The Value of Observation

Introduction to Hermeneutics and the Goal of Observation

Week two of introduction to hermeneutics. To remind everybody from last week, how many of you remember what hermeneutics means? Somebody raise your hand so I know who wants to answer. Yes. Well, it's how to study the Bible, but where do we get the word hermeneutics?

Where does it come from, James? Yeah, the mythical god Hermes was the one responsible for bringing the message from the gods to the people. Therefore, the term hermeneutics is based on that name whose responsibility it was to get the message from the author to the audience.

And that's really the idea of hermeneutics, getting the message from the author to the audience. And in our first class, we talked about the importance of studying the Bible, why people should study the Bible, why people don't study the Bible.

And if you weren't here last week, remember all of our lessons are available online so you can go back and listen to last week's lesson and know what we talked about. And also, if you don't have the book yet, the syllabus tells you what book you need.

The title of the book is Living by the Book by Dr. Howard Hendricks and the accompanying workbook, Living by the Book, The Workbook. And we will be going through our first workbook lesson tonight after the break.

Remember how we do the class. We do about an hour worth of lecture and interaction. Then we take a five to seven minute break. Then we come back for the last 20 to 25 minutes. And that's when we do the workbook.

At least that's when we're gonna be doing the workbook. How many of you have your workbooks? Great. And I know, Ron and Wilma, you guys just started. How many of you did your workbooks? Okay, not everybody.

Well, we're gonna do it together. We're gonna go through it. So that's good. Okay, class two. Tonight, we're going to be looking at observation part one. How many of you remember the three steps to Bible study that are found in our book?

I'll go ahead and let you go again, James. What is it? It's not Jeopardy. You can just answer. You don't have to answer the form of the question. The three things is, that's right. Observation, interpretation, and application.

So since this is an eight week course, we're gonna spend two weeks on observation. We're going to spend two weeks on interpretation. We're gonna spend two weeks on application. That'll get us to week seven.

And then in week eight, here's what's gonna be great. On week eight, you guys are going to get to give me texts that you want us to look at in class. And we're going to take that process that we learn of observation, interpretation, and application, and we're going to do that in class.

Now, over the weeks, I'll be asking you if you have a passage you want us to do, write it down and give it to me. You don't have to wait until that night, because I'd rather have an opportunity to look at them beforehand and maybe judge which ones would be best as far as for time, because last time, I'll tell you what happened.

We did this class two years ago. Brother Mark Souder was in this class, and he asked me to go over Genesis six, and everybody else wrote what they wanted. We spent an hour on Genesis six, and it wasn't fair because I spent so much time on his, I didn't get anybody else's.

And so I'm gonna try not to do that this time. I'll try to make sure that we have the opportunity to look at more than just one passage on week eight. Okay, so tonight, observation part one, we're going to be looking at the value of observation.

We're going, and this comes straight out of your book. This is part of what you should have read. The value of observation, 10 strategies for reading. We're going to talk about and answer questions about the 10 strategies for reading, and then we're going to take our break, and then afterwards, we'll go over our workbook assignment.

But before we do that, I want to start with prayer. Father, I thank you for this class. I pray, Lord, that you would bless us in our study. Lord, most of all, that we would not study the Bible just to increase the expanse of our minds, but Lord, that we would study the Word so that we would know you better.

And Lord, that we would grow in our sanctification through the power of the Spirit coming and teaching us your Word. And I pray that he would be here tonight teaching us, Lord, that I would decrease and that the Spirit of God would have preeminence here in Christ's name, amen.

All right, so we're going to look at part one. Good evening.

Why Observation Is the First and Most Important Step in Bible Study

Part one, the value of observation. When we look at the three steps, observation is not only the first thing that we do, but observation is, in my humble opinion, the most important thing that we do. Observation is number one.

And number one, not only in order, but number one in importance. And a lot of people don't see it that way. A lot of people think interpretation is the most important thing. But what we are going to learn through this course is that the better you are at observing the text, the more accurate will be your interpretation.

And the more fruitful will be your application. So that's why I say it's number one, not only in order, but also in importance. The first step to Bible study is observation. We are seeking to answer this question, what do I see?

Too often, people go directly into what does this mean or how does this work? They miss the vital first step of observation. Years ago, I read a book by Dr. Steve Kreloff on how to preach. It was a small book called Expository Preaching.

