How to Study the Bible III – How to Study the Bible Finale

So as of today, we've spent 49 Sundays focusing on how to study the Bible. And we asked the question, now why would we do that? And there are several passages here that we'll want to take more than just a nominal look at. But the first one we have there is 2 Timothy 2.15. So be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. Accurately handling, and that's actually in the Greek, one word. Accurately handling the word of truth. And that word that we point out there is ortho tomeo. What's ortho mean? Ortho means straight, right? Means what? Straight. Oh. So, like for example, the term orthodox, right? It would be straight doctrine, right? So, ortho-tomaeo is a straight cut.

And it was used, we have a couple of illustrations. It was used as a term for the Roman road engineers. in laying out a grade where you'd have a good balance between cut and fill and you'd end up with a good grade as well. And so that was a word that was used for their laying out a good road grade.

And then another use was one that Paul himself would have used, and his friends, Phil and Priscilla, tent makers. You cut along the pattern line carefully, so that when you put the pieces of the tent together, you have no gaps or flaps. No gaps, no flaps. So the parts, you cut along the pattern line so the parts fit together well.

And so those were ways in which this word was used. So accurately handling the word of truth, some earlier dispensationalists have taken the rightly divided as some sort of a It's some sort of guidance to start cutting things up in certain time periods, but that doesn't check out very well and it's not really what the word is talking about. It's laying things out so that, in the case of the road engineer, so that the road has a good grade, a good balance between cut and fill, and then using the tent maker's application. And you can imagine, here's the Apostle Paul, and he's using this term, and I imagine he's had Timothy, sitting there talking with Timothy while he's working on tents, right?

And talk to Timothy and make sure you orthotomaio this material well so that we get a good fit when we sew it together here. So be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. Accurately handling this orthotomaio, the word of truth. Yeah? What does it mean to the left? The pictures. The pictures to the left. The Roman road engineer and him laying out using their surveying instruments the road grade.

I've always had a question about be diligent. That doesn't put me under the law that I'm not required to do this or I'm not Am I doing this? Well, listen, you asked a very good question. It says, be diligent. And so does that mean ultimately that it's up to me to be diligent? Well, it seems to. You know, I've seen another translation of do your best to present yourself to the world? Yeah.

Well, I think with everything, and we're going to be talking about that in this next elective next year, but with everything there is a priority, a priority and prior action on the part of the believer. And that is, walk in the Spirit. There is a priority action. Jesus says, abide in me.

And so in that sense, when I start putting those kind of passages together, Galatians 2.20, it's no longer I who do the living, but Christ does the living in me. Ultimately, it's Christ's diligence.

I'm not independently delegated to be diligent, yeah. But the act of will that is implied in something like that is that we would walk, that we choose to walk, we choose to believe, to keep our eyes on Christ, essentially. Yes, and that's where it comes from, and that's where I would say a translation of your best efforts is not, it kind of sidesteps the point, and that is what the Lord desires is we're continuously in fellowship with Him and dependent upon Him. And even the diligence, it's not God's not delegated that to me, and He's going to check back with me and say, how'd you do, right?

I think I see what you're saying. I'm learning in Colossians that as we behold the Lord, we do these things in His power. So in His power, I am diligently studying to accurately handle the Lord. I'm studying accurately, trying to get the truth out of the verse. Right. You know, in His power, always looking to Him. Right, and if you look at it, you know, here's the Word of God. It's inspired, right? Theopneustos is the word. It is inspired. as a ministry of bringing forth the truth of the word. And the application of those truths is a work of the Holy Spirit and the appropriation of it.

So all the way from writing these things into how does it get lived out, the Holy Spirit is there every step of the way. And so that's where, if we look at a passage in isolation, We'll say, okay, well, I've got to do this and it's up to me and all that. But in the end, in the larger context of scripture, everything that I'm told to do and not to do is all in the context of my dependence upon the Lord and my abiding in Him, my abiding in Christ, walking in the Spirit, beholding the Lord through His word, all those things. It's essentially His to-do. in and through me.

