 Okay, so last week, we covered an introduction of that lovely lady who's not having a baby yet. She also has more outlines. Oh, by the way, when you get the outline, it's meant to be folded like this. I didn't realize that last week. So it's meant to be folded like this so that you can, like the ones my wife has, so that you have it in a nice sort of booklet form. Okay, so last week we covered an introduction to biblical theology. We went over about how biblical theology is a discipline, a discipline of studying the Bible just like systematic theology, historical theology, or practical theology. Systematic theology is taking what the Bible says in a particular topic and over viewing that topic, getting what the Bible says as a whole, historical theology is taking a theological topic and then looking at how the development of that doctrine throughout Christian history, throughout the church history, so historical theology is a lot of church history and the theological beliefs that have become clear, for example, if you look at the historical theology, you would look at the doctrine of the Trinity and how different heretics come along and challenge the doctrine of the Trinity and how that doctrine becomes clearer because of the challenges to that doctrine and you can see in historical theology that sort of development. Every time a particular doctrine in Scripture is challenged, then it becomes clearer because the church is defending it and we can see that with historical theology. Another discipline is practical theology where we're learning about how to put into practice the particular doctrines that we have and so biblical theology is another discipline. It's another discipline that is often neglected and what this discipline does is it teaches how to read the Bible with the full events in mind. In other words, we don't look and read the Ten Commandments like a Muslim reads the Ten Commandments. Like a Muslim will believe in the Ten Commandments, a Jewish person will believe in the Ten Commandments and a Christian will believe in the Ten Commandments. What are the differences in how we would view that? This is by way of illustration for your application of biblical theology. How would we view the Ten Commandments even though we believe them and a Muslim believes them and a Jew believes them like someone in Judaism, but a Christian believes them. How are we going to look at those things different, Josh? Amen. Yes, so what Josh is explaining is we view the Ten Commandments and how they lead us to Christ. We see the purpose of them and we understand them as a true love because of how the Lord explained it. That's right. You see how the biblical theology affects your understanding of the Lord's day and how we understand that and why it switched, because we see the Bible as a whole. We have the Bible as a whole. In that last week, very briefly, we covered the divine revelation, the characteristics of it, how it's progressive, it's historical in nature, it's organic, it's practical, and we covered the character of the Bible, how it's human and divine, human and divine, and that the goal of the Bible is God's glory to the praise of the glory of His grace, God's glory in salvation through judgment. So that's a review from last week. So this week we're going to cover, if you look at the outline on the very last page of your outline, we have the structure of the class. Today we're going to cover, begin to cover the section of the tools that are needed in order to understand biblical theology. Biblical theology employs the other disciplines, such as systematic theology, and we also need to employ the exegetical tools. So today we're going to cover a exegetical tools. For those who've been through a methodical Bible study, then this may be somewhat of a review. And so looking in your introduction, we see hermeneutics, the theories of interpretation under introduction, and that the purpose of hermeneutics is the science and art of biblical interpretation. The science and art of biblical interpretation. So I'm going to give you some phrases by way of understanding hermeneutics, applying the science and art of biblical interpretation. I'm going to give you some phrases and you tell me how they have not applied hermeneutics correctly. By way of introduction. Doesn't the Bible say, judge not lest you be judged? Why are you taking me through the Ten Commandments? I feel judged. The Bible says, judge not lest you be judged. Where are they going wrong with their hermeneutics there? Dan? Okay, so context. What would context have shown about judge not lest you be judged? Okay, so there's specifics. Let's answer that as a together. Daniel? Yes, so everybody here, Daniel, that in context is on the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord himself is taking people through the Ten Commandments and examining whether you're guilty of that. And Breon? Yes. Yes, so even in the very context, I believe it's Matthew 7, in the very context he says, judge not lest you be judged. And when you judge, judge with a righteous judgment. So the context is about righteous judgment. About not judging hypocritically. Judging with a, well you gotta pick out a speck out of your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye. Okay, another quote. And what I'm doing is giving you illustrations for the importance of this lesson. Another quote. Hey, I don't have to go to church. We're two or three are gathered. There I am in the midst of them. We're having church right here, right now. As you have a one-on-one conversation with someone. How did they not apply hermeneutics or the exegetical tools? Oliver. Yes, so what Oliver's bringing out is the historical argument. Who's talking? Jesus is talking to his disciples. And what he's talking about in context is a church discipline issue. How to handle sin in the life of the body. So he's pointing to historical. If you look at your