How many of you would say you are here because you want to help visual learners? How many of you are visual learners? We kind of throw that term out like it's this little segment of society. And it's not. It's everybody. And if you are not a visual learner, I'm not really sure what you are. Because we all learn visually. I mean, except for maybe the blind people, and they learn from other ways. But we all hang information on something that we see. So I'm going to read a couple of excerpts here. This is just from an article from the Atlantic Bay University blog. Have you ever read something over and over again, however you did not really understand much? Or had someone try to explain an idea to you, but it did not click. But then once you encountered a graphic or a picture related to the information, it finally made sense to you. You might be a visual learner if you've ever learned of such a case. Now, just so you know, this is in the context of education, so there'll be some references to education as we learn here. Visual learners learn best when interacting with the information presented as visual images such as photographs, graphs, diagrams, et cetera. These learners can quickly remember faces and places as they manage to recollect data by picturing them in their minds. Although we went through a simple definition of visual learners, you might still be wondering what is a visual learner. To best understand it, you must know what visual learning style is of itself. So visual learning uses the individual sensory modes to help them perceive better the environment and material presented to them. This learning style uses various visual stimuli such as pictures, maps, graphs, all those type things to make the process of noting and retaining information more straightforward. This learning style is characterized by various elements and comes with many benefits that you can utilize to your advantage throughout your future study. I thought this was visual learning. That was a lot of words. So what are some of the benefits of visual learning? Well, you get better quality education because you get a more rounded education as a result. It's more cost effective if you can just show somebody something as opposed to trying to build it or whatever. How many YouTube things whenever you're trying to fix something? My daughter, Ashley, who's out in California right now, we love to work on cars together. And so it's just standard operating procedure. We go and watch a couple of YouTube videos on other people doing it. Why do we do that? Well, we do that because we see how someone else did it, and then we see how someone else did it. And they're never the same. And then we do it ourselves, and we make our own discoveries. What else? Creates stronger memory. When you can visualize it, it sticks with you longer. Most important for us, Learning becomes fun. I think we can all relate to that. What are some of the characteristics of visual learning? Well, first off, they're great observers. When you learn by seeing, you tend to observe better. You know, I drive Sophia crazy because I'm always, you know, we can be deep in a conversation while we're walking here on campus, and I'm looking at, oh, there's that dead tree over there. You know, things like that. Stop it! Quick learning process. Can you not learn something quicker by watching somebody do it? than by trying to read the manual. How many of you, you know, like, you get the manual for the TV, and that goes in the trash, and you're YouTubing how to do it because it's much quicker. I get it. Stronger memory through graphs and pictures. You retain it more. We've already kind of mentioned that. Visual learners are usually good in arts. And I see a number of arts people in here, I might add. Motivated and engaging visual learners in the classroom. Again, this is going back to that education aspect of this, utilizing photographs, videos, graphs, and charts. When I was in high school, when we hit World War II, that's really when media and war collided. And we basically studied the entire World War II section in the book for two weeks with nothing but videos. And we remember a lot of it as a result of that. Creating groups with only visual learners for specific tasks so they can efficiently work together. Now that obviously doesn't necessarily work quite as well in the context of Bible study, but as you are working with your children, with coworkers and with those, work with that concept. Make it visual for them that they can benefit from it. Giving students enough time so students can visualize the ideas you explain in their notes through illustrations or other ways they prefer to help them. Don't just tell them, help them. Incorporate colors, images, and other visuals into your lectures as frequently as possible. Now, anybody notice the difference between the way Pastor Monroe preached and the way Pastor Caleb preached? Pastor Caleb does all these sermon PowerPoints. You pick up more, you retain more. You can actually take notes and, oh, is that how that's spelled? You know, things like that. Providing written instructions for projects or other assignments so visual learners can go back and re-read them whenever they forget or are confused about an idea. That's why we take notes. So that you can go back and say, what was