Even the reason for study is from him. If I study it for my own purposes, I get the wrong application, the wrong observation. I can do it all wrong. I'll get the wrong interpretation. But if I study beholding him for his purposes, I should get the right interpretation. So anyway, you asked a good question.

Because that diligence is ultimately not my diligence. It's the Lord's diligence in and through me. And then in terms of accurately handling, accuracy in understanding the word of God comes from the Lord himself, the spirit of truth, right? Word of truth. I can't accurately handle it. Yeah. Isn't His power working through me? Yeah, notice it is in our dependence upon Him, not just doing our best to understand, Lord, how am I doing? Right? Yeah.

Next we have there is Hebrews 4.12, and one of the things that we have in this illustration, again off to the left here, we say, okay, for the believer there's the physical realm, And in the spiritual realm, we would say in the physical realm, we have the five classical senses, sight, smell, touch, and those kind of things. So we have the five classical senses. We have the brain that has mind, emotions, and will on the physical side, which is a part of the body. On the spiritual side, we have the spiritual realm, where we have in scripture reference to five classical senses in scripture as well. Hebrews is especially a book with lots of reference to those senses. Looking unto Jesus, we see Jesus, right?

So there's that. He talks about them being dull of hearing. He's not talking about anything a hearing aid is going to fix. He's talking about spiritually speaking. Right? Yes? Well, doesn't this kind of connect with what Jim was saying about the question that he asked earlier? Because it's able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So that's where it all began, right?

Yeah, so what we have here is, this says Pearson as far as the division of soul and spirit. So what we see is, here is an item, an object in the physical realm that I take in through my senses. on the physical side, and it has an impact in the spiritual realm deeply. Nothing else does that. Nothing else does that. I can go to the doctor and say, hey doc, can you give me some medication for this or that? And the doctor can prescribe something that's on the physical side, but it doesn't go to the spiritual side.

But this does. This does, so it's unique. So we have the impact. So the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. So this is unique. Is there anything else like it? There isn't. There is nothing like it that's living and active.

You might say, OK, this is some really cool literature or whatnot, but this is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, as the machaira, the two-foot long Roman short sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So it goes deep. It goes deep.

So that's what I was saying. The thoughts and intentions. Do we depend on Christ to work through us? Or do we depend on ourselves? to try to do the work and then fail. So it's the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So it's for us to work on that. That's what we work on, right? Not how we act or what we do, but our direction, our desire, our motivation.

One of the reasons for pointing realm, Scripture talks about all of those five senses, and essentially says that we as believers have those senses turned on. And Scripture then allows us to see and have understanding and insight where the unbeliever doesn't have it. Remember, what's the problem with the unbeliever's mind? Their minds are blinded. They don't see anything. They say, there's nothing there.

But for the believer, it's turned on. And so Paul, Ephesians chapter 1, was to say, I pray that, and it's actually the eyes of your hearts having been opened, that you might see. So spiritually speaking, the believer has those senses turned on. And they're trained for use by the Word of God.

I forgot what the five spiritual senses were. I think you've given it to us before. Well, we talk about the eyes of your heart. That's one of Paul's things he talks about. Talking about spiritual hearing, and that can be let them hear. Spiritual hearing, so you have that.

An aroma from life to life and death to death. So here is the same aroma to the unbeliever that it stinks. To the believer, we look at it and say, this is life. And so you go about, and then Ephesians talks about the unbeliever's past feeling. calloused, past feeling, no physical sensation.

And is it Psalms or Proverbs where it says, taste and see that the Lord is good? Yeah, and so taste is another one of the senses that's used actually more than once in the Bible. So you have reference to the five classical senses all in the spiritual realm and actually multiple instances of each of those.

I was just going to say that only makes sense because when Paul talks about the new self or when you're born again, I mean, you would need this. I mean, this should be a result of the new kind of being that you are. I mean, you have to have that. I mean, that's who you are as a new being.

Yeah, and here, as the unbeliever, everything's kind of shut down and they're blind, they can't hear. Believers are turned on and God's Word then gives us the means for seeing and tasting and touching and employing those senses in the spiritual realm. So this is cool stuff. So we have, through the Word of God, and having been saved, we have the opportunity to exercise those five spiritual senses using God's Word. I don't see anything, right?