outline, he's pointing to some historical details. There's, in our other illustration, there's grammatical details. We're noticing the flow of the argument. In Matthew 7, when we talked about judge not lest you be judged. It can be answered by grammatical issues. And there's also importance of understanding the genre of literature. Okay, so another one. Quote, God helps those who help. Doesn't the Bible say God helps those who help themselves? No. Okay, so Christian says no, the Bible does not say that. Dan says it's Benjamin Franklin. That's not what the Bible says. Okay, so that would be misapplication of biblical theology. That's not even in the Bible. Okay, doesn't the Bible say believe in your heart and confess with your mouth and you will be saved? Romans 10, 9 and 10, I even know where it's at. How am I not applying correct hermeneutics? Now let me ask you with this one. Now that you kind of got where I'm going with this introduction. Look at the outline. Grammatical issues, historical issues, genre of literature. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong when I'm saying, well, I got saved when I prayed the prayer. Doesn't the Bible say believe in your heart and confess with your mouth? I believe in my heart and I confess with my mouth. Yes, it's man-centered but particularly about hermeneutics. Tom? Yes. So it's not, salvation is not a formula. And in context, in the grammatical context, we're noting that it's under the lordship of Christ and Christian. Yes, each example is not in context. Okay, so then what are the tools? We can say that's not biblical when somebody gives us a strange wrong understanding. We've heard all these very common, right? In likelihood, almost every one of you has heard somebody quote one of these things out of context. So what is the art and science of biblical interpretation? What are the details in which we can show how these are wrong quotes? It's going to be basically through the historical grammatical method by grammar, the historical background, and the genre of literature. Okay, so let's dive in. Well, before we get into the body of the class, I noticed there's a lot more people here now than when I first started and I want to make this announcement again. Please, if you have not gone through an essentials class, then the essentials class is taking place in the elder's office. That class is going to cover the introduction to the doctrines that are key for salvation and it's a requirement. In order to be in this class, you have to go through the essentials class. It's the introduction to our church. Okay, so first grammatical. First grammatical. Oh, I have a note here under the grammatical historical method. First beware of intentional fallacy. Intentional fallacy is when you go beyond what the text, beyond the text into the author's feelings, motives, and unexpressed intentions. The purpose of hermeneutics is to understand authorial intent. Authorial intent. Not to fill in what we think the author has to say, but we have to get from the text what the author has to say. We can't fill in the apostle John's motives when he writes, unless he states them. We can't fill in extra information. We can't see what's not there. We need to base it in the text, so that's what intentional fallacy is. But the goal of hermeneutics is to understand the author's original intent. This is important because in our day and age, postmodernism has led many to believe that you really can't understand what the Bible has to say. You really can't understand authorial intent. It's too cloudy, it's not specific enough. Your truth is my truth. What you do when you read somebody else's literature is you get what's important for you out of it. To give you an illustration, maybe some of you have faced this in literature class. Pastor Rick was in a local community college. The professor hands around some literature and begins to ask people in the class, why don't you read this and then what does it mean to you? What feelings do you get when you read this and what is that? When it got around the class to Pastor Rick, he said, I don't believe in reader response. I believe in authorial intent and I don't want to participate in this. The teacher stopped and said, I want to talk to you after class. After class, the teacher asked him, how did you know what I was doing? He said, well, I read and I don't believe in reader response. Reader response is essentially you interpret the meaning for yourself. You decide the meaning for yourself what is in a written document as opposed to authorial intent. Instead of reading it and saying, what does the author mean? Keith, do you have any comments on that? He teaches literature, English and things of that nature. This is very important because now those attacks come on the Bible. That thinking of there is no absolute truth. It's what you want to believe when we read a document. That comes into the church and it's something that we need to understand that God has made his word very clear. His word is very clear. God has not made mistakes in his communication to his people. When God wants to communicate, he's chosen a method suitable for that. The method of his word written down by holy men of old, that is sufficient. It's not just the words are sufficient for our lives, but the manner in which you want to communicate with us is sufficient for communication. Some parts of the Bible are harder to understand than others, but the bottom line is the word of God is clear. It's clear and it's a suitable way to communicate. We want to understand the author's intent. First, grammatical. Context is king. The context you need to read over and over and over. You need to look at the outline. You need to know how does the larger text break up into units. That's going to be different according to genre. Narrative could be a story. You need to know each story when you're noting that unit. With poetry, you need to