WWUTT 1620 Q&A Sunday School Lessons, Expository Preaching, and Understanding the Text

Expository Preaching and the Word of Christ

How can you prepare a good Sunday school lesson? Should preaching in the church be topical or expository? And how do we understand the main meaning of a text? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Visit our website at www .wtt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. So let's start here in Ephesians chapter four, verses 29 to 32, because I gave this passage to somebody today, so it was on my mind. All right. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed so that it will give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has graciously forgiven you. That's awesome. Thanks for joining us today. Bye-bye. That's it.

There you go. That's the message. There's your Bible lesson for today. And it pretty much sums it up. A good reminder for every day. Oh yeah. That we keep control of our tongues. Even the things that we write or type.

Or think. Yeah, thinking even, having a mind that is submitted to Christ. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. As Jesus said, when we are called to worship God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, your mouth and the fingers that you use to text the things you text or post on social media, all of that is attached.

Yeah, or write emails. Writing emails. Who does that? That's old school. Yeah, right. You just send a video chat to somebody now. Who's even writing email anymore. I still prefer writing email.

I still prefer letters and cards. I wanna have

Things that you can hold in your hand. Yeah, well, that's good too. I also, I just want one place where I can go and get my messages. I hate having five social media accounts and I have to check all of them.

That's why I have so many emails. I gave up on that. Well, you need to have one email address.

Well, I have one email address, but that's multiple things to check. So, I've given up.

Well, your email inbox has 50 ,000 emails in it.

No, it has more.

Yeah, I was gonna say, that's probably low-balling. That's low. But anyway, back to the point. Anyway, yes. Yeah, that's right. Poor people have a heart attack. That as we share and communicate with one another, even in the words that we're saying to each other, may they be honoring to God.

Yes. And speaking of email and all of that. Yes. On Friday, we respond to emails from the listeners and you can send those emails to one place. One email address. What is it? When we understand the text at gmail .com.

Now, we've got a contest going on right now. We're giving away an R .C. Sproul book.

Ooh, which one? Well, it's a couple of them.

Oh, even better. Holiness of God and what's that other one up there? Saved from what? That's what it was. So, either, no, not holiness of God, chosen by God. Oh, I was gonna say. It's either gonna be chosen by God or saved from what?

You can specify in your email which one you want. If we read your email next week, it's next week's podcast, which today is the 11th, so we're talking the 18th. On next week's podcast, if we read your question, you win the R .C. Sproul book.

You'll get it from us in the mail. I'm clearing off some duplicates off my shelf. And I had several copies of those two books. So, either one, you'll receive if we read your question next week. Now, be sure to include your name and address.

I'm getting enough emails now that I'm not gonna hunt you down. And I've already received a couple from somebody going, I'm entering the contest, but they don't have a name and address attached. Oh, that hurts.

You have to remember your name and your mailing address, because if we read your question,.

Then I'm just gonna throw it in a package and drop it in the mail. And it's something that you can hold in your hand. That's right. See, we're back to the hold in your hand and the email. Not digital communication.

You've got the words of R .C. Sproul right there on a book in front of you, yeah. That's awesome. So, whatever question you wanna ask, anything theological at all, as we respond to your Bible questions, it could be about something you've heard on the podcast.

It could be about something that has been in a Sunday school lesson that you heard over the weekend or whatever else. Just a general Bible question that you have. Send it to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Include your name and address. And we'll do our best to answer it. That's correct. We'll do our best. Your response to the question might be, I don't know. Yep, it might. But I read it. I read the question on the air, so you still get the book.

Even if I didn't know the answer to your question. So, all of the questions that I'm reading today, all of these, I think, were sent prior to the contest. They didn't have any names and address or not a mailing address attached to it in a way.

So, these questions have been sent in by our listeners. And this first one comes from Susanna in New York. Do you recognize that name? I do. Yep, so she says, Pastor Gabe and Becky, ahhhhhhhhh! I think that's how you say that.

I don't know. I don't know. Well, she puts in parentheses, that's an excited ah. Oh, okay. So, ahhhhhh! Yeah, or okay, sure. That sounded less guttural than mine did. It did, yes, yes. So, she said, you have absolutely made my year and it's still only February.