You know, before I was saved, I got a Bible, you know, when I was young. I got my first Bible, and I started reading it, and I knew there was something really special about this Bible. But I would read it, and try and read it through and it just became really dry and I just couldn't do it. But after I was saved, man, I couldn't get enough of reading it.

So it's amazing, God's Word is the necessary ingredient to have those spiritual insights and to engage and employ those spiritual senses. It's only when God has done a work in the believer's heart to turn those senses on, once they're saved, and then employing God's Word to be able to see and to hear with insight and understanding and full sensation. It just had no meaning. I knew it was special, but it had no meaning for me, before I was saved. Here's John 17. A prayer in which Christ prays for himself to the Father, then he prays for his disciples, and then he actually prays for us. And this is the second section here, Jesus praying to the Father regarding his disciples.

Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Now what does sanctify mean? Right, to set apart, right? And so it's interesting, in our position we're already sanctified. The Apostle Paul wrote to the believers of Corinth, and let me tell you, they're messed up.

But he starts in his greeting, and he says, you sanctified, perfect tense. So in their position it's already a done deal. But there's a process going on, that's one of the things we'll be looking at in this next elective. There's a process going on, and that's ongoing process of sanctification. In our condition. In our condition. And so really, if you think about it, our position is already there from the moment we believed. We spend the rest of our lives catching up to what God's already done.

Okay, so you see that, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. And let's ask this, is there sanctification apart from the word of God? See, the word of God is a primary instrument, a necessary instrument, not just an optional feature. If you don't know the word of God, can't continue on in your sanctification. So, we start seeing where the Word of God is pivotal here, critical, essential.

Now, let's look at the next one. What I have there is 2 Corinthians 3, 17 and 18. First of all, I show it as a chiasm. It's a small chiasm. The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And then he finishes as just from the Lord, the Spirit, right? And then the next one, but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, that is beholding then as a process, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, right? And the pivotal and kind of the hinge point is the glory of the Lord in the middle of this chiasm. So that's one interesting aspect of the structure that Paul wrote into these last couple of verses.

But then here's what I call expanded and explained, 2 Corinthians 3.18. So it says, But all of us who are in Christ with a face that is not veiled by the law, having died in relationship to the law and living by God's amazing grace, are right now continuing to behold as we read and hear the written word of God, seeing as one who looks into a mirror the glory, the radiant essence of who Christ is, the glory that comes from Christ himself, and we are in fact in the very process of being changed and transformed into the same spiritual character, growing from one level of Christ's glory to the next, And every pardon of this beholding and transformation is from the God-given ministries of the Holy Spirit.

One of the things we'll be covering, and we actually take two months to cover these two things. Romans 8, we're conformed, God works everything. together so that we're conformed to the image of Christ. And that, he's working through circumstances to conform us to the image of Christ. But this is a parallel process that's carried out in an entirely different way. This is beholding the Lord through his word that transforms us into the image of Christ. So they're both headed in the same direction.

But God's word is the means by which we're transformed. And one of the questions I have here, we all with unveiled faith, what was the veil that he's talking about in this passage? The law. The law. So what happens the law into this process. Clouds are good. Yeah, it inhibits transformation. It inhibits transformation. So that's why he starts it off, we all, with unveiled face. Not injecting the law into the process and expecting that to help.

So, but anyway, we go over this and essentially take two months to cover being conformed and being transformed. And looking at those and looking at what's God's part and what's our part. So anyway, we'll be looking, taking about two months to look at those conformed and transformed processes. Both of which are aimed at making us into the image of Christ. So then we have at the bottom of the page here, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

All scriptures inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in the righteousness. I added the definite article into the American Standard Translation. In the righteousness. Why would it be definite article righteousness? How is that different? But it would be the specific righteousness of God? Yeah. The specific righteousness of the Lord. It's not just some generic, but the specific righteousness of him. Not just a general righteousness. But the righteousness.