And it became one of the most important books on my shelf. I found myself referencing it over and over, even though it was really not even a more than just, I couldn't have been more than 100 pages. It was a very small book.

But in it, Dr. Steve Kreloff said this, he said, the only three steps to preaching is read the text, explain the text, apply the text. Read the text, explain the text, apply the text. And he says, and that's all preaching is.

And honestly, in 15 years of preaching here at this church, I've not really deviated from that particular model of preaching. Read the text, explain the text, apply the text, move on. And that's it. Well, what's the first step in Dr. Kreloff's order?

Read the text. And he spends time in that book explaining. He's not just saying, read it. He's saying, observe it. So really in my own preparation for preaching, observation is number one. The problem is we often don't observe.

And I love Sherlock Holmes. So I brought this and this was also in the book. Sherlock Holmes was famous for saying, you see, but you do not observe. I used to enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes, used to substitute teach.

And there wasn't a lot you could do while substitute teaching while the kids are doing their work, you have to do something. So I would pull up on my Kindle, the Sherlock Holmes novels, and I would read through.

And they read very similar to your modern day television programs, like CSI or things like that, where there's something going on and you got to put all the pieces together. And I don't know if you ever saw CSI, but there was a character called Gil Grissom.

And he was like the head of the crime scene. He was like the modern day Sherlock Holmes. He could look at a crime scene and out of that crime scene, he was able to draw all of this information in that was able to give him a picture of what had taken place.

He could look at the, whether it was a splattering of fluid on the wall or something else, and he could look at it and it showed sort of how his mind was putting all of these pieces together. And that really is a modern day version of the Sherlock Holmes mythology, the story of the idea of someone who was a master observer.

If you read your book this week, you'll remember that Dr. Hendricks talked about Luis Agazes, I think I'm saying his name correct. He was a renowned 19th century naturalist of Harvard. And he was asked on occasion, what was your greatest contribution scientifically?

And his answer was, I have taught men and women to observe. I've taught men and women to observe. That's my greatest contribution to science. Consider the way pastors preach through a book. Early on, many pastors will sometimes preach two or three books in a whole year, but then the further they get into their preaching, the further they get into their study and they begin to be better observers.

You find yourself going one book for two or three years versus two or three books in one year, because you begin to see more that you didn't see before. You begin to draw out more that you didn't draw out before.

Some people, you know, I remember years ago, Byron Starkweather, he was one of our elders here, and I was preaching through the book of James. And he came to me and he says, you're going awful fast. But I was young, I think I was 28 years old.

He says, you're going awful fast. And he was right, because as I was learning to preach, I was learning to observe. Well, I preached through the book of James years later at set free, and it took me a lot longer the second time, because I was able to observe more than I had the first time.

Dr. Hendricks goes on to talk about the professor and he says this. He says that same professor at Harvard would place a fish on a tray and put it before his student and ask him to write down everything that he sees.

The student returned a day later and he said, I found 37 things. The teacher said, good, go and look some more. He did this until the student exhausted, until rather, until he exhausted his student over a period of two weeks, just observing.

Every time he'd come in, I found 20 things, go look some more. I found 15, go and look some more. In fact, that's the motto of this class. This is it. This is the motto of this style of Bible study. Go and look some more.

Spend time in the text. Spend time observing the text. Go and look some more. So with that in mind, we're now gonna have our first practical exercise of the course. And you might think that I'm gonna put a Bible verse up here, but I'm not.

This is a little different. And you might think maybe a little weird, but if you know me, you'll know that that's not beyond reason. I am a little weird. You like weird? Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you a picture.

Now this is a graphic. It's not like a picture picture, it's a drawing, but it is a computer generated drawing of a desk drawer. And inside this desk drawer are all kinds of items. And I'm going to give you one minute to observe all that you can on this picture.

And then we're gonna go around the room. Not everybody's gonna get a chance to speak, but we're gonna see what were some of the things that you were able to observe in this picture. So get your pen and paper ready.

And again, boys in the back, boys, gentlemen in the back, you may wanna come up here where you can see better and that's okay. But this is, you're gonna get one minute starting as soon as everybody sits down.

I'll wait till everybody sits down. Are we ready? One minute, write down as many observations as you can. Nothing is unimportant. Go. We're about 30 seconds in. 10 more seconds. Pencils down. It's like a test, pencils down.

All right, I'm gonna leave it up there. But we're done writing. Last semester, I actually put it, I had a table with a tablecloth on it filled with all kinds of stuff. That was a little more fun, but this was easier.