When I wrote my email about where a Christian could turn for trustworthy news sources, I was not sure I would even get a response. But not only did you answer my question on the Q &A, it was the basis for an interview with Brian and Megan Basham, whom I just discovered and love.

Oh, good. I felt like I was in the same hangout with you all. Actually, a Zoom call. It was.

It was a Zoom. Well, I was hanging out. Yeah. They were hanging out a few states away. I don't think I've ever done hangouts before. Is that Google?

Is it Google Hangouts? I think so. I'm not advertising for those companies. Google Duo, I don't know about Hangouts. They're not paying us to push their stuff. Don't even look it up. Why are you looking it up?

I'm curious now. I'll put it away. So, she says, I've already listened to the interview twice. Aww. And I'm sharing it with everyone in my family. Thank you so much. That's awesome. Good deal. It was great to visit with Brian and Megan.

Oh, it was so great. Really neat to get to know them. Now, the funny thing about that was what you heard last week was 45 minutes of chatting. Becky already can't contain herself. Sorry. There was an additional 58 minutes of chatter in the whole recording.

An additional, that was not part of.

That was all the talk we were doing before and after. And even when we were chatting like 20 or 30 minutes beforehand, I was going, guys, we could be putting this on, the program, let's get it together.

No, then we chatted for another five or 10 minutes. We did, yes. So, great couple. One of those that was like, you know, wish we lived closer, we'd go out and do something together. Totally. Something like that, yeah.

It would be awesome. But great to hear about what it is that they're doing in their respective journalistic corners. Yeah.

And it's also a good encouragement to Christians that we can go out into different fields and like media, for instance, and still be true to our commitment to God. Our convictions. Yes. And our convictions, yes.

Right.

We need more of that. We do. We need more Christians in those areas. Yes, definitely. So, anyway, all of that was really good. If you missed any of that, go and listen to last week's Q &A. It was awesome.

It was our pleasure, Susanna. Thank you for your question. Yes. Thank you for the excuse. That's right. Because even when we put something like that together, I mean, I'm not the best with coming up with questions.

Like, what do you want to talk about? All the random chatter that we did before and after, that's usually what we do. Yes. It doesn't typically have a direction. Yeah.

You know, we just like to chat. Yeah. That's it.

So, yeah, if somebody else sends an email sometime and I go, you know, I know somebody who might be able to answer that, we'll throw another interview together. That'd be awesome. You never know. I've been wanting to get Justin Peters on.

Oh, that'd be so cool. And I already know what I want to talk about. So what is the evidence that we look for for genuine repentance? Because it was a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, it was back in 2019 when Kanye West came up with his Jesus album, Jesus is King.

And everybody was going, oh, Kanye West is a Christian now. He's clearly not. He's in an open relationship with another woman, which means they can just kind of be out with other people. No, that's not okay.

Nothing of his lifestyle looks like a Christian. And yet when Justin said three years ago, back in 2019, when he said, we need to be careful about this because there is no evidence in his life that he's a believer, man, the response to him was just so angry.

They were, they were livid. And yet Justin was right. He was right about Todd White, who was not really repentant when he said he was. Justin was right about Benny Hinn, who claimed to repent and he had not really repented.

So I think it would be a good conversation. Definitely. How do we know, how do we identify? He has that good discernment. That's right, he does. How do we identify if somebody is truly repentant? What should we be looking for?

I'll set that up with Justin. We'll see if we can That'd be so cool. Get him on the program. Yeah. This next question comes from Richard in Indiana. Dear Pastor Gabe, I have been enjoying your Sunday school lessons through the book of Ruth.

I am a Sunday school teacher myself. I teach an adult class in my church. I heard you say that most of the classes are doing the same thing. So yeah, the classes here at First Baptist Lyndale are, we're teaching the same book, going through the same book.

We don't do it that way, Richard says, and it's incumbent upon me to pick my own series and write out my own lessons every single week. My question is, how do you prepare your Sunday school lessons? Is it any different than the way that you prepare your sermons?

That's a good question. So yeah, it is different than the way that I prepare my sermons. Definitely. So there are some sermons where I'll go into the pulpit with no notes except for the quotes or cross references that I'm using.

But when I do my Sunday school lessons, they're completely written out. And then I ignore what I wrote when I teach the lesson. If I follow what I wrote, I'll get lost. That's part of the problem. And Sunday school is a lot more interactive.