So that the man of the God. Now, the English translations typically drop out The definite article on righteousness and also the God. Why did Paul often actually write the God instead of just God? Because there's only one God. Yeah, and he's in many cases writing to people from a Gentile background, where you have a bunch of different gods.

And so Paul could be very specific. No, not that one, not that one, the one. The only one. Yeah, the only one. And so he would actually often, and oftentimes our translations drop it out, he would actually often write the God. And this is one of those instances.

So that the man of the God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. Now, how many of you like to take things on in which you feel inadequate? Not so much, huh? So where does adequacy then come from? Yeah, it comes from the Lord and He's saying that adequacy then It comes from the use of God's word in its various ways. So it's inspired by God and profitable for teaching?

Reproof for correction, what's that about? Connected to the righteousness. Ah, yes. Connected to the right... Reproof is more like correcting. Reproof and correction are close in meaning. Reproof is telling you where you're wrong, isn't it? And correction is putting you back on the right track.

So they're two halves of the same... need training in the righteousness? Why is that necessary? It's not our nature. So let's ask, when we think of training, where do we often use that word? Training would be used in military. Can you think of other uses? Athletics. Athletics. Military. Alright, and what else? Child raising. Pardon? Child raising. Child raising, right.

So, yeah, and you know, let's take it for instance, a lot of times in businesses they'll send people off, hey we got this new, you know, A program that we want you to use in a new set of procedures. We've got training and that sort of thing. So a business will send people off. Here, training in the righteousness. I was going to say, probably most importantly, in the ministry. If you're going to be an elder, or a deacon, or a pastor, or a shepherd of a flock, there's a certain amount of training that needs to be accomplished. Why don't we just say, you know, hey, here's the Word of God.

Read it if you like. If you feel it's inspiring, that's great. Why don't we just leave it at that and just sort of make it random? Why not just take that approach? Well, to me it's like my sister that's in New Age. I mean, they teach that it doesn't make any difference really what you read because the truth is out there in all of the written material that's existing in the world.

So if you just become well-read and you read spiritual books and manuals and pamphlets, then some of that sooner or later is going to rub off on you. Yeah, and so really what we're looking at, God's word is very specific. From Acts chapter 6, as we're soon going to see, all the way to Revelation, the faith. Again and again and again and again, the faith. The set of teachings of the apostles.

And so it has a specific definition. It has a specific content. It has a specific intent. Right? And so training in the righteousness, the truth, the faith. So scripture is intending for us to come to a specific set of understandings and conclusions. Yeah? And you could probably add and say the word through the servants of God, because there are specific people that he gave the skills and ability to be able to present the Word.

How about that last part, equipped for every good work? Is there a hazard that we just kind of keep it all here? Now, one of the greatest hazards in seminaries, or even in a church like this one, where there's a lot of focused teaching, is that it all just stays up here, and has no real and practical application. But it's intended to be lived out and implemented. This is the appropriation. of what we spell out as an application. The application is still just writing and talking about it. The appropriation is taking it so that it's lived out.

OK, let's take a look at the second page here. So early on, we said the outline and sequence of studying the Bible looks like this. So observation, and then interpretation, application, and appropriation. So those four stages, and so let's talk briefly about what each of those things are. The first six months, roughly, in this elective, we introduced principles and techniques of observation. Right. So we essentially look for six months at those tools and techniques. And it was everything from here's how you know. look at the Greek and pull out, you know, word definition and grammar and things of that sort. We then looked at, like for three weeks, we looked at here's the Greek Old Testament and here's how you use that to draw, you know, truths together, that sort of thing.

So we progressed then for six months looking at elements of language, history, and culture, okay, putting those together. One of the things we said is that the observations need to be true and complete before we begin to interpret. One of the cautions that we gave is what often happens is people will observe a few things, grab their ism, and then start interpreting. And the ism ends up guiding their understanding.

Rather than saying, what does God's word say? In the Reformed camp covenant theology, what will happen is that draws people to the conclusion that you didn't die to the whole law, you just died to the ceremonial part, and maybe the judgments, but you're still under the law.