Quite honestly, this is, and I think it gets the same thing across. Let's talk for a minute. What were some of the things that you observed about our, what would you call this, a junk drawer? Everybody got one of these in their house?

A drawer that's just junk? Well, what do you observe about the junk drawer? Anybody observe anything right off the bat? What you got, Frank? It's open. Hey, that's good. That's an important point. It is open.

In fact, the way that it looks, it might not even be attached to a desk. It looks like it's sitting on something because you notice the other stuff around it. It looks like it might be out of the desk.

See, that's something else you can notice. What else? MacGyver can make a bomb. MacGyver can make a bomb, okay. They like pizza. They like pizza. That's good. Yeah, either that or they're smokers. Yeah.

They like pizza. They're little scissors.

Little scissors. Oh, little scissors, ha ha. Okay. Anything else? What else? Something, yeah. I think that's a barcode. It's a barcode, yeah.

I think it's a tag. I think it's a price tag. Yeah, again, you'd want to observe closer, right? Because you're kind of not sure. What else? Yeah. That's a good one. I thought about that when I pulled this up.

The marker doesn't have a cap, which again, now we sort of move into a little bit of didactic reasoning, right? And that is that it probably is dried out. Okay. What else? It's a good light bulb. Light bulb.

There's no vacuum on the band aid. What is it? It says you can light the light bulb with paper clips and batteries. Okay. Somebody's going to start a fire, but there's enough stuff here to start a fire.

Absolutely. It's an old drawer. Because it has film. What camera uses film anymore? Not very many. And what? The stamp. The stamp is? Is it a regular stamp or a forever? It's 34 cent. That's old. Yeah.

What's a stamp cost now? It's a stamp today. Yeah. So that dates it. That's good. That's a good point. Yeah. There's this receipt and I can't see. There's a date on it. Yeah. The receipt would date it for us.

It's 4 -20 -2001. That's old. So it's 20 years old. We now know at least it can't be newer than that because it has a date on it. Okay, what else? Juicy fruit says bubble gum, but juicy fruit's not bubble gum.

Exactly.

That's wonderful. Wow. Now that's a good point. Juicy fruit is juicy. It doesn't say juicy, but you can tell by the color that's juicy fruit. Oh. I mean, the taste will move you, but it's not bubble gum.

It could be a laxative fruit. It's not bubble gum. All of this is good. Anything else? Nobody's noticed? Batteries are rechargeable. Batteries are rechargeable.

Oh, I didn't notice that. I'm not sure if we were just up here. I can't read it, but I'm not sure if we're going outside. Well, that's what I was saying. Something tells us there's some stuff got knocked out or fell out.

Yeah.

Yeah. Chuck, you used a magnifying glass on it and it was trouble seeing. Okay. That's scissors. That's scissors.

Grocery list. Grocery list? Key looks like it's in a PO box or safe deposit box. Not a door key.

You think this door... Now, this is impossible to know, but you think this door belongs to a man or a woman? That's a man. That's a man. I was... Yep. Screwdriver. That's a woman. I was going to say, I don't think you can know.

As I said, I don't think you can know, because my wife and I share a junk drawer and it kind of looks just like this. What's on the receipt? That's what I'm trying to say. It's a hardware store.

It's a hardware store. I was saying, it's $31 .47. That's the only way you know. I don't know. A woman would put the cap back on the marker or a piece of plastic.

But you see how we're going even further and further. This is what observation is. We go back and we look some more. We see things like, number one, we don't know whether that Band-Aid is used or not.

Yes. Because it's sticky side down, right? You don't know if it's got the little tabs. So you don't know for sure if that's a used Band-Aid, which is gross. But it could be. You don't know whether or not...

Here's something you can probably discern from this. Some of you may be too far away to see it, but you can probably discern that these people have children. Because it's children's aspirin. So these are little things, right?

Little observations. Again, you become Sherlock Holmes. We could have a heart condition too. That's true. Now see there, Ed, you threw something I hadn't even thought about. Because people with heart conditions take baby Tylenol, children's, or baby aspirin.

There you go. All these things. Nothing is unimportant. Last time we had the thing with the table, Gary Childers was here. And he goes, the table's got four legs. He didn't say it like that. I don't know why I gave him a New York accent.

But he was just like, he was right. And I said, nothing is unimportant. The table does have four legs. So this is just a little exercise. This is a fun exercise to do. And you can do it anytime. Practice your skills of observation.