that? You can go back and re-read it. Put it in your own words. Once you understand the connection between finding your learning style and how it affects the learning process, then you can begin to improve the overall quality of your learning environment and process. Remember that being a visual learner should not limit you, but rather help you find strategies to grasp ideas with ease. Do not be afraid to try new things, explore and discover various learning styles and techniques until you find what best suits you. Let's pick up that thought and drop it into your Bible study now. What are ways that you can use visual things to enhance your own Bible study? When we understand that God made each of us with different learning styles, we can begin to understand the need to visualize what we learn, what we understand, and what we believe. And I wanna tie that together. That's gonna be a little thread that I want you to keep in mind. We understand a lot of facts and a lot of theology about the Bible, but when we can't tie that all together into what we believe and why we believe it, what's the point? If we are not automatically creating images in our minds as to what we read in the Bible, are we truly engaging it? Are we actually thinking about what we read? Are we trying to understand how it applies to us based on how it applied to the authors and the hearers in Bible times? Is there biblical precedent for visual approach to studying the Bible? For those who were there, what is the difference between what they saw and experienced versus what we can only read on the black and white pages of our scripture? First of all, let me be very clear about something, and that is the sufficiency of scripture. We understand clearly from 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's proper for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, and righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. The believer that was born blind is just as saved as the man who has 20-20 vision. He has the same word with the same authority, power, encouragement, challenges, edification as anyone else. The word of God is sufficient. Nothing else is needed. So, why? Why do we need to talk about visual learning? What more do we need? Why do we need other things? The Bible gives us the ingredients. We each have to make our own bread. If the Word of God were the same for everyone, we would all be the same. We are not. We each, as individual children of God, grow in the light of His truth and grace. We each mix our bread slightly differently, using the same ingredients. We're going to have different outcomes. What makes the difference between a mom cooking a loaf of bread in her kitchen or a five-star chef in his galley making all kinds of artisan breads? What's the difference? Knowledge. Knowing what your ingredients are, where they came from. Knowing the chemistry of cooking, how things relate to each other. Knowing how different ingredients that work together affect the taste. Not just the taste, but, you know, is this bread gonna be a rising bread, or a flat bread, or, you know, a sweet bread, all these other things. Some of us eat our bread plain. Allow the word of God to directly affect your life by saturating your life with it. Great, I mean, that's a great way to do it. Some of us like to eat a sandwich. We use bread to make a sandwich with other things in it. The truths of God's word, when combined with music, Does that help us retain things? Yeah. Some of us eat French toast. Some people like to study through different languages. That's what we've got. My dad, and if you wanna see what his, well, it's too late now. You'll have to watch the video later. But your dad's doing a whole section. If you could see, he's so far beyond anything that I've studied. If you can see what he sees in the structure of how the Old Testament was written, It's, there's so much of it, we call it poetry or structure, but it's not poetry like we're accustomed to. It's a beautiful structure and a flow, and it's very visual. And so if you want to pick up a little bit more on that, go watch his videos. All right, enough about bread and things like that, too close to lunchtime. The point is that we each learn and retain information in different ways. There's a large portion of society that retain information better when we have an image to associate with it. I would say I want you to close your eyes at this point, but we are visual, so we're going to keep our eyes open. Can you picture the hot, barren wilderness where David talks about hiding and abiding in the shadow of the Almighty? How many have been to Ironwood? I know there's some people that have been here. That's very similar terrain, that's down near the Dead Sea. Finding that shadow, that shade, can be life and death. We don't look at it that way, we just think about it, shade, so nice. No, that is a place of survival to them. Can you imagine the trek that Abraham made to rescue Lot? This is a different kind of visual. So, well, you know, the kings from the north came down and whooped up on him and took Lot and his family and they went back that way and Abraham decided, hmm, let's do something about this, took off after them. Okay, so give you an idea. Abraham chasing those kings with his, was it 400 men from his own house? That