. Geography is important. We gave the example earlier of Jericho. Verses like that might be difficult for us until we understand the geography. Ah, there's two Jerichos going from one to the other. Right? There's many other things in the Bible. It's important to understand what's happening in and around that part of the world. And language, understanding sometimes the original language, Greek or Hebrew, is gonna give us not just insight, but sometimes give us real specific clues to understanding a particular verse or the interpretation of a passage, okay? Because sometimes we'll be reading a passage and it just does not make a lot of sense, okay? And it's not because the translators are trying to be deceptive. It's just sometimes it's difficult to give the full meaning of a particular word. Right? Or to put it into complete, you know, provide the complete context of that. So there's many illustrations I could give you from the scriptures, but just keep that in mind. And often having a dictionary is going to be helpful if there's some verse that you're coming across and you think, that just doesn't make a lot of sense. It might be because the language that it's using is not really resonating with you and getting to the bottom of that word in Greek or Hebrew might give you a more specific meaning that's going to help you to understand that. Let me give you an illustration. Sometimes it's not just the language, but it's actually the phrase. At the end of chapter 23 of Matthew, Jesus has just spent the whole chapter condemning the Jewish community for their sins. And then he says this really interesting statement. I'll read it from Matthew chapter 23 at the end there. He says this, I say to you from now on you will not see me until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That's nice. We usually miss what is actually being said there. What's being said? What does it mean that he says you will not see me again until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Well, in the Hebrew culture, when someone would arrive to your home, and to this day, they still speak Hebrew in Israel, you will often say to them, which means, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It's a way of saying, welcome. You have come well. Glad you've come. Blessed are you who have come. Blessed are you who have come in the name of the Lord. That's the formal way of welcoming someone. In fact, most of the times they won't say, Baruch haba vashem Adonai, they'll just say, Baruch haba, which is, welcome, you have come well. Okay? What's this passage actually saying? Jesus is speaking to the Jewish people, to His own people, and saying, you know, you've rejected Me, and you'll be condemned for that, you'll suffer greatly because of that. And yet, when you, My people, the Jewish people, finally welcome Me back home, Recognize your error and accept me as your Messiah and welcome me back home. Then the kingdom will come. Then everything that's been promised will come to fruition. Then the Messiah will return. And so understanding just a little bit of the culture and that phrase really brings that verse to light in a beautiful way. Otherwise, it's kind of shrouded in mystery. And there's many other examples we can give like that. But remembering, as we're studying the Bible, our purpose is to understand, OK, what is happening then and there? What was the situation that Paul was writing about there? And then we're going to take it and apply it to our own situation. Then we're going to take that principle and want to say, OK, how can I apply it in my life today? But without understanding what exactly happened there, we cannot, in fairness to the text, really apply it and transfer it over to our day and age. You might have questions, hang on to them and we can take a few questions at the end. But again, just to visualize what we're talking about here. We're going from the present day 2,000 years back to some events, things that were written quite a long time ago, trying to understand them for doing, to do that effectively, we need to think about these things, the author, the audience, the culture, the language that was used then, the purpose for which things were written, the date, the time, the history in which it was written is very, very essential, okay? So we understand it then, and then we can bring it into our day and age. Finally, the Bible is best interpreted, whoops, keeping in mind certain distinctions. What do I mean? There are some natural distinctions that we can see in the Bible, obvious ones like the Old Testament and the New Testament. We recognize these are two very significant but important distinct sections of the Bible. We're not in the Old Testament times. We're not under the law. The Old Testament was an agreement, a testament or a covenant that God made with the Jewish nation. And they were bound by the law of Moses. We're not bound by the law of Moses in that way. We are not Jews under that covenant. There is a new covenant. In fact, the New Testament makes a great deal of this. Hebrews chapter eight talks about this new covenant is now and the old covenant is going away. So we understand there's two testaments and some of the things that are from the Old Testament are clearly not to be enforced in the New Testament. We can see this break also in the area of the Israel on the church. The Old Testament was specifically focused on a nation. And why is this important? Well, take for example, there are many passages in the Old Testament which deal with Israel attacking some nation or eliminating some pagan tribe. Now, that might seem very distressing to us. You might think, wow, is that what God wants us to do? How can this be in the Bible? This doesn't make any sense. I thought we were supposed to love our enemies. All that's true. But remember, the Old Testament and what's happening in the nation of Israel, this is having to do specifically with a nation. And every nation has the responsibility to protect its citizens against harm and to establish its sovereignty. And so what's happening in the Old Testament in situations like these are specifically related to the nation of Israel. We don't go back to those passages and say, just like God commanded Saul to eliminate the Amalekites, we now need to go and eliminate this. That's not the kind of connection we could or should make in the Bible. Because those are clearly, those commands were given in a specific time and