He was singing there, It's Through the Blood. And I'm going to be teaching today, but I'm going to preach for just a second here. It reminded me of a true story from World War II. There was a US soldier who was a prisoner of the Japanese and went through the death marches and watched his buddies die, his close friends get killed, and he got tore up and tortured. and matiated and starving. And I mean, when they took them on those death marches, they'd walk them by and there would just be these kind of like caribou holes just full of all that filth and excrement and stuff. And those soldiers would run down there and try to drink that water. They were so thirsty. and they'd shoot him for it, and they would rather die than have to be that thirsty. And this fellow was just dying, but he managed to stay alive, this soldier. And one day they had him on a ship, and those Japanese soldiers got real drunk that night, and they let their guard down, and he managed to escape. He managed to get to the jump ship, and he was completely naked, and he Swam to shore, I mean, just struggled through the waves all night, managed to get to an island and just had the strength to get to the island and fell. I mean, just passed out on the beach and woke up a few hours later in the sun and managed to crawl to the bushes and passed out again. And he's just completely, I mean, just dirty and filthy and he's going through there trying to find some help and he hears the voice of American soldiers. And he's thinking, oh, thank God. Oh, thank God. I'm saved. I'm going to make it. And he goes running through there. And he comes through and sees this soldier. And he says, oh, my gosh. I can't believe I found you. I'm an American. You saved me. And that guy put that M1 right on him and said, password? And that guy falls down and he said, I don't know any password, I swear. I'm from Pennsylvania, I was born here. And he starts giving all this stuff and that young soldier just looked at him and said, listen, buddy, I've got orders. How dirty he was and with everything, it was hard to tell if he wasn't Japanese. And he said, I'm on strict orders that if you can't give a password, I'm gonna blow your brains out, you give me the password. And that fellow just fell down and he said, I've gone through all this. Everything I just went through and I've lived and I found an American and Americans going to kill me and out of Japanese. That guy fell down on his knees and he just said, can I pray before I before you kill me? And he said, sure, man, go ahead, pray. And with that M1 right in his face, he bowed his head and he said, God, You know me and You know I'm just a vile sinner. You know I don't have any righteousness at all, but I'm about to see You. And when I see You, will You please just remember the blood, Lord? And the guy goes, that's the password. The password was the word blood because the Japanese couldn't pronounce it. They'd say, brud. And that was what they would do. The Germans too, they would have them say certain words that they couldn't pronounce because of their language. And the password was the blood. Come on through. That's a true story. And that's the only way anyone gets to heaven. It's the blood. And you won't go any other way. Amen. All right, open up your Bibles to 2 Timothy 2. You got a lot of preaching this week, so you're going to get some teaching today. I think you need it. I need it too. And this might be something that actually takes a little bit of time, but I think it's important. Look at 2 Timothy 2. And I actually taught some of this yesterday to the crew in Madeira, but I'm going to go even deeper today I'll take some time here, maybe a few weeks, maybe even once I get back I'll teach some more, but it says basics, but some of this is not going to be basic. At least as far as how the Bible's taught many places, this is going to be a little bit deep, but this is going to help you understand that book that you have in your lap. Now, the thing about that book, I remember Dr. Ruckman saying it one time, and I remember him saying this, and it almost sounded sacrilegious. It actually kind of bothered me the first time I heard it. He said, that King James Bible in your lap is the most deceptive, sneaky book you've ever seen in your life. And I thought that that was blasphemous. Now I know what he means. Before we look at this, let's look at Psalms. You see, the thing is, when you come to this book, it's reading you just as much as you're reading it. And you say, really? Yeah. Hebrews chapter 4, what is it, verse 12? The Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The book, the Word of God is discerning your thoughts and intents. So you know what happens when a man comes to this book to find an error? The book reads him. You intend to find an error. I'll give you one. That's how the Lord works. I heard a preacher say one time that God will deal with an honest skeptic, but He will not deal with a dishonest skeptic. You come to this book skeptical but honest, the Lord will give you light. But if you come to this book with the intent to find an error, He'll give you an apparent contradiction, even though there's no contradictions in it. Let me show it to you. Psalms 18. Psalm 18, verse 26. Psalms 18.26, "...with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward." It doesn't say he is froward. It says someone comes to God as a froward, you'll perceive God as froward, but if you come to Him with a pure heart, saying, God, I don't understand, I'm not smart, I'm dumb, and I need Your light, I need You to give me some wisdom from Your words, He'll show you that. Now, what happens with this book and when it comes to studying this book is there are some basic rules and some basic guidelines to study in this book so that you don't get fouled up. Because if you come to this book wrong, assuming that all of it's written to you and that all of it applies to you, you're going to get yourself messed up. You know what happens to some people? They come to this book right here, and they read some passages from the Old Testament, and they come away believing they have to go to church on Saturday. They're called