notice each stanza or each line of thought. With an epistle, you're noticing the argument when he switches from argumentation. You're noticing first your grammatical, what's the larger setting of either story or argumentation or stanza, if it's poetry. You need to note two, you need to note the general flow of the argument. Is there a contrast being made? Is there a pattern? Is there an illustration being given? And then in point three, in the grammatical analysis, you need to notice how are the sentences made up? What is the subject? What is the verb? What is the object? What are the prepositions? You need to know the connections of thought. So what this means is it's cool to go back to school. It's cool to go back to school. You want to know and understand grammar in order to understand how the Bible goes together. The better reader you are, the better you can understand God. He's not communicated through a voice in your dreams last night. He doesn't communicate himself through a PowerPoint or a YouTube video. He communicates himself in a book. In a book. So you got to know how to read. And you got to know how to read well. It's cool to go back to school. I didn't care. I went to school and I, believe it or not, and I couldn't define what an object is or a preposition is after high school. And I didn't care. And then I got converted. And suddenly these things mattered because I had to understand them in order to understand God's communication. Then you had to, okay, you were going to cover some of those genres in a minute. Okay, so in order to understand the grammar, you got to go back to school. In many cases, not for everyone, but in many cases, we got to understand the grammar. And then you have to read it over and over and over. You cannot substitute anything else besides time in your seat with the Word of God in front of you. That's the basic. If you don't get that, you don't get anything else. You're not going to get biblical theology. You're not going to get systematic theology. You're not going to understand the Word of God unless you spend time simply reading your English Bible. Okay? So you got to do that. That's where it starts. Lee? You want an airplane mechanic who reads the manual, who understands what he's reading, and takes it for authorial intent and not makes up what you think. Yes, aircraft mechanic is a good illustration of someone who needs to understand authorial intent. Okay. So we understand a basic overview of, review of grammar in order to understand the Bible, and then historical, historical. We need to understand how does this, what is said, fit into the larger context. You can get a Bible Dictionaries, Commentaries, MacArthur Study Bible, to understand what is the larger context. What's going on here? What's the historical, what is the historical context, point two, of under historical, what does that say about author, date, audience, or place of origin? Place of origin. So in order to understand why the Apostle Peter is talking about suffering in 1 Peter, you need to understand who he is, who he's writing to, the church at Rome, or those in the dispersion under the Roman Empire. You need to understand the date, the audience, what's happening in the overall context, with the persecution that's happening with Nero, and the power that people are suffering. Point three, you need to understand the cultural context. What's a Pharisee? What was it like to be a woman in the Roman world? Is there really a needle gate? You know, a camel goes through an eye of a needle? Maybe you've heard that before? Well, what it's really talking about is how there was a needle gate, and if you got everything off the camel, then you could squeeze that camel through. And then you're like, wait a minute, Jesus was saying it was impossible for Richmond to enter the kingdom of heaven? So it is possible? There is no needle gate that somebody has made up. You've got to do the historical background. It becomes something that preachers like to say. You can't just simply go by what some preacher or preachers like to say. Preachers get illustrations and they share them, you know, like kids share colts. They just get passed around, and a preacher hears from a sermon, and he's like, oh, I'll take that illustration. That's a really good illustration. You need to understand, is it truly historically accurate? So you can get help with that by going to various Bible dictionaries, commentaries, study Bibles, reliable sources, reliable sources. Okay, point four, you need to understand the issues of geography, politics, history. For example, when Jonah leaves for Tarshish, and he was supposed to be going to Nineveh. In order to understand the geography, that's helpful to understand what's going on there. Does anybody remember where Tarshish is? Tarshish is in Spain. Does anybody remember where Nineveh is? Yes, Assyria. Nineveh was in Assyria, which would be close to Iraq. Okay, so we're talking about a difference of 2,600 miles. So that's about the distance from here to LA. Okay, across the continent, across the continent. You know, continents are big places on the other side of a continent. That's the distance that Jonah is trying to run away from Nineveh. A continent's length. That's helpful to understand what's going on in Jonah's mind in order to understand the context of the book of Jonah. Do you see how the geography helps out? Maybe Pastor, I missed the first sermon, but perhaps Pastor Mark went over some geography with the Sea of Galilee and where it is and how that applies to the ministry that Jesus has. Okay, so we understand that the grammatical, the historical, and then also biblical. What we're covering now is understanding the biblical view. How does it relate to the rest of the Scripture? That's the point of the class, to understand a particular text and how it fits into the larger scope. And we covered that with an illustration by the Ten Commandments. We