So it's not like when I'm preaching a sermon, I can stay on thought and just follow the text, follow the flow of the sermon and not get off. But with Sunday school, because I'm being more interactive and people are kind of responding with questions or comments and they can interrupt me at any time with a question, then that's gonna interrupt my flow of thought.

And I will get lost in the manuscript, in the lesson that I've written out if that's what I'm following. So I don't follow the script when I'm teaching, but I know exactly what I'm teaching because I've already written the whole thing out.

Right. So it's not like, yeah, I'm gonna write all of this and then I'm gonna ignore it and teach my own thing.

It's not like I'm going with that. Essentially, I've noticed that when you prepare some stuff for either or, for both sermon and Bible study, that you prepare way too much and you have to dwindle it down.

Yeah, it's over prepared. Multiple times. And so you have a good feel for and knowledge of, even if it does go on a rabbit trail down a different direction than what you were intending, you still, like you were planning on covering six verses, but you only covered three because of the deep thought that went into that.

And everybody was reactive to that. Yeah, because I was over prepared. Right. Right. Now, when. But it's, I mean, like you're more able to flow with the, I don't wanna say audience, but the people in the Bible study.

Right. Versus up on a sermon, you know, in a sermon when you're up on stage, you don't.

I probably try to tune everybody out when I'm preaching. Yeah. So like, I'm not even really reading the crowd. Right. You've heard that expression, read the room. I'm not even doing that. I'm up there preaching to honor the Lord.

There's a different approach to preaching the sermon than when I do the Sunday school lesson. Plus with the sermon, I've run through the whole thing Saturday night. So I went through all of it the night before, but then even on Sunday morning, as I'm continuing to reflect upon those things, yeah, there may be something else that comes to mind that ends up stretching it out a little bit more.

Like Becky said, I always go into the pulpit over-prepared, but I feel like I'm under-prepared. That's part of the reason why. So it's kind of like I'm up there to preach an hour and a half sermon and I come away with 45 minutes, then I did pretty good, you know.

I don't manuscript out my sermons, kind of for the same reason, is I'm afraid I'm gonna get lost. It tends to get me off if I feel like I have to read and even the genuineness of my delivery, I feel like gets lost.

It does. You have a different tone when you're reading versus when you're talking. But I'm also not going into the pulpit blind, you know, like I've not done anything, I've not prepared anything, but which is why I run through it the night before.

Now with the Sunday school lesson, I have taught through it before I teach my Sunday school class. We get together with our teachers on Wednesday night and we go through the entire lesson. We spend an hour together going through the whole lesson, exactly what I've written out, taking questions, comments, other elders chime in.

We've got at least three elders, three other elders apart from me in that room when we go through the Sunday school lessons. So this has brought our Sunday school classes at First Baptist Lyndale under elder leadership and not just mine, but even other elders that serve at the church.

I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's wonderful, yeah. And even though Tom is not part of those classes, Tom Buck, because he's got another class that he teaches on Wednesday night, but he sees the lessons.

So this really is an eldership effort. We've put all of this together, guided our teachers so that all of the teaching and all of the classes basically have had eldership approval, if that makes sense.

So with the Sunday school lesson, yeah, it's a little bit different. And the way that I'll present it to the class, if you've been listening to the Ruth study when it gets published on Sunday, you'll hear me kind of, I'll read through the text, I'll give you an outline, which is a little different than the way that I do it in a sermon.

I don't often do that in the sermon. I don't give it out. Sometimes I'll say, like, you can see how the text divides and that's how we're gonna approach this today. Right. Our first point is, you know, these couple of verses, the next one's gonna be these three.

Now, when I do that in the Sunday school class though, I'll bring the class into here's our central proposition, meaning here's the point of this text that we're looking at. So I lay that out at the very beginning.

And then everything that we look at points back to the main purpose of the text, this passage today. So we'll be talking about that even as we go through it. And then when we get to the end, summarizing all that again.

So now do you see how this text points to this?

So how do you get to that point that you know that the text is that? Like, isn't he asking your approach to?

How do you prepare your Sunday school lessons? Right. Now, okay, so you're asking, like, how do you know that that's the central proposition of the text? Sure. Because I get lost a lot. Hold on to that thought.