was like them on foot chasing them 40 miles past Charleston out to sea, okay? And then coming back. That's a hike. That's a long way. So they made that whole hike, caught up to them up here in Dan, which, interestingly enough, we're gonna be talking about this area here in just a few minutes, and then divided his forces, and then whooped up on the kings. So you do a 240-mile hike and see how much fighting you're gonna do, all right? Can you smell the firewood burning, preparing the stone to bake the last two cakes for the widow and her son before Elijah asked to be fed first? Imagine the faith that took. Can you hear the sounds of the hungry lions as they pace about, their mouths supernaturally closed by God? Can you comprehend what you are seeing when one small boy's lunch supernaturally feeds 5,000 people? Can you feel the chill of the water spraying over the bow as you see your friend become the first man to walk on water? Can you fathom the loss of communion with the only equal in the universe as the sins of the world are placed on your shoulders, much less the blinding pain of the spikes hammered through your hands and feet? A casual to-do list reading of Scripture will result in missing so much of the Word of God. Now, what would it be like to actually be able to see and understand the things described in Scripture? Some of you may be familiar with Adventures in Odyssey. How many of you have are familiar with them? Quite a few. The Imagination Station. So for those of you that don't know, it's a fictional location. Wits End is a kind of a place that an older retired gentleman runs. It's kind of like a soda shop. I guess you could say. And he's got all these Bible things in his store for kids to learn more about the Bible. And the most famous is the Imagination Station, where you get in this machine and it transports you to Bible stories and different things in history. fantastic way that they portray, just through audio, of course, no video there, just audio, portraying what happened in so many of these Bible stories. It's a really good series. So if you have kids or have grandkids or whatever, it's a great series for them. Would you not remember it better? Would you not understand it better? Would you not be able to identify with it better? Let's look at a passage of scripture and see what we can learn from it. Matthew 16. If you turn to Matthew 16, I'm going to read verses 13 through 19. This is a passage that is very familiar to you, or should be very familiar to you. And we've got some kind of stereotype interpretations, takeaways from this, that I might like to challenge a little bit whenever we understand more about what's going on. Matthew 16, verse 13, when Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, some say thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whosoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So, we have our passage. What are some questions we can ask? Well, how many English people are in here? Good, because if you're visual people, you're not English people. Diagramming sentences, really? Come on, anyways. All right, questions to ask who? Well, Jesus and the disciples. That's pretty much who comprises this narrative. What? Well, it's a short getaway. We'll understand more about what that is in a little bit. Where? Well, a lush, peaceful retreat 30 miles above the Sea of Galilee. I remember when we saw Dan, it's right in that area. The spring here is the main source of water for the Sea of Galilee. This area was allotted to the tribe of Naphtali when Israel conquered the land. The area sparsely populated as it was considered more of a getaway, almost like the wilds of what we would be used to around here. So when was this? This was approximately 29 AD and John the Baptist had just been killed. This is the winter before Christ's crucifixion. Christ's ministry had become very confrontational, warning his followers of the leaven of the Pharisees. After a recent confrontation with the Pharisees, they departed and came to the other side. So they had been just at Magdala, which was kind of the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. And then it says they crossed over, so they would have kind of gone over to the northeast side, which is where Peter, James, and John and all them were from originally. So it was kind of coming home to them. And then they went north from there. Incidentally, this is the first mention of church in the Bible. That's an interesting thought. Why? A time away from the multitudes? For Jesus to explain who he was and why he had come. This is when Christ really starts to get specific with his disciples about who he is. What are some of the key words? Well, I mean, you can, we each would have a different list. The ones that I pull out of this are just words that are, that kind of stand out as a little different from the rest of the narrative of the book thus far. And those words being church, rock, gates of hell, first time some of these were mentioned. So what do we know about the location? Let's go back to that, the where. Caesarea Philippi. The city of Caesarea Philippi, also known as ancient Panis, was situated way in the north, about 30 miles past the Sea of Galilee. So Dan is where Abraham had ended up, and now we're about, I think it's like five or seven miles