don't just read the Ten Commandments and say, the Ten Commandments say, you shall not lie. So you better not lie. It doesn't end there. The Ten Commandments are understood in how they bring us to Christ. How they show us our guilt. We see the biblical view of the Ten Commandments and understanding them as a bigger picture. So in order to do that, we must understand the literary forms. Importance of literary forms. Notice how it says, under importance of literary forms in your outline, it says, the first distinct genres tend to have distinct rules or patterns of communicating. For example, there's distinct patterns of communication. If I say, once upon a time, there existed a giant named Jack in a land far away. Right? In a galaxy far away, in a time long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you're going to understand a story that's coming up, right? That it's not an actual story. It's something made up. Or if I say, dear Frank, what kind of communication am I starting? Letter, right? Or if I say, dear Ashley, it's a different kind of letter. Okay, so there are markers that distinct our genre. So we must understand those because the communication is going to be different, right? So the Bible has multiple different genres. Third, some of the Bible is going to seem culturally foreign to us. Okay, so maybe the genre will seem foreign or the culture background will seem foreign. You know, a lot of people, when you evangelize them, like skeptics, they'll say, you just believe that because that's what your parents taught you. Did you go to church when you grew up? Like, yes. Okay, well, see, it's just what your parents taught you. Like, wait a minute. This wasn't started by, you know, Dennis Mudge in Chuliota, Florida. This is started by, you know, the apostle Peter writing on the other side of the world and from another ethnic background speaking another language on completely the other side of the world. You can't get much farther from us than Israel. And you can't get much farther in time or culture. And yet this is not something that's just simply we believe because it's something we've been taught from our culture. It's something that is foreign to us, but it's from God. Okay, first, before we get into the genres, a little note about that. You may notice that some genres are going to be easier for you than others to understand. And that may depend on your person. We have genres of narrative, parable, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, epistle, apocalyptic. Okay, some of those are going to be easier to understand for you than others. For example, poetry. I've never written poetry. It's hard for me to read poetry. When I write a love letter, you know, I don't communicate poetry. All I know is roses are red, violets are blue, you know, and something, something, something. How I miss you. I don't know much about poetry. So what does that mean for me? I got to work harder to understand poetry. I got to work harder. Maybe some, I like a good story, a narrative. Stories are easier for me to understand. I like movies and I like to look at them and think about how the director is communicating. What message is he trying to communicate by what he says and the selection of phrases and what is the goal they're trying to reach, the laughter at a certain point or the drama or they're trying to make you afraid. What is the director doing in a storytelling to lead the audience along? I like that. It's easier for me to understand than other things. So narrative is a story is easier for me to understand because of who I am. Now, if you notice with like Pastor Rick or Pastor Jimmy, they have a clear understanding of logical flow of argumentation. They can take an epistle in the logical flow of argument and be able to explain that in a clear manner than usually I can. And it just has to do with the type of person you are, whether you're thinking in argumentation or you're thinking in a story. And I give more stories in illustrations when I preach because that's how I think. Now, the point is, it's going to be similar with you. You're going to have different genres that are easier to understand for you than others. That means you have to work harder to understand the ones that are not natural to you. Okay? You got to put in more work to understand how to study those. So first, narrative. Like we covered last time, the majority of the Bible is in narrative. The majority of the Bible is in narrative. And the overall flow of the message of the Bible is told in a narrative story with creation, fall, the sacrifice and love of Jesus coming, His death on the cross, and His return. These events are told in narrative and story, and there are other types of genres that explain those events, the significance of them and are necessary response to them. Okay? So narrative, some helps for narrative. One, pay attention to the story and its details. Remember that they're not always chronological. Like, for example, with Luke. Luke is not chronologically chronological in nature. There's some chronological details, but he mixes and matches because he's going for a particular message. He may not tell it just like his story. You can see that by reading the other Gospels. You'll want to notice the plot, what events are happening where, rhetorical phrases like the dialogue that's being used, the character development. You notice when you read through the book of 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, you'll see character development of David. You've got to remember that the narrator is being selective and what it records. So what it records is key. For example, Goliath said many things, right? But what is it recorded about what Goliath says? About how he curses God, how he's going to rip David apart and let the vultures eat him. You know, what's communicated about Goliath is what it, you know, of all the quotes that Goliath said, give me that