So they will read them into passages like, you know, here's Galatians 2.20, you know, I've been crucified with Christ and what does it say in 2.19? I died to the law. Died in relationship to the law and what they'll do is snip, snip, snip, and so I died in relationship to just this part of the law, but I still got the rest of it. And the ism ends up dictating what the passage means, instead of what does the passage really mean.

So observation, and very thorough observation, making sure what we have is true, is key. I mentioned the reform camp. One of the things they do is they divide up the law into ritual or ceremonial. judgments, and then civil law. Do this, don't do that. And so they'll divide that up. Does the law of Moses itself divide itself up that way? No. It doesn't make those distinctions, so it's artificial.

And then plus some of them, like even remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, right? Some of them are OK. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, is that just civil law? Or, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, is there a judgment that goes along with that?

What happens if you break that? Death penalty. Right? So there's a judgment that goes along with it, and then are there certain things that are to be done on the Sabbath that are not done? Yeah, certain things. So it's hard to break it at. So the law of Moses doesn't make that distinction. It's an artificial external distinction. So that I can still hold on to some of the law. But it doesn't work.

So, thorough and true and complete observations. One of the things we said about commentaries, is a commentary is going to be most useful when it lays out all the observations that the interpretation is based on. When a commentary just jumps to, it means this and this and this and this, that's not as useful, because you don't know what observations that interpretation is based on.

Alright, so then, the next step there, we introduce the principles of interpretation. So one of the things that we said there, right at the core, is interpret literally. Interpret literally. And why do we say interpret literally? Because it leaves out all the personal, emotional, and what you said earlier, isms, that you can put in there. In other words, if I don't interpret literally, all of a sudden my ism, whatever it is, comes into play. And that then is guiding what it means instead of what did God intend to say in His Word.

You'll have whole churches and movements and major developments over centuries all focused on interpreting allegorically. But different allegorical traditions for different groups. So once I allegorize, I have to decide where does the allegorized interpretation start and end, and what controls the interpretation of an allegory.

Well, there isn't any. Because you would think that people who allegorize would continue using that allegory to interpret the same thing that are the same words or phrase or sentence in the same way over here, but they don't. Yeah. So you can make it say anything. Yeah. Well, and that's where, you know, one of them that I go to real quickly, just to check on how are they going at this, is Revelation chapter 7.

This is where it spells out 144,000, right? 12,000 by each of the tribes. It says it's of Israel, and then it names each of the tribes. And so there's 12 of them, and 12 times 12,000 gives you 144. And it says right there in the passage, it's Israel, and then listing the tribes, and 12,000 of each tribe, and then the total, 144,000. It gives that, right?

So the standard amillennial interpretation is that that's talking about the Christian denominations and different groups of Christians. And the Mormons say it's the most spiritual. Yeah, and of course the cults love allegorical interpretation. Why? Because they can make it say anything they want. And it depends on what age they are. So the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, in Revelation, where there's five months of these scorpion-like creatures stinging people, they say that the scorpion stinging is them, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they're stinging us, the Christians. That's what they say. Yeah, that's the interpretation of that. Never mind that the scorpions are taken from the pit and returned back to the pit, to the abyssos. Scorpions are actually angels.

So anyway, consistent literal interpretation so that we're not grabbing for isms. An ism is a way to add and inject a meaning into scripture instead of asking what does scripture say. An ism is also laziness. An ism is laziness because The ism says, well, I don't need to observe so much because I'm going to interpret this way according to my ism anyway. Right? Yes. Or maybe not so much laziness, but the fact that you don't have the new eyes and the new ears and the new senses that's required to recognize the truth when it's there.

What did God intend to say? What did God intend to say? Not what did Luther intend for it to say, not what did Calvin intend for it to say, not even Augustine, right? It's not what did one of these guys with their isms He intended to say, but what did God intend to say?

We draw the meaning out instead of reading the meaning in. So now we've got the interpretation, then we can look at the application. Now, for any particular passage, how many meanings are intended? One intended meaning. How many possible applications might there be given that one intended meaning? It could be quite a few.