away. They're on a terrace on the foot of Mount Hermon on a southern slope. It's about 1,150 feet above sea level. The area has an unusually beautiful setting. It was very lush and full of life and has been one of the main sources for the Jordan River. The ancient Canaanites built a sanctuary to Baal at Panis. The Greek and Romans both built sanctuaries because of the cave to Panis. Inside the cave was a seemingly bottomless pit with an unlimited quantity of water, which made the pagans marvel. Josephus had said that they would take rope and tie a heavy rock on it and lower it down, and they never did hit the bottom. They ran out of rope, literally. So it's that kind of place. Caesarea Philippi, which stood in that lush area at the foot of Mount Hermon, was a city dominated by immoral activities and pagan worship. Caesarea Philippi stood only 25 miles from the religious communities of Galilee, but the city's religious practices were vastly different of those from the nearby Jewish towns. In Old Testament times, the northeastern area of Israel became a center for pagan worship. In the nearby city of Dan, Israelite King Jeroboam built the high place that angered God and eventually led the Israelites to worship false gods. Eventually, the worship of Baal was replaced with the worship of Greek fertility gods. This whole area, and then going around the east side of the Sea of Galilee, down into what they called the Decapolis, was heavily influenced by Greek. Caesarea Philippi, which stood in this lush area, became the religious center for the worship of Greek god Pan. The Greeks named the city Panis in his honor. Years later, when Romans conquered the territory, Herod Philip rebuilt the city and named it after himself, Caesarea Philippi. This was his palace, a rendering of what his palace would have been like right there. These are the temples to Pan and Baal and things like that. Let's see. Years later, we got that. In the cliff that stood above the city, local people built shrines and temples to Pan, which you can still see to this day. Philip, in this pagan setting, he encouraged his disciples to build a church that would overcome the worst evils. Wow, interesting, why Christ would come here. So what is this Gates of Hell? To the pagan mind, the cave at Caesarea Philippi created a gate to the underworld where fertility gods lived during the winter. They committed detestable acts of worship to these false gods. Caesarea Philippi's location was especially unique because it stood at the base of a cliff where a spring of water outflowed. At one time, the water ran directly from the mouth of the cave, set in the bottom of the cliff, out. That's where the water came out back in Christ's time. Now the water comes out actually from right down about here. There was an earthquake, I think it was back in the 60s, and that changed all that water. The water came out a different spot. The pagans of Jesus' day commonly believed that their fertility God lived in the underworld during the winter and returned to earth each spring. Remember, Christ was kind of there in the winter area. They saw water as a symbol of the underworld and thought that their gods traveled to and from the world through the caves. To the pagan mind then, the cave and the spring of water of Caesarea Philippi created a gate to the underworld. They believed that their city was literally at the gates of the underworld, or the gates of hell. In order to entice the return of their god Pan each year, the people of Caesarea Philippi engaged in horrible deeds, including prostitution and sexual intercourse between humans and goats. When Jesus brought his disciples to this area, they must have been shocked. Caesarea Philippi was like going to the red light district in their world, and devout Jews would have avoided contact with it at all costs because of all the despicable acts committed there. It was a city of people eagerly knocking on the doors of hell. That's from that the world may know. We'll talk about that later. So now that we know more about this area, let's go back to our passage in Matthew and read it again. When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, that would be that when he just came into the wall area that you saw on the southern part of that picture, he asked his disciples saying, whom do men say that I am? And he said, some say thou art John the Baptist, son of Elias, and others, Jeremiah, are one of the prophets. Remember, John the Baptist had just been slain, and a lot of people were trying to make connections there that weren't there, and Christ was trying to stop that as well. He said unto them, but whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Stop there. What does Peter mean? What does the name Peter mean? Stone. Some would contend maybe even a small stone or a small rock. So now you're, picture yourself in this setting. They are standing before There were probably like three temples, you can kind of sort of see in that picture. The temple that was right over the spring, there was actually a structure over the spring and it came out in front of the structure, and then there were two other temples built into that cliff where they had hollowed out these little spots and had all these little images of Pan. Very wicked, very suggestive area. And Christ walks right up