Now we did that. Let's move on to observing a verse. Because now that we've done what we've done with a picture, which was practical exercise, now we're gonna do what we did, but with a Bible verse. And I'll put it up here for you.

If you wanna look in your Bible, if it's easier for you to see in your Bible, it's Galatians chapter one, verse one and two. Just like last week, we did, at the end of class, we looked at Romans 12, one and two, and we made some observations.

We're gonna do the same thing. But here we're just gonna be, again, we're not interpreting anything. And you say, well, what's the difference? We're just, what does it say? That's all we're looking for, is what does it say?

What information can we get out of this text, what it says? So I'll read it out loud. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.

And all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. Now, right away, we can't spend all night on this, but I'd like for everyone, if you get a, for a moment, I'd like you to write down three things about this text that just jump out at you.

Three observations. I won't give you a time, but it shouldn't take you long to come up with three. You already got them? You're done. Okay, you can go, yep. I have to, I'm drawing a blank right now. You have to remind me.

I've been walking there. Hmm? I've been walking there. Oh, yeah, that would have been a good one. That would be a good one. Maybe next class, since we have video, that would be a good one. Because we're on observation two weeks.

That would be good, yeah. All right, how many have three?

Ed, give me one of yours. Give me the best one. Best one, that his title, Apostle, is God given, not from man, but God gave him the title.

Okay, he's an apostle, not from man, but from God. Okay, that's one. Who else?

James? Immediately, he's quoting his own name, saying, Paul, I'm writing this letter here.

So he's self-identifying. Yeah. Paul often begins his letters with self-identification. In fact, this is, you guys know what pseudepigrapha is? Pseudepigrapha were books written in the early church that were written with a false name.

So like the Gospel of Thomas is considered pseudepigrapha, it's false. It wasn't really written by Thomas. But they used his name because they were trying to gain an audience based upon who he was, right?

So Paul does put his name to identify who he is. And some people would put a false name, but certainly this is not a false name.

Okay, anyone else? Frank? Is there reading from Paul on behalf of himself and others? Yep, there's other people involved. It's not just from Paul. Very good. What'd you got? I just heard it's Christ and God the Father.

That's right, he makes a distinction.

Regarding Christ and God the Father. And interestingly enough, we would say Christ is God, but oftentimes when Paul makes a distinction, he makes the distinction he calls Christ Lord and the Father God.

So he makes that distinction. Okay, and he doesn't do that here, but we see that in other places. Yes? Somebody else saying that it was written to the churches in Galatia. Nope, nobody else mentioned that.

In fact, that's the one I would have probably mentioned is that the churches are plural. What do we know about Galatia? It's a region, that's right. It's not one place, but it's a region. Acts 13, I think it is, gives us the churches that are in Galatia.

It's Lystra, Iconium, Derby. Those are all churches that are in Galatia. Anybody know by chance where the region is? Yeah. Yes, Southern Turkey. Southern Turkey. There was a Northern Galatia, and there's some people who are, I remember preaching through Galatians.

There are some who argue he was writing to the Northern Galatian region, but there is no evidence of that. All the evidence points to the Southern Galatian churches, which are in the Book of Acts. But yes, it is modern day Turkey.

Okay. Anybody else want to throw anything out there? What was your best one? You already gave us one, but give us another one, Nails.

You mean when he gives himself the title of apostle representing who he is? Yep.

That's right. Anything else? Now, you remember what I said Dr. Sproul would do? I don't remember if I told the story last week or not. When you came to his class, he would give his students, his seminary students, he'd give them a passage like this.

He would say, go find 50 things. Not 10, not 20, but 50. And they had all week to do it. And they would gather together in dorms, and they would all share and try to come up with 50 things. And they'd all come in the next week, they'd hand in their papers, professor, we got 50.

And he'd go, okay, now go find 50 more. And that was how he did it. He tells that story, it's great. And that really is, because what we're talking about, we have looked at a lot of surface things, and not that that's bad, that's where we start.

But there are other things that we can begin to draw out of this the more that we learn to observe. All right. So as far as part one goes, what did we learn? We learned many people skip observation in Bible study.

They go right to interpretation. And observation takes time and effort. We are naturally lazy. We don't like time and effort, but it's what is required, time and effort. The better we are at observation, the more we will draw out of the text.