In fact, that's part of what we're looking at here in the main service is lots and lots of different applications in individuals' lives, in families, in marriages, in churches, lots of different applications. So I think that's one thing, is we aim for the one intended meaning, that's the interpretation, and then we can talk about and write, here's all the different applications, and then it's the appropriation of those applications in our lives, in our churches, in our families and homes. That's the final step, the appropriation.

So does the life application Bible tell you all the applications? Yeah, let's think about this. If you have a life application study Bible, what's the hazard with that? It may not apply. Well, one is you've got to make sure that you've done the observations and interpretation correctly in order to arrive at the correct application. So you go to one church and they're exhorting you, hey, you need to speak in tongues, right? And so they're urging you to speak in tongues, and you're being resistant if you're not working on this tongues thing. And the problem is that they've arrived at the wrong interpretation to begin with before the application. So, life application study Bibles, well, I want to first make sure I've observed properly and interpreted properly before I start developing applications.

But essentially those four steps, and it actually should be done carefully, that's one of the reasons why we started off with the passage that we did, 2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling with thorough and true observations, and then moving from that to interpretation. And then, this moves then on to, here are the applications that are intended.

There was a teacher, who has a number of followers still, that went around teaching about the right man and right woman teaching. So you had, okay, you're married, you're the right man and you're the right woman. And so some of the people were concluding, oh, I didn't marry the right woman, or I didn't marry the right man. And so they get divorced and go try to find the right man and the right woman. And the only problem is, it's not in the Bible. But it's something added to scripture, and that's a problem. Instead of what does the Bible teach and what does the Bible say, you come up with this kind of human construct.

Okay, so as we look here, one of the things we did after looking at, here's all the techniques that we looked at. We have kind of the outline of, here's the schedule that we had for the year. And so I'd just kind of like to go over it. One of the things we did is we spent some weeks on New Testament Greek. And we offered an alternate, a complete word study New Testament as an approach to the Greek. And then we had three weeks of the Greek Old Testament. And we showed how, because we offered an interlinear And we showed how the Greek Old Testament offers lots and lots of opportunities for us to confirm things, to have insights about word meaning, grammar, things of that sort. And so we said, for instance, Jesus in the Gospel of John said, Ego eimi, I, I am. And he had seven metaphors. I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, of the life. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. And so he had those kinds of statements. He also made other statements with egoimi, such as, before Abraham was born, egoimi, I am.

And one of the things you can do is go to numerous places in the Old Testament where God says, Ego Emi in the Greek Old Testament. And one of those is with Moses at the burning bush. There is a section of the book of Isaiah from chapter 40 to 48 where there are multiple instances where God in the Greek Old Testament says Ego Emi. And in one place he even says Ego Emi, Ego Emi.

So very emphatic. And Jesus uses this very same word pair. So the question is, does that really mean deity? So how did the Jews react when he said that? They wanted to stone him. Pick up the rocks, more than once. They're picking up rocks because to them, they understood it was a clear claim to deity.

Now, then we also talked about figures of speech, and this is one of the things when we talk about literal interpretation, that does not mean we're wooden literalists, right? But we understand that there are figures of speech of different kinds. As a matter of fact, you can have figures of speech within figures of speech. The symbolism of the book of Revelation is a symbol, a figure of speech. Yes, but I can within that symbol that's described also have figures of speech inside of that. Here is Christ in the first chapter of Revelation, and here is Christ and he appears and what is his hair like? White like wool, snow, right? I like a flame of fire. But guess what?

Like is not just Valley Girl talk, it's a simile. And so you have similes, figures of speech, within the larger figure of speech, which is the overall set of symbols. So figures of speech inside of figures of speech. We talk about rhetorical writing, Hebrew poetry patterns, and poetic forms. and then chiasms. So these are different elements of structure that are used in scripture.

So we pointed those out. We went through Old Testament and New Testament history and cultures, and even talked about between the Old and New Testaments and the influence that had. Why is it that the New Testament is written in Koine, a common Greek And the Old Testament wasn't originally written with that. Because Alexander the Great introduced this essentially synthetic Greek that he had brought together and said, you guys are going to learn this. And actually enforced it. And the reason we have the Greek Old Testament is because the Jews got to a place where they could hardly read their own Hebrew and so they made a translation of the Greek Old Testament, and that's why we have it.