chicken. I'm going to go crush those Jews to curses about God. You know, he doesn't pick, I'm going to eat this chicken. I'm hungry. He doesn't pick, hand me my sword. The narrator doesn't pick any of those things. He picks particular phrases because it communicates something about, it's communicating truth about who Goliath is. He's a person who curses God. He's a person who's violent. He's a person who's an evil person. You're supposed to read it and want God to destroy him. Okay? Does that make sense? You see that what's particularly chosen and you understand that. Context is king, point three. Context is king. And remember what we said before about the intentional fallacy. Be careful not to fill in and be humble, not to fill in what is not said. There is conjecture. There is, it seems to me this way. You got to hold lightly the things that are not in the text. Be humble and focus on the word of God. Point four, you need to understand what is the point of the narrative in light of the author's purpose in writing the book. So I put there for an example, John 11. And that's the story of Lazarus. You understand the story of Lazarus in the overall function of the book. Okay, so since we're in the apostle John, what could be an overall focus of the raising of Lazarus in the overall purpose of the book of John? Dorian? The deity of Christ? Yes. And Christ is God? Josh? Yes. You see how Josh is using the overall context? Very good. Very good. It's about one of the signs that are given to show that Jesus is the son of God. So you see the purpose of that story in its overall context. Okay? So parable. I'm going to pick up the pace a little bit here. So parable. You must ask what is the main point or points? Normally in a parable, there's one main point. Okay, one main point. Typically. Parables are not allegories. An allegory is like Pilgrim's progress. Each character has its own particular meaning, and each town he comes across, and there's significance in almost every little detail that has meaning. A parable is not that way. A parable is typically one main point. Illustrating one thing. And you need to look at the context for that. You need to pay attention to repetition. You must look at the main point. It's typically said at the end. And many of the parables, most of the parables are about the kingdom of God or Jesus as the king. The majority about the kingdom of God. What it means to be under the rule and reign of Jesus as our king. We must interpret in light of the context of the larger narrative. And the example here is in Mark 4. It's a parable about how the mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds in the garden. And then when it's planted, it grows up into a tree and many birds come into its nests. And the point of that one parable is that the kingdom of God starts small and then it develops into something big. It's for one main point. It started small, 12 guys in Israel. And now look, we're part of those birds that get arrested in its branches. It's reached the other side of the world. Okay, narrative parable poetry. One third of the Old Testament poetry. It's in the Psalms. Hebrew poetry does not have rhyme and meter like Hebrew or like English. It's different. It's helpful to understand that. In poetic structure, you need to know parallelisms, synonyms, the build-up and antithetical. It means the contrast there. You're to read poetry line by line, not more than by sentence structure. You read poetry more line by line than by sentence structure because the thoughts are communicated more line by line. You consider, if you want to know more about that, ask me after class for the sake of time. I'm going to keep on rolling further. Consider word play, alliteration. Alliteration using the same beginning letter so it sounds like... With an airplane, when I train people, I say remember to turn off the mags, the magnetos, the master switch, and the mixture so you don't murder Mark. If you don't turn off those things, the engine can turn on by accident. When I'm training somebody, I'm like, remember the 3M so you don't murder Mark and I'm giving them alliteration from memory. So it's using the same letter. Alphabetic acrostic, that's what Psalm 119 uses, where it uses, okay, A is for the... And then B, C, it goes to the Hebrew alphabet. You're understanding the form of the poetry by the alphabetic acrostic, the repetition, the hyperbole. Hyperbole is purposeful exaggeration. Like when Paul says, if I were to have all knowledge and I were to speak with the tongues of angels, if I were to, and he's speaking in hyperbole, a purposeful exaggeration, there's contrast given. There is metonymy, or the substitution is like saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. Substitution for, I'm substituting pen for written influence. I'm substituting sword for war. You see how I used that word? I'm using the words to colorfully describe something bigger and more significant. That's called substitution. Look for how the whole stands for part. In other words, when Psalm 32, when David says, my bones ached within me when I didn't repent of my sins. He's saying his bones are a representation of this whole person. He's not literally talking about arthritis or something, right? I'm trying to use clear examples so you understand this pattern. It's a part, an illustration that signifies a greater picture. His bones illustrate his whole body, his whole self. When he didn't confess his sins, it made his whole person ache. Okay, point three. In English poetry, there's use of metaphor and simile. Metaphor is when you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. A metaphor is employing an example to say, you are something. You are the salt of the earth. We understand that, speaking about evangelism. Simile is using the word as or like. You are like a white wash tomb. You see how it's figurative language? There's employment of images, irony. And