to it and says this. We take what Christ said as talking to Peter, or maybe what Peter had said, you know, that you are the Christ, and that what if thou art Peter, and Christ goes, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Gates prevail. Is there a conflict with that verb? Something suggested there? What do gates do? Gates open or close, protect. Do gates prevail against something? Gates are defensive. Prevailing is offensive. Am I making sense? the church is going to prevail against the gates of hell. In other words, take it to him. Go to the very center of wickedness and build a church. And I will be with you, is what he's saying. Does that make sense? Does that change the way now that you view this now? Just knowing a little bit about the passage totally changes the interpretation of it. Now I'm not saying that that is what Christ did. We don't know that that's what Christ did. But when I picture where He was, my mind goes a totally different direction now. So I would challenge you to do that. Talk to me now. Does an understanding of the setting change your understanding of this passage? How so? Any thoughts? I forgot to mention at the beginning, I like conversational style. I don't like to dominate. So if you have a thought, by all means raise your hand. We still have 20 minutes. So what happened here that maybe is a little different and now you have a different takeaway of this passage? Sometimes we don't see the place that Jesus and his disciples who were standing like you're talking about. And having a visual picture of the area helps me to understand what's happening. It becomes real. Yes. I don't have pictures of this, just another example. What's Matthew, when somebody says Matthew 18, what comes to mind? Church discipline. Church discipline? What? All right, so that's our takeaway, is Matthew 18 is about church discipline. No! It's mentioned, yes, but that's not what Matthew 18 is all about. Matthew 18 is all about reconciliation. If you go back to the end of Matthew 17 and set the stage for where you are, okay, you're in Capernaum. What is Capernaum? Well, we can do all the same research here. Capernaum was a town that produced a lot of olive oil. And chances are they actually made the olive presses there. So you're near the Sea of Galilee. It's kind of a little bit of a cross of industry and agriculture in this small town. There's arguments amongst the disciples, who's the greatest, all that type of stuff. Christ pulls a child in, sets a child in the middle of them. Now, picture Matthew 18, front to end, with a crowd around the disciples and this child at that spot the whole time. all the things that are mentioned there, you will see that Christ is building a narrative all the way through that chapter until the end where you see that this is why I came. I came to fix relationships. All of that is about fixing relationships. He would point, he may have even been sitting on a millstone It would be better if a millstone was hung about your neck and that you were drowned in the depths of the sea. And he pointed over to the Sea of Galilee. Remember, culturally, water was mysterious to the people of this time. Even devout, what we would consider Christians, those that were in the way, there was still a great mystery. You can tell with the disciples and their fear of while they were out to sea and the storms came up, there was a desperate fear of what is under the water. And so for Christ to say these things, you know, the worst thing that you could do is to offend somebody, because I would, you just need one of these big heavy things right here and thrown in there. Problem solved. There's another spot that comes to mind. They are walking through southern Israel, and I'll show you some pictures of this next time. I do have that in my next series. Remember our talk about faith the size of a mustard seed? and you can tell this mountain to be moved. What if you could go and check out where that mountain, what it's talking about? That's not just any mountain that they're standing next to when that happened. There is a mountain near the Dead Sea. It's the Abrodian, I think it is. It inherits Winter Palace. It was a hill. that he literally built into a mountain. It took hundreds of thousands of hours of slave labor and years and years and years to build this. It was this huge edifice to Herod. It was a place that he could go if Jerusalem was attacked, he could go and hide there. He had months and months and months of food and water stored there. But the point was, there's Christ, and he reaches over and grabs a little mustard plant, breaks open the flower, holds out the seeds. The seeds are literally the size of grains of pepper. And he says, if you have faith this big, you can tell that mountain that Herod built, just move. That meant something to them because they knew what it took to build that. And if that's all I need of faith, well, they can't be the amount of faith that makes the difference. It's who the faith is in that makes the difference. See how little things like that make a difference? What is the value of being able to visualize what we read in Scripture? How many, anybody in here been to the Holy Land? A couple. Did anything change when you were there and saw it. I grew up about 40 minutes away