Ten Strategies for Reading Well

So now let's move into part two, 10 strategies for reading. Do you all read this in the book? How many of you read this portion of the book? Amen. Okay, only a couple. All right. If you did not read this portion of the book, that's okay.

But I will say, after I've given you these 10 strategies, if you want to learn more about them, it's in the book. Because I'm gonna give you an overview of the 10, I'm gonna kind of hit the high points of what each one means but as you go through, you may say, I don't really understand that, I need a better clarification.

Go into the book and it will clarify what each of these 10 are. The first step to be good, excuse me, the first step to good observation is to become a better reader. According to New Testament scholar, Douglas Moo, 30 of American adults read at or below a fifth grade level.

In fact, if you have your textbook, mark page 70, mark page 70. I don't know if you wanna dog ear it, put a note in it, do whatever. But there's a good reading test on page 70 that will help you kind of judge your reading.

It gives you a portion to read in 90 seconds, you read in 90 seconds and then you answer questions about it. Just sort of gives, it doesn't give you a grade but it gives you sort of an overview of what your reading level is.

And I was commenting the other day that my wife is a much better reader than I am. But I will say this growing up, one of the ways that I became a better reader was by reading comic books. Because I didn't read a lot of novels when I was in high school, but I did enjoy reading comic books.

And it actually did increase my vocabulary and my ability to follow narrative and things like that growing up. So whatever you can do to help yourself be a better reader, do it. And what's funny is I had a comic book Bible when I was a young man.

Not that they're the best in the world, but it was something, it was something. Whatever can help you be a better reader. So 10 strategies for reading. I'm gonna give you these 10, you can write them down and I'll define them.

I didn't put the definition on here because it's just, it was too much on the screen, you wouldn't be able to probably see it. 10 strategies for reading. We wanna do 10 things when we read. Number one, we wanna read thoughtfully.

Now, what do we think that means when it says read thoughtfully? That's right, that's it. Just what you just said, Ms. Wilma. Actually think about what we are reading. One of the things Dr. Hendricks says, he says, put your thinking cap on.

You remember when your teachers used to say that? Put your thinking cap on, do not put your brain in neutral. How many of you've read a page or something and realized when you got to the last period on the page, you don't remember anything that it said?

Yeah, I think all of us would be, if we were honest, would say, yeah, we've all gotten to the bottom of the page and said, well, that was a waste of five minutes because I don't remember anything. And that was because at some point, our minds simply shut off and we were not reading thoughtfully, we were just basically skimming or scanning the words.

Good reading requires thought. It requires thinking about what we are reading. Number two, read repeatedly. Dr. Hendricks in the book mentions this, and I've heard the same thing. He said, I was listening to a preacher preach one time and he said, when I read this passage for the 100th time, this jumped out at me.

And he goes, I don't think I've ever read any passage a hundred times. And it just dawned on him that it took that guy a hundred times reading that passage for it to jump, for the information that he had for that observation that he made to jump out at him.

How many of us read repeatedly? Remember what I told you last week? I talked about my own personal Bible reading. What do I do? Is I read the same passages every day for a month. Right now I'm reading the first seven chapters of Revelation and I'll do that for 30 days.

Then on next month, I'll do the next seven chapters of Revelation for 30 days. Now, after that, I'll probably do eight chapters because there's 22 chapters and I don't wanna have just one chapter left.

So I'll probably do seven, seven and eight to get through the book. And you break it up however you want to. But after the third or fourth day of reading the same thing, you begin to see the things that you missed.

And after the 10th or 11th day of reading the same thing, you begin to really, you know what's coming and you begin to outline it in your mind. You follow a different, and then again, after 30 days, you kind of know where everything in that book is, those seven chapters.

And so reading repeatedly is a way to increase your reading, increase your reading ability. Number three, read patiently. You cannot, I love this. You cannot hurry holiness. A nice little phrase from our textbook.

You can't hurry holiness. You have to pace yourself. I am very, I admire people who read the Bible every year. And I had a friend, he used to be an elder here, Richard Taylor, he read the Bible every year since he became a Christian.

He'd been a Christian for decades. And so he had read the Bible once through every year, and that was his discipline. However, if reading that amount every day is more than you can do and do so well, then don't try to do what you can't do well.

You know what I mean? You can pace yourself. If it takes you three years to read through the Bible, do it. But don't feel like you gotta keep up with Richard Taylor or whoever else is a better reader than you.