space for the nation of Israel. But not for the church. The church is not a nation. The church is not a particular ethnic group. It's an international, it's a multi-ethnic family. And it's much broader. And it's a spiritual connection, not an ethnic connection that brings us together. And at the end of the day, even though the church in many ways carries on the responsibilities of Israel, of proclaiming God's goodness to the nations and His salvation and the gospel to the nations, we're not Israel. And it's important. Some people make the mistake, I believe, of equating Israel to the church, or somehow believing that the church replaced Israel, that there's no place for Israel anymore in God's plan. Well, Paul would beg to differ. Romans chapter 11 makes it clear that God is not finished with Israel. There's a place for them, once they repent, to be in God's economy again, when everything comes to a culmination. In the meantime, yes, the church continues God's purposes on earth, but we're not to see ourselves necessarily as Jews. This is where groups like Seventh-day Adventists, I think, go a little bit too far. They see themselves as Jews, if you will. They have to abide by the certain laws and regulations that are enshrined in the Old Testament. And they have to stay away from pork, and they have to keep the Sabbath, and they have to do a whole number of different things. Okay, I can respect that, but there's no warranty for that in Scripture. And at the same time, the Scripture makes it clear that we are free from the law and from those regulations. Christ's comings is clear in the Old Testament that Christ was going to come, and yet when he came and was rejected by his people, again, he made it very clear, I'm coming again. There is a second coming. And when you especially are trying to interpret passages in the Old Testament, sometimes it's difficult. Is this Christ's first coming or is this his second coming? There's some that are clearly related to his first coming, say Isaiah chapter 63. And then there's other passages like Isaiah 11 that deal with his second coming and his coming kingdom. So again, differentiating these two can be very helpful and again, takes some time and practice and wisdom to be able to do that. Teachings in the scripture, things that we find in the Bible, sometimes we can differentiate them between things that are historical, namely things that, happened in history and things that are actually commanded for us to do and to continue. There are things that happened in history. We can see many examples in the Old Testament, things that happened even in the New Testament, whether it's the Book of Acts. Take, for example, the early believers decided that they felt convicted they needed to choose another apostle to replace Judas. What did they do? Well, they do what every good Jew would do, and that's cast lots. That was nothing unusual for them. Casting lots was a way of ascertaining God's will. Now, that's how they did it. That was good Jewish form, good Jewish custom. Many of us would say, well, that's maybe not the way I would want to ascertain God's will, okay? But just the fact that they did it, does that mean that we need to do it? That's how they went about doing it at that point in time. Does that mean we have to continue that? No. There was no injunction in the scripture telling us that whenever you need to find out God's will, you need to, you know, cast the lots. No. That's not a teaching. That's not a doctrine in scripture. It's just an example of what happened in time. Many other examples like this of things that the apostles did, things that people in the Old Testament did. Again, we can learn from those things. We can deliberate about whether that's the best way to do it or not. But then there's other passages in the New Testament where Paul will tell us very clearly, you know, children obey your parents. That's not up for debate. Okay, that's not historical. That's not what they did back then and we don't do that today. And again, we get into trouble when we do that kind of stuff. People will often look at Paul's teachings, again, and we talked about whether it's teaching about women in particular. That was just his opinion. No, I beg to differ. Because he deals with that subject, not in one, in two or three different passages, and he says the same thing. And this is the clear teaching of Scripture, and also the practice of the church down through the centuries. Then there's things that we need to differentiate as things that might be cultural, and things that are, again, clearly commanded in scripture. Something that might be cultural, again, kissing one another on the cheeks. That's cultural, and you can do that however is best in your culture. Jesus wanted to show his disciples the value of humble leadership, and he did this by washing their feet. Now, does that mean that we should wash each other's feet every time we gather together for church? If you want to, go ahead. But there's no clear teaching in scripture that every time you gather together, you need to be getting the sandals out and the towels and doing the washing of the feet again. No. Regarding the breaking of bread, for example, it's clear that as often as we gather together, we want to break bread and remember the Lord Jesus. That when people come to Jesus and have a faith in Him, they're to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. These are clear commands. Okay? But say, for example, washing feet, or how we kiss each other, or how we greet one another, or how we dress. These things are things that were relegated to their culture. They have important principles that they teach us. We don't actually continue to do those things specifically. Okay? So there's some differentiation that we can do that will help us in our interpretation. And finally, I think it's important as we come into understanding and interpreting scripture, you'll find that people will disagree. It's only natural as human beings that we will see scriptures in different ways. A lot of it has to do with our spiritual maturity. I'll be honest, there's a lot of things in years as I've studied God's Word more and more, there's certain, not core doctrines, but certain other more secondary doctrines and teachings in the scripture that I've come to view in a new light. You know, I used to be very critical of these kind of Christians or people who did this or people who, you know, believed in that