you can see Psalm 119 for a greater example about that. Very quickly, now, wisdom, prophecy, epistle, apocalyptic. I'm sorry, yes, thank you, it's 19. Okay, wisdom. You need to understand their different forms of wisdom. Literature, drama, proverbs, autobiographical confession. What's important about this is you understand that wisdom, literature is not teaching you promises but principles. They're not promises, principles. For example, trade up the child and wish he would go and he won't depart from that. That's not a promise. Christians do have unconverted kids, but it's a principle that is generally true. What's difficult about biblical theology, the most difficult aspect of biblical theology in genre is wisdom. You say, when you read the proverbs, how does that fit into the larger picture? And it fits into the larger picture because the wisdom literature is how do you respond to the understanding of the big picture of salvation? Okay, that's how it fits into the big picture of the Bible. When the Bible gives you proverbs, you understand it in the big picture as a response to how you respond to the work of God. Okay, prophecy. Understand that there is point to multiple horizons of fulfillment. For example, in Isaiah 61, Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 when he's in a synagogue and he says it's fulfilled in your hearing. But if you go back to Isaiah 61, you'll see that there is a prophecy of the Messiah coming for salvation and there's the Messiah coming for judgment. But Jesus doesn't quote the part about judgment. When he's in a synagogue, he just quotes the part about salvation of the Messiah. We understand that Isaiah was seeing two different mountain peaks. He's seeing the first coming of Christ and the second coming, how he comes for salvation and then later how he comes for judgment. And when you look at the mountain peaks, they look very close and similar, but they're separated by a greater amount of time. That's very important for prophecy. You must understand the language and images of the past are used to describe the future. In other words, how Jeremiah 2314 uses Sodom and Gomorrah to illustrate something about the future for the people of Israel in that present context. And not all prophecies are unconditional. Jonah gives a prophecy saying if you don't repent, the judgment's going to come. The judgment didn't come because the people repented. So there's sometimes conditions that will happen. The epistle, the epistle is context is extremely important when you're reading a letter. Logical arguments. What helps with that is to write it down. For me, I could write down the arguments in block form. Okay, if this argument, draw an arrow on a piece of paper, means this. Because of this argument, then necessarily this must take place. Because of this, and for me, I'm more visual. So in order to understand logical flow of argument, I'll write it down on paper. And to conclude, apocalyptic, and what it is, is essentially a prophecy with imagery. Daniel and Revelation. Literary context is important. They're going to draw from the autism examples. Revelation covers more Old Testament than any book, any other book. It is chock full of Old Testament. You must understand the Old Testament in order to understand the book of Revelation. This is considered the more difficult part because many are confused by the images. But what's helpful for that is to understand that the same general rules that apply to other literature apply to prophecy or apocalyptic, the imagery. It's not an allegory. You understand that the literalistic view is not always possible. You look in the context to see how the author describes what the symbol means. For example, in Revelation we have the dragon, and he's seeking to devour the child of the woman. We understand it's not a real dragon trying to eat a real baby, a real child. We understand that there's a symbolism there, and what does the context describe what the symbolism means? So we must see the apocalyptic event as complete. See if it has been completed in history, and we must see particularly a greater emphasis on the Old Testament. So to review, bottom line, do you want to understand the big picture of the Bible? It's cool to go back to school. It's cool to go back to school. I'm trying to cover a lot in a little bit of time. We have a whole class on this that has been taught multiple times. We have grasping God's Word on the shelf if you would like more help in this particular area. But essentially, read your Bible over and over and over, and then get help for some of the questions you have in interpretation. Employ context, rules of grammar, understand the historical background, and understand the type of literature that you're reading. These things will help you to understand the big picture of the Bible. That if you don't understand these things, then you're going to misunderstand the big picture of the Bible. Does that make sense? Okay. So next week, it may not be me teaching. We may have a baby in the meantime. So we will cover biblical theology tools. And in that tools class, in order to understand the big picture, we'll cover promise and fulfillment, typology, and the continuity and discontinuity. These are key things to understand the big picture between the Old Testament and New Testament. Okay, let's pray. Dear Lord, we pray, please help us to understand your Word better. Please help us to work hard to understand your Word. We know that the beauty of your Word doesn't come to just reading a verse on a plaque on a wall as we walk by or a verse under a calendar. We understand that you want us to seek after you as a deer pants for the water, so our soul pants after you, O God. We want to desire you in such a way where we study your Word fervently and diligently. Please help us to do that better. Thank you Lord for this class. Please help us to understand the big picture of your Word. Amen.