Because we actually got another question coming up here. There we go. That I think that one will go better with than the preparing the Sunday school lesson. So when I go into, well, not go into the pulpit, but come to the stand with the lesson that I have prepared, I'll follow my outline, but I'm not following the manuscript that I wrote.

The other thing with regard to the manuscript of the Sunday school lesson is I have questions that are written in there for other people in other Sunday school classes to ask and answer. And so different classes may expect different things.

Like there's some classes, they want a handout. They don't just want to sit there and listen to a lecture. But there are other classes that they don't want anything. We don't want to ask questions. We don't want to write anything down.

We're just here to learn. We'll be interactive, you know, whatever. But they don't have any extra, don't want any extra materials. So they don't get the handout. But those classes that do, I've got blanks in there.

So as they're going through the lesson, they can fill that out. There's a margin on the side if they want to keep some extra notes and things like that. So I've written that out. I've tried to cater the lesson to different classes' needs.

And that's another reason why I can't follow my own manuscript, because it's completely different than the way I teach. I'm trying to cater the manuscript to all the teachers rather than just me. Just you.

Yeah. But at least I've written it out. We've talked it out before I ever even come to teach it on a Sunday morning. And then this past lesson, if you were listening to the Ruth study this past Sunday, you'll notice that I didn't even get to the end of it.

So I had the text broken up into three sections. We got through the first two. And now this coming Sunday, I'm gonna have to finish that third one, which is really short. It's just resolution to that part of the story.

But nonetheless, I went down to the last minute. I had no extra time. Ran out of time. Yeah, and it was because we were talking about some other things, things that were not in the recording. You know, we take prayer requests and things like that at the start of class.

So all of that at the beginning of class kind of ate up time and I didn't have enough time at the conclusion there. But that's kind of another example of, you know, coming into the teaching over prepared and then just not being able to get everything into the lesson like I needed to.

That's another reason why I wanna make the central proposition known at the start of the lesson. Like the main point of the text, I wanna make that known at the start. And not save it for the end. Yeah, say we start discussing something about the text and we get hung up on that idea.

And everybody's asking questions. That's where my brain goes all the time. And I've even prepared some, you know? Like prepared some, not Sunday school, but like women's studies and stuff like that, you know, going through a book of the Bible or whatever.

And I still, I have to go to you constantly because I'm like, I don't get it. Help me put into words what I'm thinking. Like, I know what I'm trying to say, but I can't get there.

So when we start talking about those kinds of things and we'll rabbit trail, you know, or a certain concept in the text. Maybe I didn't even think that this was gonna be a discussion point. And then it does, you know, it becomes something that the class is asking questions about, then we don't get to the end.

And I haven't resolved the, I haven't gotten to the point yet, guys, you know? So that's why you make the point known in the beginning. And then you keep bringing it up as you go. So you see how this is the theme, you see how this keeps coming up, you know, things like that.

That's what you're doing as you go through the lesson so that you're not left at the end trying to scramble and bring everything together when you don't have enough time, you know? So yeah, the preparation for a Sunday school lesson is gonna be a little bit different than the preparation for a sermon.

That was it. Okay. I don't have any more. Any other questions or comments about that? That's the way I end my classes. Yeah, every time. Any questions or comments? So let's go on to our next question then.

So now I'm skipping down, but this ties into the question that you asked. How do you find that central proposition? How do you get there? Okay, now we're gonna move from Sunday school class lesson to expository preaching.

Okay. All right? So Jason from Illinois, that was Richard from Indiana. We're jumping over a state to Jason from Illinois. He says, could you please shed some light on the importance of expository style preaching?

Possibly share the differences between topical expository and whatever other styles are out there. Should your church sermons be all expository style or should there be a balance of both styles? Thank you for your ministry.

My response to that question is every single sermon should be expository. Definitely. There should not be topical sermons. Now, having said that, somebody's going, what? What if we want to address marriage this Sunday?

Well, then you address marriage, but you be sure that whatever text is being preached is being preached with expository disciplines because otherwise you're ripping that text out of context and trying to fit it into a framework that you've already preconceived instead of treating the text for what the original author was saying to the original audience.

Even if you're making a cross-reference,.

So, hold on a second. Okay. Let's back up a little bit and explain what expository means just in case people don't know.

So, expository means just what the word sounds like. It means to expose what's in the text. So, your main discipline when you preach expository is to understand what the original author was saying to the original audience.