and then years later come to realize, well, that actually, you know, wasn't wrong and my way of judging them was quite wrong and actually the Bible does teach that and we grow, we mature. And that's a good thing. The moment you stop growing, and stop maturing, and stop being open to the Spirit's teaching and leading your life, then you're in trouble. Okay? So, one of the difficulties is we often argue about a lot of things, especially when we're young believers like many of you, and we can cause a lot of harm. Okay? Arguing about things that are really non-essential. And so bringing our ideas about the Scriptures into kind of a bit of an order, and put it into priority, I think helps us, it helps me at least. To put things that are critical at the top level, things that are important kind of on the second level, and other things that are really up for debate on the third level. Critical things would be doctrines expressly taught in Scripture. Okay, what would be a doctrine expressly taught in Scripture? Okay, the inspiration of the Bible. It's very clear in Scripture. Okay, the deity of Jesus. Okay, this is doctrinal. This is essential. We believe in this thing because we're believers, and if you don't, then you're not a believer. Now, there are other things that are important, like practices alluded to in the Bible. We would say that these things are practical in nature, okay, but there's many things that the Bible discusses that are not necessarily make it or break it. If you don't do it like we do, you can't be a Christian. There's a lot of different ways we practice our faith, and we can still genuinely call ourselves Christians. And finally, there's a number of things that are not directly taught in scripture, or maybe are taught by inference. And these have a lot to do with our understanding of certain passages. So now, if we break it down into these three levels, these latter ones will be more based on our conscience. Let's talk about it. The doctrines that are worth giving your life for. are things like the deity of Christ, the authority of the Bible, the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and He rose again. These are essential. You don't believe in these things, you can't be a Christian. Simple as that. These are the kind of stuff that you can die for. There's a few other things that are important, but I wouldn't die for these things, okay? What the Bible teaches on the role of women. It teaches on the role of women. But just because somebody else thinks differently about the role of women than I do, does that mean I excommunicate him, have no fellowship with him, call him a heretic, infidel? There's no reason to do that, okay? As long as he believes in the core doctrines, I can get along with him. I can call him a brother and sister in Christ. We can be amicable, okay? But just because he thinks differently than me on spiritual gifts and any host of different things that the Bible says but are not essential to our faith, doesn't mean I have to cut ties with him. Now, I might not be able to serve with him in ministry. It might be difficult to be teaching together, ministering together if we think very, very differently and remember different things, but as long as we're agreed on the essence of our faith. Really you can do a lot together. Okay? An example of this is right now we're serving in Famagusta with a brother named Ryan. Maybe you know him. I'd venture to guess there's a dozen or so different things that we completely disagree on. Okay? In fact, if he was here listening to me today, he'd be grinding his teeth, I'm sure. You know, whether it's creation or revelation or, you know, any number of different things, And you know, we can work together pretty good, despite all those things. Why? We agree to disagree. We know where we have certain boundaries. We don't make an issue about those things. But there is plenty that we agree on, on the essentials especially, that we can serve gladly together for the sake of the Kingdom. Okay? And I think that's something that we should all aspire to. Okay? Unfortunately, we often aspire to making sure everybody thinks like we do, and I will work great with them. That's, I think, not really the ultimate. The ultimate is if we can even work with people who disagree with us and still honor Christ. That's the beautiful thing. So, there's a lot of things that are in Scripture that we are going to have different opinions about. Okay? You can discuss these things. But again, these are not make it or break it things. And there's things that might not actually be mentioned in Scripture, and yet we often spend most of our times discussing them. And actually, these are often the things that we break fellowship over, okay? Whether it's dancing or smoking, or can you go to the cinema or not, or what can you eat, what can you drink, and all the other different things. Now, are they not important? They might be important. But a lot of these things, the scripture will leave them up to our conscience. There's whole passages in scripture where Paul says, you know, if you want to eat meat, go ahead. If you don't want to eat meat, that's fine. It's up to your conscience, okay? It's not essential to your faith. Okay, so these are things that are important. But what our problem is, is we often get this upside down. The things that we are often spending most of our time arguing about, and oftentimes actually being very judgmental about, are these things on the bottom run. Now, if there's something you want to argue about and get very hot about, this should be the things on the top, not the things on the bottom. They're hardly worth spending your time messing around and arguing with people and breaking people's hearts over it, right? Because they're not clear in Scripture. A lot of it has to do with their own opinions. And you can tell a mature believer from an immature one with the amount of time you can spend wanting to argue about ultimately silly things like this, when our goal should really be to bring people together in unity. Now, if we have a few minutes, I don't know how much time we have, but I'd be happy to take a few questions and try to answer them before we finish up, because we've come to the end of our lesson. We could give many illustrations, but I think you've gotten the picture. Does anyone have any questions having to do with their lessons? Don't ask me something having to do with some other subject, please.