We also have cultural changes between the Old and New Testaments. And some of that is explained by Alexander the Great, but what were some other influences during New Testament times that Alexander the Great didn't have anything to do with? You've got the Romans coming in. So you have the Romans coming in, and that's after the time of Alexander the Great, and so things are significantly influenced by the Roman occupation. There are ideas about adoption. Pardon? There are ideas. Yeah, and so one of the reasons it's important to take a look at, you know, you have this kind of cultural shift here.

Alexander the Great comes in, but he doesn't really have any plan of continuity, right? And so you have, here you have the Greek empires that followed Alexander the Great. The Jews had about 100 years of semi-independence during that time, and then the Romans come in. And so you've got a kind of a smear. You've got Greek cultural influence, and then you've got the Roman political and cultural influence coming in.

And so understanding those is key. You mentioned adoption. That's a biggie. That's a biggie. It's one word in the Greek, Euthysia. That's it. But this is the adoption of sons from Augustus Caesar, the first one to have adoption of sons. There were five Caesars in a row that became Caesars through the adoption of sons process. And so Paul talks about, we have the adoption of sons, and he only uses that with churches where there was significant Roman influence in those churches. He didn't use it elsewhere. And one of those is in the letter to Rome. I think there's some Roman influence there.

So then, flip side here, going through it, we talk about principles of interpretation, which we did for actually a few weeks there. And then we began to go through examples. And so our pattern was this. We would look at passages. We would look at topics. Here's how I go and study this passage. Here's how I go and study this topic. And it's useful to be able to do both of those. And so we gave examples of each.

We were able to look repeatedly at portions of the book of Ephesians and see, hey, there's some significant things to observe here in Ephesians. We took an example of looking at some of the Psalms. How do I read through the Psalms? A lot of Christians will just read the Psalms and not understand how do I interpret this, and you can actually end up with some wrong conclusions by not understanding what you're looking at. Blessed is the man who walks, right? That's Psalm 1. Which blessed is that? Is this Ephesians chapter 1 blessed? Or is this blessed as in Deuteronomy 28? It's Deuteronomy 28, right?

Because this is the Jews national hymn book. Should I pray, take not your Holy Spirit from me. Not here, not now. Yeah, and so as we read these things, we need to understand how we go about studying them, not simply take everything directly to heart.

They were blessed on a conditional basis. If you do this, then I will bless you here. And the blessings were earthly in the land. Right. Right? The blessings were earthly in the land. Wait a minute, I'm not looking for earthly blessings, I'm looking for blessings where? Spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. That's a radically different deal. They weren't blessed with all spiritual blessings, they were blessed with all earthly blessings.

So one of the things that Psalms really brings out is the value of comparison and contrast. Are they blessed? Yes. How are they blessed? They are blessed conditionally in the land if they obey it. Am I blessed? Yes. I am blessed unconditionally in the heavenlies in Christ, with every spiritual blessing. So, not sit there and say, oh, that's for me. But to do comparison and contrast and learn from each of those passages.

We looked at several different factors in interpreting the book of Revelation. We said early on in the study of Revelation, ten basic principles for interpreting the book of Revelation correctly. And if you follow with those ten principles, every single verse becomes clear. People are amazed. Interpreting Revelation is a piece of cake.

We've kind of run out of time here. As we've gone through here, just kind of remember as you go back here, we've given you tools and given examples, both topical examples, It's like Craig looked at, here's the gospel, and here's the Trinity, and can you lose your salvation, and those kinds of things. We've given you specific examples on topics. How do I go about pursuing that? And then we've looked at specific passages and sections of scripture, studying old books. OK, thoughts, questions, ponderings? Has this been helpful? Good? I think so.

The idea is that we're able to look truthfully and carefully at the Word of God and ask the question, what did God intend to say? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the tools with which we can accurately understand your word and then apply it appropriately and appropriate it appropriately as well. I pray as we move forward here that you would use these things that we've learned and been exploring in our hearts and lives that we might indeed be transformed. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.