Okay. That's first. Okay. That's the first thing you're asking in your mind. Who is this by? Who's writing? Who's reading this? So, you follow what we refer to as travel instructions. Okay. Yeah. Just like you've got a roadmap and you're gonna follow the map, you're not jumping straight to New York.

You got to plot your way to New York, right? Sure. So, it's same with when you're writing a text. Well, I guess Susanna, who we read from earlier, she doesn't have to plot her way to New York. She's in New York.

Anyway. Anyway. Keep going. So, you have to just, the same with any lesson that you prepare. And this goes for Sunday school or this goes for sermon. You need to know how you're gonna get there. So, you're plotting out, understanding the main point of the text, plotting out how you're gonna get there.

Even when it comes to pointing to Christ in the cross and then how you find modern application. You don't jump straight to modern application because then you've just taken the sermon and you've made it moralism.

And how do you know that you are even drawing the point out of that text that the original writer intended or that the Holy Spirit himself intends? Right. If you're reading stories about David and Goliath and you're like, all your problems are Goliath and you're David, you know, then you've completely missed the point of the text.

Right. Let's skip that. That's not the meaning of that story. So, the first thing is understanding, exposing the meaning of the text. Right. Another word we use for that is exegesis, which means to draw out the original meaning.

Now, the contrast to that is eisegesis, which means to impose upon the text what you want it to say. So, we're not trying Yeah, and that happens so much. A lot. That's a great majority of teaching.

So, we're not trying to understand what the text is saying. We're just trying to find a verse that fits with what we want it to go with. So, one of the most recent videos that I did, what videos was the Purpose Driven Life?

Yes. It's been 20 years now since the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren came out back in 2002. Oh my goodness. And one of the things that he does throughout that book is eisegesis. So, he's got a point and then he goes and just finds, he goes to find a verse that fits his point and he looks through multiple translations.

So, he finds the wording of that verse even that fits the point that he's making. Man. And I cannot even remember an article that I've read from Rick Warren where he was not eisegeting. Everything I've ever read from Rick Warren, whether it's in that book, in another book, Purpose Driven Church is another book of his that I've read, or any of his articles that he writes.

I think it's pastors .com is his website. Any of those articles, they're all eisegetical. He's always constantly taking verses out of context to fit his point. Me, me, me. Yeah, me, me, me, I, I, I, or you, you, you, just making it about you.

And it's infuriating. I mean, to see somebody treat the text that way. Sure, right. Because he's talking about you. I can make the Bible into a fortune cookie. Yes. You just pick all these verses out and.

And that's the hard part is whenever you're teaching children specifically, you have to make sure that their minds are wrapped around that God is not a genie. He's not a fortune cookie. It's not the same.

There's a big difference. Your wish is my command. Right. And your prayers should not reflect that. So that's, I mean, that's hard, but that's where a lot of Rick Warren-like people.

Tend to go to. Yeah. So we've been talking about Sunday school and sermons, but even when it comes to children's lessons, or even when it comes to the Bible study you're hosting in your home, whatever it might happen to be, in all of these things, you have to practice the same disciplines.

Yes. Drawing out the meaning of the text, not imposing upon it what you want it to mean. Right. We all have to be disciplined in this way, in the way that we handle the Bible. So that's the first thing regarding expository preaching.

Now we've got expository workshops. Yes. That we do through G3. The next one is coming up just in the days, the couple of days prior to the Shepherds Conference in California. So ShepCon, let's see, I leave to go to ShepCon Sunday, March 6th.

So I think the workshop is, is it Tuesday and Wednesday? I don't know. See, now I'm just talking off the top of my head and I'm gonna get it wrong. I think so. Oh, it's in this book I'm holding. Hang on, let me see.

Oh, hey. Yeah, I bet you it's right here. January, nope, that's not it. It is, January was in Arkansas. March 7th and 8th. So there you go. Yeah, I get there, I get to California on Sunday. Oh. Sunday evening.

Monday? Right, our first day is Monday. So March 7th and 8th, Santa Clarita Baptist Church, which is the pre-Shepherds Conference Pastors Workshop. There you go. Okay, so this is all, it's G3 that puts this together.

This is right ahead of the Shepherds Conference. So it's kind of like we're getting pastors that are coming in for ShepCon and then they're just coming in a little bit earlier so they can attend this expository workshop.