from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Went there many times. We rode bikes there all the time, and we even did an all-nighter there one time. You know, I kind of thought I knew what was going on. You know, you had Pickett's Charge, and you had the battalion from Maine that held Little Round Top, and, and, and, and all these little things. And then the movie came out. How many have seen the movie Gettysburg? Then I went back to Gettysburg, literally within a week, and just everywhere I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. It just, it made so much more sense. Everything connected because I was now able to visualize it and see the flow, the timing. When you can understand God's word that way, Do you see how that can benefit you? Are visuals important to God? What are some examples? Well, I'm just gonna start at the beginning and just give some really small, yes? I wonder, I mean, even Christ was using visuals when he talked on the air, and I wonder if, because when the first time, you just mentioned that the first time he talked to Peter about the church, he was not in Jerusalem around Israelites, he was in a, place Gentiles correct so later when he calls Peter he's still having to remind him you know with the sheep full of blood and food and he wants him to go and preach to the Gentiles. Peter has to think back to the first time he said I'm going to build my church amongst the Gentiles. He consistently give Peter visuals for him to get. So yeah, visuals are important to God. Go through, just do a study of the life of Peter and his interaction with Christ and then going forward in the founding of the church. How much of that with Christ was visual? Okay, let me get through this and we'll, no, let's go to that, let's stay there, because I'll forget. What are some of the events that specifically name Peter and Christ together? that had a strong visual about them? Walking on the water. Walking on the water. Denial. Denial. Transfiguration. What about the transfiguration? Very visual. Taking off the ear. What? Taking off the ear. Taking off the ear and healing it. Yeah. The sheep. coming down from heaven with the unclean animals on it. That was just visual. All these ways that God does visual things just with Peter. God saw everything that he made and it was good. God saw. God made man in his own image. Symbolism of the tabernacle. We could do a whole series Has anybody been to a model of the tabernacle? There's one up in Lancaster. Where else are they? Is there one in Orlando? Yeah, Orlando. That's what I was thinking. It's amazing when you can actually see it and then have all that gone through. What all the symbolism is. It's incredible. Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. Christ even mentioned that one. The stones of remembrance. the Jordan River. What are some others? I want you to think differently about Scripture. What are things that were visuals to the people at the time that now all we have is a black and white page recording it? But God made something very clear that was visual. I think if you've ever heard Craig Hartman preach, when he gets into the New Testament and sets up a passage, he sets the whole passage up and he takes you there and you see it. And one thing I'll never forget is when Christ says, I am the light of the world. Because Jerusalem at that time was filled with lights because it was the tabernacle feast. And every person put candles up around. And when he brings that to life, then when he begins to give you the message, wow, it just is amazing. Through Jewish eyes? Through Jewish eyes. I think is his series. I would strongly recommend that. Checking that out, Phil. The blood posts for the Exodus. So that can be a couple different levels. So what are some of the obvious levels of that imagery? It symbolizes the cross. And the blood itself, the sacrifice. Thank you. All the references that he makes to plants and agriculture and their agricultural society, and then also his deacon, when he called Peter, James, and Don to make them fishers of men, they were right there on the boat, just having come in from the canal. Yep. Others in Abel's sacrifices. Okay, so talk to me a little more about that. What imagery is there, and what imagery was not there that should have been there? It feels as though, in reading it, one was based on agriculture, the other was on livestock and sacrificing animals. God wanted a picture of Jesus to come, and that was the acceptance of sacrifice. It was the end of the sacrifice of blood. Yep. So with produce, there is produce used in sacrificing. You know, that's in the law. But that was just, that was never for the payment for sin. That was just a sweet smelling savor to God. The only thing that could cover sin was the blood. Baptism. We just had that this morning. Death, burial, resurrection. Water. Do a study on water in the Bible. We just go to a tap or a water fountain and water's there. You were in a culture where water was precious. So water meant a lot more to them because it was a lot harder to come by. What else? The rainbow. Well, that's one that's gotten contorted. God meant something very specific with the rainbow. And that is one thing that Satan wanted to grab and distort. Destroy that image. He actually says this is a visual symbol. Yes. Yep. Yep. A reminder. Yes? The