You should pace yourself and read at the pace that is comfortable. And also, when you are thinking about the subject of studying a particular passage, you need to read patiently. And not, you don't read this.

I know this sounds cheesy, but it's one of those things. Oh, Dr. Powers used to say in class, he says, it's not important that you get through the reading. It's more important that the reading gets through you.

And I just remember, you know, it's more important that it gets through you. And that comes with patience. Number four, reading selectively. Now, I want you to put selectively slash investigatively. Investigative, because selectively is a little odd, but if you do go to the book, what he's saying is when you're reading, you're asking yourself questions as you go.

The questions, what are the five interrogatives? The five questions that you ask when you're doing who, what, where, why, right? Or is it who, what, when, why, and where? Those are the five questions that all, every good journalist knows to ask.

And they start their interviews with those questions, right? Well, when you're sitting down with the text, you're interviewing the text. You're asking the who. You're asking the what. You're asking the where, the when, and the why.

So that's reading selectively. So slash investigatively. Investigatively. You're a journalist. You're looking for the answers. You're seeking the answers. Number five, and this one, every time we say something should go without saying, there's a reason why we say it.

Nothing ever really goes without saying because there's reasons why we need to say it. And we need to read prayerfully. Prayer and Bible reading are cooperative disciplines. Years ago, something dawned on me.

I don't remember where I, if I was a pastor yet or not, but I realized that prayer was my opportunity to speak to God. But reading God's word was his opportunity to speak to me. And that became almost like discourse.

I could read his word and that was him speaking to me. And then I could pray to him and that was me speaking to him. And that's how we begin to have a conversation with God. Some people want their conversations with God to be some kind of mystical.

God speaks through something. Well, he does speak through something. He speaks through his word. It's a joke, but it's not a joke. You want to hear God's word? Read the Bible. If you want to hear God speak out loud, read it out loud.

Because that's his word. So you may pray about the case then when you get God. Yeah, yeah.

When you're, yeah. And again, you're asking the Holy Spirit to be with you in your study. You know, what does 1 Corinthians tell us? It tells us this is spiritually discerned. The information in this book does not come to the unregenerate, that they can study it and they can pull facts from the Bible, but they will not pull the spiritual meaning, the truth out of this.

And even if they pull the right meaning, they won't be able to apply that meaning to themselves. So you're asking the Spirit of God to be your teacher. You know, that's what we're told. You know, I hold the position of teacher, but I really don't.

I'm a facilitator of information. The Holy Spirit is the teacher. And if you are going to learn anything, it's because the Spirit's going to apply that information. I'm just a mouthpiece and hopefully a useful one, right?

So reading prayerfully. Next five, read imaginatively. Now I want to throw a word on the board. I talked about this in my last sermon, actually two sermons ago. And the word is, oh, I knew I was going to do that.

Spelt it wrong. Sometimes when you're writing on a whiteboard, things just sort of look weird. I-A-L-L-Y. And the word is existentially. Existentially. Now, you've probably heard of the philosophy called existentialism.

That is not what I'm endorsing. But existentially means that when we read the text, we read the text remembering that the people that we are reading about within the text literally existed at a point in time and in a place in space, they existed.

Like I mentioned this when I taught on Genesis 22. Genesis 22, I waited for years to preach on this because I started Genesis back in 2018. And here it is 2021 and I'm only in chapter 21. I got to chapter 22 two weeks ago and I was so excited to preach the text because when I read Genesis 22, I try as best as I can to put myself in my sanctified imagination into the footsteps of Abraham.

As he is told, take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, onto the mountain that I will show you and sacrifice him there. And it says in the very next verse, there was no argument. God did not barter for the life of his son or Abraham did not barter for the life of his son like he did for Sodom.

You remember when God said he was gonna destroy Sodom? He said, well, maybe if there's 50 there or 45 or 40 all the way down to 10. But in this moment, it didn't say that he bartered for the life of his son, but rather it says he rose early the next morning and he cut the wood and he saddled his donkey and he took his servants and they left and they walked for three days until they arrived at the mountain where the sacrifice was going to take place.

For three days, Abraham watched his son who probably was a young teenager at that time, run and go back and forth around the donkey and go and pick up a rock and say, look dad at this rock that I found.

For three days, he watched his son take a breath and expel a breath and smile and laugh and hug him and sleep next to him for three days, knowing that on the third day, he was going to take his knife and he was going to run it across his throat and kill him on the altar.