And then we pour into these pastors over a couple of days. These disciplines to use when it comes to sermon preparation. And a lot of these guys will say they have never known this before. Oh yeah, I bet.

Yeah, they went through seminary, probably even went through six years of seminary, got their doctorates and nobody ever taught them about expository preaching. And I hear this, I've heard this for years, not just when I got involved in these expository workshops, but I've heard for years pastors say to me, I went and got all this theology knowledge, I learned the languages, Hebrew and Greek, nobody ever really taught me how to preach a sermon.

Yeah.

I mean, everybody has their own approach. Is it difficult to teach someone else how to do that?

Once you learn these disciplines, you're actually gonna find it much, much easier to do your sermon preparation than you ever thought. So when you do it correctly. Yeah, right, exactly. So let me just kind of run through briefly the instructions.

The five main courses that we give in these expository workshops. All right. So number one, we call this first instruction, yield to the text. Okay. Text over framework, the text is king. So when we say text over framework, it means you need to understand the text without imposing upon it, you know.

Not letting it fit in your box. Right, yeah, exactly. Like you're bringing your own preconceived notions to the text or even certain lenses that you might look through. One thing that you're hearing right now that is very, very common is people taking their cultural experiences and trying to read those things onto the text.

That's a framework. Right. And you're losing the meaning of the text when you're trying to impose that onto what the Bible says. Definitely. A person who lives in Africa should be able to read the same Bible that a person does who lives in Europe and still come to the same meaning.

Yeah, definitely. The text only has one meaning. So you yield to the text. It's text over framework. Now, not all frameworks are bad. You know, the fact that you call yourself reformed or a reformed Baptist, you know, that's the camp that I'm in.

That's not bad. But you still wanna be sure that when you're reading the text, you're not trying to make that text fit even into your own reformed framework. Because how do you know that text even matches up with this reform doctrine that you're trying to fit it into?

Right. Maybe it's the wrong text for that doctrine. You know what I mean?

And you always like put a spin on it or a filter. You know what I mean? Yeah, something like that. Like filter it through your brain and it comes out differently than what somebody else would read. So you yield to the text.

That's number one. Number two is what we refer to as travel instructions. Our first instinct is to go directly from the biblical text and apply it to our modern audience. Sure. Application. That's what you're here for, right?

You came here to hear me tell you, here's what the Bible says about your circumstance or your situation. Here's what God says that you need to do about that, right? Yes. But we'll never rightly understand what the text means to us today unless we first understand what it meant to its original audience.

And we must keep in mind too that a text can't ever mean something to us now that it did not mean to them then. So what it meant to them 2 ,000 years ago in the church to whom this was written has to mean what it means to us now.

Now that doesn't mean that's the application. The application of course is gonna be different. We live in a different world, a different culture, a different society than they lived in 2 ,000 years ago.

So the text may have 10 ,000 applications but there's only one interpretation and you have to get that interpretation correct. So even going back to Richard's question about preparing a Sunday school lesson, you should not ever preach or teach a book that you have not read all the way through.

You have to read that book of the Bible. No matter what your text is that you're teaching, you need to read that book so you know the context of the whole book. You know who the author was, who he was writing to and why.

Now sometimes that's pretty clear. Like for example, you know that Habakkuk for example is talking to God because of the Chaldeans and the way that they are persecuting God's people, oppressing God's people and Habakkuk's going, now hang on here, the Chaldeans are way worse than we were.

Yeah, we were bad but why are you letting the Chaldeans get away with this? So you understand why Habakkuk, right from the beginning of the book, you know what Habakkuk's talking about. The Gospel of John, it says in John 20, I've written these things to you that you may know that Jesus is the Christ.

Right. By faith in his name, you would be saved. So John plainly lays out, here's why I'm writing this book. And that's been the theme that's carried out. You know, he said that at the beginning of the book as well, just drives the point home when he gets to the end.

Even in 1 John 5, I've written these things to you that you may know that you have eternal life. So again, sometimes it's plain, sometimes it's clear, here's the meaning of the text but you have to read the whole text in order to get that.

Yeah. With John, he sticks it at the very end. There you go. So, how could you And therefore. How could you have gotten it if you hadn't read through the entire book, right? So that's the other thing.