Seventh Day Adventists. And they believe they're right. And they can show you Scripture that they're right. And they're dead wrong. They're reading someone else's mail. They're reading something that wasn't intended for the church. It was intended for Israel. But see how sneaky that is? See how you can get the wrong thing from this book? Well, the thing is, the book's 100% true, but there's some things that are written for you, and there are some things that are written to you, and there's a difference, and we'll get to that in a minute. And I am not even looking at my notes. Look at 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15. Study. Now, if you've got a Bible there that doesn't say study, you might need to get a new Bible. Most versions don't have that word in there. And here's your only command in the Bible to study that book. And if you have a version that doesn't say that, I ask you to consider maybe getting a different one. This one says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Let's open in prayer. Father, I ask You now to please, Father, fill me with the Holy Spirit. I pray that You'll speak through me now, Lord, and speak to Your people. Give Him something from Your words, and I pray, God, that You'll get a blessing from this as much as the folks here, that You'll be pleased with it, Father. I pray, Father, that this time now would be a blessing, would be interesting, Lord. And God, I'm sure that some of this is very old information, and I just pray, God, that it'd still be a help. And God, for those that have never heard it, please, Lord, give them understanding, Lord. God, I can have all the wisdom in the world. It means nothing, Father, if the hearer doesn't understand what I'm saying. So please, Lord, give me wisdom in the teaching and give them understanding, Lord, from those that are listening today. We love You. We pray all this in Your Son's name. Amen. 2 Timothy 2.15, probably one of the most important verses in the whole Bible. And you'll notice it's broken down into three parts. Number one, study to show thyself approved unto God. Number two, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Number three, rightly dividing the word of truth. Let's take a second and just break that down. Number one, study. Study to show thyself approved unto God. Now, there's a couple verses in the Bible that will talk about studying. In Proverbs it says, the heart of the righteous studieth to answer. And in Ecclesiastes 12.12, it says, much study is weariness of the flesh, and if you've done any studying, you'll know that to be true. I wear myself out studying, but here's a command from God that it's your responsibility. Notice it doesn't say study. Here's Paul talking to Timothy, and he doesn't say, study to show thy church approved unto God. Thyself. It's on you. And that thing of approved, you're proving something. You know what's going to happen to every one of you at some point in your life? You're going to die and you're going to stand before your creator and you're going to stand before the author of this book. And you're going to sit there and try to have an excuse. And he's going to say, I gave you this verse that you have to study to show by self approved unto me. So if somebody stands before God someday and they say, well, I believed this, this, and this, they're going to say, just like Jesus Christ said to those Pharisees, have you not read? Jesus Christ said it over and over. Here are these Pharisees that knew the law front ways and back ways, and they read it, and they were the smartest, and they were the scholars in all this mess. And they stood before Jesus Christ, and he'd go, didn't you read this? Didn't you read that? And one of these days you're going to stand before God and you won't have an excuse because you had the complete counsel of God in your lap. And He's going to say, did you study to show yourself approved unto Me? Now that's the first thing. The second thing, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. It's definitely work. Much study is weariness of the flesh. A workman, but notice this, notice what it's connected to. It's connected to shame if you're not doing it right. What's that shame? Well, according to that Bible in multiple places, 1 John and in Mark and in the book of Revelation, you can stand before God one day and there can be shame in it. I didn't say you're going to lose your salvation. I didn't say you'd go to hell. But there's shame. And one of the things that can happen is you can stand before God and say, God, I didn't know. And He'll say, well, you didn't work hard enough. You didn't study my words." And there's shame in it. And then lastly, and probably most importantly, it says, "...rightly dividing the word of truth." Now, first off, you can wrongly divide it then, apparently, because it says, "...rightly dividing it." There's ways to divide this book. A simple division is Old Testament and New Testament. Isn't that right? But there's more than that. And if you don't get a hold of that, you'll read something in this book and go, is this for me or is this for somebody else? Does this apply to an Old Testament Jew? Does this apply to a Tribulation Saint? Does this apply to a Christian right now in this age? And if you're not rightly dividing it, you'll misapply something. And then notice this, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. So it's showing you what to study. Because at the beginning it just says to study, but then it explains what to study. The Word of Truth. Now you should study a whole bunch of things. Spurgeon said, visit many books, but live in the Bible. And you should study this book right here. Well, what's the Word of Truth? Look at John 17. John 17, verse 17. Jesus Christ speaking. The word of truth, here we go. John 17, 17. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. So you've got His words in your lap. You've got the perfect words of God and you're supposed to be studying them. You're supposed to be rightly dividing them. And that's going to help you understand and be able to grow in the Lord. Look at John 16. John 16, 13. Now here's what you need. You don't just need the Bible. You have to have one other thing. And that's important because a lost man can get his hands on the same Bible you got. I mention him here and there. There's a real famous conservative philosopher right now that everybody just loves, man. They just go on and on about Jordan Peterson. And he's got whole books and whole series and all these talks he does on the Bible. He's lost. The man does not have the Holy Spirit. I'm not saying he doesn't have good information. I think some of the stuff he says has a lot of wisdom in it. It's worldly wisdom. At the very least, it's fleshly wisdom. He doesn't have the Holy Spirit in him. That guy is just as lost as a golf ball in high grass, man. And he'll take this book and he'll try to speak on it and try to give you wisdom from it and all this stuff. He's missing one important part, John 16, 13. How be it when He, the Spirit of Truth. So you have the Word of Truth, but you need the Spirit of Truth within you. The Spirit of Truth has come. He will guide you into all truth. Alright, now look. Let me show you how. Look at 1 Corinthians 2. See, the lost man can get a hold of the same book. A good picture of that thing is Jesus Christ. He's sitting there, what is it, Matthew 13, I believe. It says that He's preaching to the whole multitude. He's preaching to the whole multitude. He's preaching to all the Pharisees and the scribes. He's talking to everybody. And He gives them a parable. And then He turns around and He pulls His disciples to the side like this, and He says, they're not getting the interpretation. I'm giving you the interpretation of it. So all of them got the Word, but they got the interpretation. Alright, well the whole world gets the word. The King James Bible is the best seller of all time. They all get it. But if you have the Holy Spirit in you and you're seeking to understand these words and get it, the Lord can pull you off to the side and say, now they all get it, but let me give you what it actually means. Let me give you some deeper things in this book. Look at 1 Corinthians 2, look at verse 9. How many times have you heard a preacher preach this verse and stop? Look at verse 9, "...but as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." And then they stop. The verse says, well, eyes never seen, ears have never heard, no one can even grasp what heaven's going to be like, and they don't read the next verse. Verse 10, "...but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." Listen to me, your eyes aren't spirit, that's physical. Your ears aren't spirit, that's physical. The spirit can reveal things to you. but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." Look at verse 12. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now that's how you're going to get this book and how you're going to understand it. You have to have the Holy Spirit in you, and that means you have the Spirit of Truth, and then you have the Word of Truth. But listen, now you have to compare spiritual with spiritual, and that's cross-referencing. If you come here on Sunday morning Bible study with Brother Matt teaching Matthew, or if you come here on Wednesday night when I'm teaching the book of Revelation, you'll know that you get a finger workout, because it's just this right here, this verse and this verse, and see how this verse connects to this verse? What's that? Comparing spiritual with spiritual. There's a great verse, what is it? I think it's 1 Peter 1, I think. It might be 2, but I think it's 1, where it says this, no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. What's that mean, private? Private is all off by itself. And what religions do is they'll take a verse they don't understand. There's a verse in 1 Corinthians 15 that says this phrase, the baptism for the dead or baptism of the dead. And the Mormons take that thing and they pull it over here privately and they interpret it. And without connecting it to anything else. That verse does not mean that you take somebody else and baptize them for a dead person. That's not what the verse means at all. But they've taken it and pulled it private and set it apart from everything else. That's a private interpretation. That's not how you understand this book. You compare spiritual with spiritual. A Calvinist will sit over there and take one verse from Romans chapter 9, tear it out of the context, and then privately interpret it over here without connecting it to the rest of the verses. And you can't do that. You have to take this verse and compare it to this verse and compare it to this verse and compare it to this verse. Look at Isaiah chapter 28. Isaiah chapter 28. Now what I do is I cross-reference and I write the verses right into my Bible. I'll talk about that here in a second. But that's just because I'm dumb and I want to be able to figure out where I'm at. Look at Isaiah 28, 9. Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand doctrine? I don't know about you, I want to understand some doctrine. I don't want to be in the dark. I don't want to come to this book and be lost. I want to know exactly what God wants me to know. Whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Watch. Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast. Well, you know over there in 1 Peter and in 1 Corinthians 3, it talks about babes in Christ. Well, that's okay. They need milk, just like a newborn baby needs milk. But he's sitting there, he's making an application, and he says, but how are you going to get some doctrine? Well, you can't just stay with the milk. You can't just have David killing Goliath, amen? And that's a great story. You can't just have Jonah in the belly of the whale. There's some deeper things of God. Look at verse 10. Watch the comparison that I'm going to make with where we just were in 1 Corinthians 2, comparing spiritual to spiritual, verse 10. For precept must be upon precept. And then he repeats it, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little, verse 13. But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little. Now you know what that is? That's a good picture of growth, just a little and a little. A child doesn't grow an inch in a week. If he did, there's something wrong with him. It's just a little bit at a time, just a little bit more food. But what you do is just a little here and a little there, another line on top of another line. And sometimes it's funny, I know that I have a habit of doing this and maybe it's annoying to you, but sometimes I'll teach through something and I'll hit 10 verses. And then later on, maybe six months or a year later, I'll find three or four more verses and I'll hit all the verses again and add the others at the end. I'm just connecting those dots. I'm saying, see this? This, this, this. Remember those? Now look at this. Here's more. And it connects more. What is that? Just line on top of line. Here a little, there a little. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now this is just free, but I write the notes right into the Bible. My other Bible was stolen here this summer, but I literally had thousands of notes in it. I remember one time I was dealing with a fellow over when we were missionaries in Scotland, and I had it opened up to a place where I had so many notes that I couldn't add anymore. You could still read all the Bible, but there was just so many notes around it. My whole Bible wasn't like that, but this one spot definitely was. And he goes, Man, you really think it's right to mark on God's words like that?" And I said, yeah, absolutely. It's a command from God that you're supposed to mark His Word. And he was like, what? Well, I mean, do you think that those words are as inspired as those words? I said, no, I didn't say that. Those words around it are just pointing me to other Scripture and cross-referencing. And I said, but don't you know you're supposed to mark the Bible? And he was like, no. And I showed him Jeremiah 23. Look it there. Yeah, the Bible says you're supposed to mark it. And he wasn't ready for it, amen. Jeremiah 23, 18. Jeremiah 23, 18. For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word, who hath marked his word and heard it? I understand mark can mean something different there, but I literally mark his word. I literally mark it. You know why? Because I'm not that smart and I don't want to forget where verses are. Sometimes I'm sitting there dealing with somebody and I'll just glance down and I'll see a note and I'll know where the next place to go is and how to deal with somebody. I literally mark his words, amen? All right, so now what I'd like to do is I'm going to give you here, and it'll be a little bit of time, but I want to give you some practical rules on how to understand and study this book. I want to go over some, just, these are bare bones, man. But if you can get these right here, if you can just start applying some of these in your own personal Bible study, this book will start to open up to you and you'll start getting light from these words right here. Alright, the first rule here, the first one, I'm going to call them laws. Number one, and I don't like writing in front of people, so this is new for me. I like writing beforehand. But I'm going to do the law. of first mention. The law of first mention. Now, the law of first mention in studying your Bible is just this simple. That is the first time that a word shows up in the Bible, it almost always sets the tone and the basic meaning of the word throughout the rest of Scripture. Now listen, I'm trying to help you understand and study that book. And what you'll find is that this rule right here will help you in understanding the rest of the Bible. Because you'll come upon a word and you'll go, I know how the world defines this word, but how does God define this word? What does this Word really mean? And the Law of First Mention is going to help you. It's going to set the tone. It will set the association of the Word and the basic meaning of the Word for the rest of the Scripture. Let me show you the best example. It's in Genesis 22. The Law of First Mention. Everybody alright? Genesis 22. Here what we're going to do is we're going to look at the first time the word love is mentioned in the Bible. You've got all these songwriters in America, they write about love, and I guarantee you they don't even know what the word really means. They're going to write it about a man and a woman. And nowadays they're going to write it about two men or two women and all that abomination. But here's how the Bible defines the word love. Genesis 22, look at verse 1. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham. And he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thy only son Isaac, whom thou Lovest and get the end of the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering now Here's one of the most well-known stories in the whole Bible The Lord comes to Abraham and says take that boy the boy you love by the way And I want you to sacrifice him to me and you have one of the greatest types of Jesus Christ being a sacrifice in the whole Bible, but but listen that type makes Abraham a picture of God the Father and it makes Isaac a type of Jesus Christ the Son and So the greatest love of all is the love of God the Father to His Son. There's the type. See it? Now here's the thing. It's not the love of a mother for her infant. Although that's a great love. But there's a place in that Bible that says, I'm going to paraphrase, it says, can a mother forget her sucking child? Yea, she could forget. So even though that's the great love of a mother to her child, it's not as strong as this one. And you'll find that the second mention of love in the Bible is in Genesis 24, and it's Isaac the son loving his bride. So what you have is you've got God the father and his love for his son, and then the next love is the love of Jesus Christ for his bride. And then just for a side note, the third mention of love is Isaac loving food. And I was like, I get that one. Amen. Praise God. It says he loved that venison. Amen. Praise God. I'm with it. But see, that's the first mention of love. It's not a man for a woman or a woman for a child. It's the father for his son. That helps you understand and define love. Let me show you another one. Look at Genesis 6. Here's a word that is very commonly misunderstood and misdefined. It's the word repent. And you'll find that in Baptist crowds all the time where you're dealing with somebody and they'll say, well, you've got to repent of all your sins to be saved. And they don't understand the word repent. Look at Genesis 6 verse 6. Here's the first time repent shows up in the Bible. Notice who's doing the repenting. Genesis 6, 6, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart. I know one thing for sure is God doesn't have to repent of any sin. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness. Be ye holy as I am holy. He was perfect and sinless. If repentance is strictly for sin, then God's a sinner. He had to repent. But that's not the Word. The Word has to do with turning from something. Now, it can be repentance from sin. But no matter what, the word repent isn't exclusive for sin. It's turning from anything. He's sitting there saying, I made man and now I'm turning from it. I'm repenting of it. He's not repenting of sin. Let me show it to you. It's a change of mind or a change of direction. Look at Acts chapter 20 and watch how the Lord uses the Bible words to define the word. Acts chapter 20. Here's just a couple quick examples here so you understand this law of first mention. And in your own personal Bible study, if you come across a word, you're reading through the book of John there, and you find a word and you go, what does God mean by that word? You're going to need to get yourself a concordance and look up the first time it shows up as a general rule. It's so strong we call it a law. But that thing works 99% of the time, where you'll look at that word and you'll go, oh, that's what it means. Just like this word repent, it's God repenting. Look at Acts 20, 21. Testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks. Watch. Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. What's that? That means they had faith in the wrong direction. They were going this way and they repented and turned to God. It's a change of mind. It's a change of direction. Acts 26. What a man has to do to get saved is turn from whatever else he's trusting in. You can trust almost anything. People trust in all kinds of stuff to get them to heaven, and they'll go straight to hell. When I street preach, sometimes I say there's 10,000 ways to hell and one way to heaven, and you've got to turn from any one of those 10,000 ways. Turn to Christ. Acts 26.20, But showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coast of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God. and do works meet for repentance. It's a turning. It's a change of direction. That's what that word really means. Let me show you one more. Look at Genesis 13. Now, I won't get into biblical numerology or anything here today, but if you know your Bible at all, you know 13 is connected to the Antichrist, and Judas Iscariot, and all kinds of things. So in Genesis 13, 13, I'm sure it's purely by coincidence, amen? You're going to find the first mention of Sodom, the first mention of wicked, and the first mention of sinners. Genesis 13, 13, but the men of Sodom. They were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. You don't even have to know what was going on there. And something makes you step back from the very first mention that there's something wrong with Sodom. Now, of course, you know later by Genesis 18, you know what's going on over there. It's so strong that it's now known as sodomy, but it's because of the place, Sodom. Genesis 13, 13, they were wicked and sinners. Now what that means, and this is what I'm getting at here today, is that you can look up the meanings of the words by going to the first mention. So here's what I recommend. I've got a couple things down here I'll grab. Here's a couple concordances that I use. That's a young's concordance and a strong's concordance. And the old preachers used to say, the young's concordance is for the young. And the Strong's Concordance is for the strong. And I don't really use Young's very much, but man, I use that Strong's every sermon just about. Any Bible study, anything, I use that. And all that is is it's got every word in the Bible from the very first mention to the last. And that thing right there is very, very helpful. It is a helpful tool. And for any preachers out there, that's one of the top five books you ought to have in your library is a good concordance because it'll help you study, help you look up words. Now, the other thing, and this is just free, but the other thing that's real helpful is to get yourself an old, emphasis on that, get yourself an old Webster's 1828 dictionary. And the more up-to-date ones, be careful with them because they've started adding a bunch of junk in there, but get yourself an old one. And the reason that, now listen, that's not a King James Bible, okay? I'm not saying that it's inerrant or anything like that. Sometimes he gets it wrong. But you ought to read some of what Noah Webster wrote back in the 1800s about the Bible. He said, the Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society. So here's a man putting together a dictionary, one of the greatest dictionaries, probably the greatest dictionary in the world, put this thing together. Now I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm not saying that. But you know what's really interesting? Is if you get yourself an old one, you'll look up the definition of a word, And it'll have a Bible verse to back up the definition, not the other way around. And that's important. You can look up words and he'll put the Bible verse there and use that to define the word. Now listen, he doesn't use the word to define the Bible. He'll use the Bible to define the word. And so he wrote all kinds of things about it. He wrote this, education is useless without the Bible. Ain't that the truth? It's crazy that America hadn't figured that one out. They went the wrong direction. He said this, "...all the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." He wrote this, "...the Bible was America's basic textbook in all fields." He said this, God's word contained in the Bible has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct. Now, what I'm saying is, especially for young preachers and stuff, get something like that, get an old Webster's and that thing will help you. And here's why. We're a King James Bible-believing church. And there's a reason for that. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. I'm not going to get into that too much today. Maybe I'll give you a few notes here at some point. But every once in a while, you're going to find a word that they used in 1611. And you're going to go, I don't know what that word means. And that's OK. Look it up. don't get a whole new translation. That's unnecessary. Now, here's what happens. I got an NIV and I brought it up just to make this point. Look at Azure real quick. I want to show you something. Because isn't this what they say? Don't they say that the newer versions are up-to-date and easier to understand? And they always say they're correcting the hard words and the frustrations of the King James Bible. Isn't that what they say? All right, well, here's a prime example, and there's many, of an NIV that's supposed to be up-to-date and supposed to be easier to understand. using a word that none of you have ever used in your entire life, okay? Look at Ezra 8 and verse 36, and if you've got a King James, I want you to read along. Everybody get there, because I want us to all be on the same page. Ezra 8, verse 36. They also delivered the king's orders to the royal satraps. What does yours say? Is lieutenants hard to understand? No, no, you guys needed an up-to-date translation, satrap. Anybody know what a satrap is? I do. It's a lieutenant. Now, I'm not going to just sit here and bash the new versions. That's a sermon for another Sunday. But that NIV is the most popular new version, and the NIV has 63,000 less words than a King James Bible. That would be the equivalent of taking out Obadiah, Jonah, Haggai, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, 1st and 2nd Peter, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, Jude, and more. You could remove all of Paul's books and it would be less words than they removed in the NIV. It's just easier to understand. They take out the word Christ 25 times. They take out the word Lord 352 times. Jesus is removed 292 times. Jesus? I thought Jesus was the sweetest name I know. Why are they taking it out almost 300 times? 300 times, by the way, when it's backed up by the manuscripts. 468 times they take out the word God. The word Godhead is removed all three times. The word Lucifer is completely omitted. The word devil or devils is removed 80 times. The word hell is removed 40 times. The word heaven is removed 160 times. The word damned and damnable and damnation are removed every single time. I'm getting rid of all the negative. The word blood is removed 41 times. The word salvation is removed 42 times. The phrase word of God is removed 8 times. The word of the Lord, that phrase is removed 25 times. And then this, the Lord Jesus Christ is removed 24 times. Look at Luke chapter 8. I know I'm not, this isn't exactly the lesson here today, but I've got to be in my bonnet. Look at Luke chapter 8. Isn't it weird they take away all those words? Doesn't that stand out to you at least a little bit? Something in the back of your heart ought to go, what's the deal? Why are they taking away the words? Look at Luke chapter 8, look at verse 11. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear, then cometh the devil and taketh away the word. Oh, that's a satanic thing. Now, you don't have to get me started. I mean, the NIV, man, I could preach all day about it. How they had two homosexuals on the translation committee. A lesbian and a queer. And they both, I know, it's okay to say that from the pulpit, amen? Stinking dyke is what it was. And they're sitting there, I mean, that, what's her name? Mollenkott. That woman, after translating a Bible, She goes and writes a book called The Pleasures of Gay Sex, and queer Christians and all this stuff. Yeah, you want that stuff? You don't think that stuff seeps through? I also didn't mention the word Sodom's taken out in the NIV, and Sodomites are taken out. I wonder who did that? Anyway, 16 verses are completely missing, where they're not even renumbered. in the NIV. And you say, what's the deal? What are you bringing all this up for? I'm trying to help you understand that you need to study the right book. And listen, this isn't a personality cult. We don't just come up here because we love some guy named King James. I'm sure most of you don't know much about him. He was a regular guy. He was a sinner like the rest. But you know what it is? I think the Bible says it right. Where the word of a king is, there's power. And in your lap is the only Bible that was ever authorized by a king. Not one other one was like this one. And I believe that God has put a blessing on this book right here. And we can get into semantics and talk about some other stuff another time. But at the end of the day, what you have in your lap is the book. And the Lord has put His blessing on this book right here. More people have been saved by this book. More missionaries have been sent out by this book right here. It's the words of God right in your lap. And all these other versions are counterfeits. Counterfeits are the real thing. And you need to be real careful with that thing. You say, what are you saying all that for? I'm saying sometimes you're going to need a concordance, amen? Because you're going to find a word and you're going to sit there and go, I don't know exactly what this word means. And that's okay. Why would you change the word if it's the right word when you could just look it up? I'll give it to you like this. This is a simple illustration. I believe that this one is corrupt and I believe this one is God's Word. I believe this one's perfect. I think this one's got errors in it. But they say that one's easy to understand. OK, let me put it to you like this. Do you know it's harder to eat organic? Don't you have to do some research and figure out what to get and what not to get? Isn't it more expensive? Don't you have to pay more, put