communion, the blood, the cup and the paper. Yep, yep. The whole Lord's table that last night before his crucifixion, all of those things were symbolic. So now let's step back. So as we study scripture, how important is it that we visualize it? What now does that mean we have to do? Can we simply read our Bible? Remember I talked about a to-do approach to your scripture reading. Is it simply enough to read, check off, and go about your day? You need to ask questions of what you just read. Those things are hiding a ton of stuff. Look at it like scripture is a puzzle, because it is in some ways. Look at it like there are things subliminally hidden in there that if you just read it, you're never gonna get it. But if you go back and look at the who, what, where, when, how, why of that passage, it's gonna illuminate it and change the way you understand it. And more than anything, it's gonna build your faith and trust in the word of God and the God of the Bible. Other thoughts? Man, this is kind of jumping back to what things can mean. So when we were in Israel, which was awesome, they were showing us, they think this could be the mountain where the mountain of transfiguration, but it's kind of not like hidden in Jewish culture. But there's a lot of like, oh, in Jewish tradition, this is this place, this is this place. But what's interesting about where they thought the Mount of Transfiguration was, they believe that could have been also the same place where the angels came down that were fallen from heaven. And it's almost like in Jewish culture, oh, this is kind of like a portal from heaven. So to Jewish people, the fact that Jesus went there for that mountain transfiguration was more like he is kind of completing that. So that was super cool. So you can't just read. You've also got to research and also see what Jewish custom and culture talks about. Yep. So next week, if you all come back and want to, we're going to look at tools. And I want you to start thinking now about I mean, there's some obvious things, but then there's some less obvious things. What are some ways that we can find out more about Scripture? What are ways? And so, even if you have a couple things that you have found that you like, bring those. You don't have to bring them physically, but you can tell us about it, because I'm not exhausted on this by any stretch. I want everyone to be thinking, what can I do to make the Word of God more real to me? We live in a media world where the printed page is becoming, it's not, it'll never be obsolete, but it's not, you should put a book in front of a kid or a phone in front of a kid. Which one are they gonna take? They're gonna take the phone every time. Why? Because it's visual, it's engaging. They don't have to think as much. More blanks are filled in for them. Well, we need to start filling in some of those blanks by doing our own homework. So I would challenge you, even this week, maybe read a little less, but do a little bit more homework on what you read. Find out the whys. Going through Psalms, there's some amazing things in Psalms that reveal things about the culture. We'll talk a little bit about culture next week as well, because that is something that's totally foreign to us. You know, the whole Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, so much of that, the Mosaic law and all of those things that Moses laid out for the people were in a response to the culture where they were taking over. God wanted a clear, this is the line in the sand, that is the world, and this is how you are gonna be, and it's completely different from the culture. Oh, there's a visual again. Isn't that weird? So, it's not just a visual for us. We are to be a visual. What is to be our main visual for the world? What did Christ say? How will men know that ye are my disciples? If ye love one another. That's a visual. It is. I'm going to brag on my wife here a little bit. My daughter got to know a girl through, my daughter's taking welding down at Greenville Tech, and there's another girl in the class, a black girl from the north side of town, and pretty messed up life, kids out of wedlock. drinking almost every night, you know, that type family. Well, they hit it off. And now Ashley's out in California. So now Sophia gets to step up to the plate and kind of keep this relationship going. Sophia went over there last night for a couple of hours. And this girl cannot understand why Sophia is doing this. And Sophia explained to her, well, it's two things. First off, because my daughter loves you. and cares about you. And now because she does, I do. But all of this happens because Christ loves you. And if I can show you that love of Christ and effect a change in you, and then you and your daughter, and then you and your daughter, you see how that changes? That visual of showing love. That's her most commented thing, is she just doesn't understand why Sophia's doing this. Sophia keeps telling us, it's because we love you. Any other thoughts? Time is about spent. All right, let's close in prayer. And we'll see you next week. Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for this time that we can be together, help us to be able to remember these things, and that we would grow in our knowledge and love of you every day. Thank you for your love. Amen.