more effort in? Isn't it easier just to go to McDonald's? Yeah, you're going to pay for it. You're going to pay for it by the way it makes you feel and by how you won't grow and how bad all those trans fats are going to get in there and give you all kinds of diabetes and all that other mess. Or you could just put a little more time in, get yourself a concordance, and you could look up that thing, and the Lord could give you something. I know that's just some real simple stuff, but that's how I feel about it, amen? All right, here's the second thing. I'm probably only gonna get to two, but I'll do the third one in the afternoon here. Here's the second one. That's the law of first mention. And here's the next one. I mean, goodnight, this is so important. But it is the law of literal, I knew that was going to happen. This is why I didn't want to write in front of you all. Literal. Oh my gosh. Mom, I'm sorry. I can't remember how to spell interpretation. In. My mom hold and schooled me. That's why I'm. She did a great job. It's not her. It's me. Don't worry about it. That's probably wrong. Is that right? Did he? Oh, okay, all right, amen. He can also, is that right? Anybody? Not even close, is it? All right. You know what? It's all right. What's that? RE? Interpretation? I think you guys are wrong. I think you guys are wrong. Hold on. Where's that verse that says it? 2 Peter 1. And where's the verse no scriptures private inter yeah, you're right. It's an e Pre Whatever prepitation amen All right I didn't go to PCC. Okay, or BJ you amen you I went to barefoot I went barefoot to almost every class my second and third year of Bible school. Amen That's the kind of school. I went to we didn't worry about this stuff. We worried about this. Amen. All right This is the law of literal interpretation and this one won't take a long time to get through But that is this right here. Take the plain interpretation and meaning of every verse except where it's impossible to do so. Look real quickly at Matthew chapter 23. Brother Matt actually went over this verse and I said that's a good one because I had something else in mind, but I want to look at this one here. Now listen, this is important because a lot of cults will do the opposite of what I'm saying right here. You take the plain literal interpretation. You know what that means? When it says he walked on the water? He walked on the water. Amen? When He parted that Red Sea. Listen, you know what they want to say? They want to say that it wasn't the Red Sea, it was the Reed Sea. And He came to a place that was shallow. No, no, no, no, no. They came to a place that was impossible and God had to intervene. That's the literal interpretation, okay? Let's look at this right here. Matthew 23, verse 24, Ye blind guides which strain in a gnat and swallow a camel. Obviously figurative, okay? The guys weren't actually... Here's what you've got to pay attention to, especially with Jesus Christ, the Old Testament prophets, and Paul himself, is they were sarcastic. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? What is that? That's sarcasm. Sarcasm, amen? Put the emphasis on the wrong syllable there. That sarcasm is what that is. And there's times where, here's what he's doing. He's saying, you're going to swallow a whole camel? He's not being literal here. But at the end of the day, there's going to be a whole bunch of places. We're in the book of Revelation right now on Wednesday nights. I'm teaching about some devils that are coming up out of the bottomless pit. I don't think that that's China. And there's some commentaries that say, well, this 200 million army, The Bible makes it look like there are a bunch of devils and demons that are coming out. I think that the literal interpretation is where it's at. Now, a lot of religions out there, and obviously most notably the Roman Catholic Church, they try to allegorize huge chunks of Scripture. That's because they're sneaky. And what you have is in Revelation chapter 17, Mystery Babylon, when you study that thing out, you can see that that is the Roman Catholic Church during the time of the Antichrist. And you can see how devilish they're going to be. They've been sneaky right now. There's a reason it's called the Great Whore, because she does things in the shadows. And that's that Roman Catholic Church right now that's in the shadows, but she's gonna come out. And she's gonna ride on that beast and the Antichrist. And so what it comes down to is that when the Bible has something there, if it's not obvious that it's figurative or sarcastic or something like that, take a literal interpretation of it. All right, let's do one more, the law of application. Let's see if I can give you something to turn to. Go ahead and turn to Romans 15. I won't be much longer. And this one's gonna take us into next time, I won't finish it, there's just too much. I think I spelled application right, amen. The law of application. Now that is this right here. Everything you read in the Bible should be read through this lens. Who is talking and who are they talking to? Because not all of it applies to you doctrinally. I said Romans 15. I lied. Look at 1 Timothy. We'll look at this first and then I'll go over there. 1 Timothy. 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy 3. Both 1 Timothy 3.16 and 2 Timothy 3.16 are very important verses, so I got them backed up and messed up there. 2 Timothy 3, look at verse 15. And that from a child, he's talking to Timothy. And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Watch. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Now listen, he gives you doctrine first because that is always the number one thing you have to figure out when it comes to that book. When you're reading a passage of Scripture, you have to figure out, is this doctrinally for me or doctrinally for somebody else? Otherwise, you'll get your doctrine all messed up. Because there are places in that Bible that are doctrinally not for you. You say, really? Oh yeah, man. Genesis chapter 6 is not doctrinally for you. Otherwise, you'd have to go out and you'd have to build an ark to get away from God's judgment. Well, that was the doctrine for Noah, wasn't it? The doctrine for Adam and Eve was don't eat the fruit and you'll be saved. You'll have eternal life if you don't eat the fruit. Is that your doctrine? Well, of course it isn't. I know that that's real simple, but that thing carries through into the New Testament, where Jesus Christ has not died on the cross yet, and He's sitting there preaching to a bunch of people. He's preaching to a bunch of pork-abstaining, Sabbath-observing Jews who have not had to put their faith in Christ yet, and He'll say some things, and you'll go, that doesn't line up with what Paul says. He does it all the time. You say, isn't salvation found in Jesus Christ? Yeah, at the cross. He said a whole bunch of stuff before the cross. What's he say to that rich young ruler? The rich young ruler comes up to him and he says exactly what a lost sinner says. How can I get eternal life? And he tells him to follow the commandments. Now listen to me, if I preached up here today and had some lost sinner walk the aisle and I came down here and knelt with him and he said, what do I got to do to get eternal life? And I said, follow the commandments. He'd go to hell like a bullet. But Jesus said it. I've heard fundamentalist Baptists try to explain, well, he was just testing the man's heart. No, he lied to him unless he was telling the truth. He hadn't died on the cross yet. The atonement wasn't made yet. And so what you have to do is pay attention to who's talking and who is he talking to. Let's see. Here's a great way to put it. All of the Bible was written for you, but it wasn't all written to you. And so Genesis 6 was written for you. God commands Noah to build an ark and to escape the coming judgment. And you can find, listen to me, you can find spiritual application from that, amen? Devotional application, but you cannot doctrinally apply it to you. It won't work. In Exodus chapter 12, God commands those Jews to sacrifice a lamb to escape the coming judgment. Now, you know what I can do? I can spiritually apply that, but I can't doctrinally apply it. There's a difference. Spiritually, I know that a lamb died for me, amen? But what they did is they had to sit there and kill something and go and put blood on the doorpost. I don't have to do that to escape judgment. I don't apply it the same way. So I can find spiritual application, but the difference is doctrinal. Look at Romans 15. A couple more things and I'll be done. Romans 15. And look at verse 4. "...For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Well, see, that's what it's written for. It's written for you to learn some things. It's written for correction. It's written for reproof, for instruction in righteousness. But it's not the same. The doctrine's not 100%. I could sit here and write up a chart, and I actually thought about it, but I figured it'd be too confusing, but I could write up a chart, and you could almost lay out percentages of times where doctrine kind of applies to you, but then it doesn't. If you get into the tribulation, you know what you run into in the tribulation? They got 50% of your doctrine, and the other 50% doesn't apply to you. You can go there in Revelation and read about tribulation saints, where they've got to put their faith in Christ, and don't take the mark of the beast, and love not their lives unto death. Well, I don't have to worry about any mark. For the last 2,000 years of church history, Christians haven't had to worry about the mark of the beast. They just put their faith in Christ. Now, see that thing? You see how you can take some of it, but you can't take all of it? And you have to be able to rightly divide the Bible to understand that thing. Look at 1 Corinthians 10. I think this is the verse I want. 1 Corinthians 10, look at verse... Oh yeah, here's just another good verse, like Romans 15, 4. 1 Corinthians 10, 11. Now all these things happened. The context is Moses going through the Red Sea. What did I say? 11. Now all these things happened unto them for in samples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. It's still written for you, but it's not written to you. See the difference in that thing? And the simplest illustration you'll ever get on this thing is somebody writing a love letter. And somebody writes a love letter to their wife, but then you get a hold of it. it was written to someone else's wife. And if you sit there and read that thing, I've made the illustration before that if Brother Ralph just felt real poetic one day and wrote Brandy a letter and just said, you know, lovely wife, I adore you with my whole soul and heart and I'd die for you. And I got a hold of a letter. He's calling me his lovely wife. He adores me with his heart. No. Now see, I can read that letter and learn something about Ralph and learn something about their love and learn something about her. But it wasn't written to me. Now this is what it comes down to and I'm going to close with this and we'll get into this in the afternoon. But what you have at the end of the day is who's talking and who's being spoken to. Because here's what you're going to find is that you have an apostle. And that guy was given all the doctrine that you'll ever need. He doesn't have all the spiritual application you need. You can find spiritual application in Deuteronomy. You can find devotional application in the Song of Solomon, man. But your doctrine, 100% of the time, that you're never going to have to second guess or worry, is going to be found from Romans to Philemon. And that's Paul. And Paul writes to you Gentiles. And we'll get you to some of that material this afternoon. I know I'm not going to draw it in, we're not going to have a closing invitation or anything like that because I'm not preaching, I'm teaching. Do you have any questions or anything before we close? Anything with that? Nope? Alright, then we'll close in prayer. Now listen, give the ladies about 5-10 minutes. As soon as I'm done praying, they'll head back and get the food out. And if visitors can stay, feel free to stay with us and they'll ring a bell and you guys will be first in line and get some food with us. Father, I pray