11 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Investigation

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity's School of Biblical Harmonetics. We are glad that you are out with us. We're glad to have you as students. Glad that you pay attention each week for those of you that actually do pay attention.

We have some that I think just like to be in the chat room while we're going live and who knows what they're doing in there. But, a good thing I can't see what goes on, the antics that they play as students.

You know, nowadays when they have, you know, you pass notes in school, now it's like you pass chat room notes, you know. You don't pay attention at all. I mean, really. Come on. Anyway, we're glad for those who are joining.

For those who are brand new students, we are glad to have you with us. If you have your syllabus with you, that's one of the things you get when you enroll at the website down there to our School of Biblical Harmonetics specifically, but the Striving for Eternity Academy.

We have right now two classes. We'll have more as we go on, but right now we have two. The two right now are the School of Biblical Harmonetics that you can see right there, and the other is the one on Systematic Theology.

Why Hermeneutics Matters for Interpreting Scripture

That's the second school that we'll be getting back to shortly, but why is the study of Harmonetics, which is the art and science of interpretation, why is this such an important thing? Well, here would be why.

Want to read to you an email that we got here at the ministry today and a response that we had gotten to indicate this. Some of you may be aware that there was a conference recently called the Strange Fire Conference, where they dealt with some of the issues of the charismatic movement and speaking in tongues.

Different people come down differently on those issues, but what you end up seeing is we had in our newsletter, if you get our newsletter, that is, you see that we basically linked this to a couple articles on there, and so here's, I'm just trying to find the email here, because this really helps us to see why this is important of an issue for us to be studying out.

Because here's what the issue is. Someone basically tried to disagree with us on the views that we take on how to interpret the scriptures with regards to whether tongues have ceased or not, and the issue that this person said when I expressed following the principles of interpretation and saying that we do need to follow principles so that we can know whether we're having a right understanding of what God's Word says.

That's really what our heart desire should be, is that we would want to make sure that we're right in regards to what God's Word actually says and not what we kind of want it to say or think it's going to say or what our experience makes it say.

So this individual who's arguing that tongues have not ceased, when I gave him an outline from the scriptures of what scripture says on this and where we should be understanding this and how we should be approaching this and having an interpretation, he tried to say that there was no clear interpretation, that I wasn't correct in mine, but here was why he said it.

Because basically his main issue is this. His issue is that he's saying that he experiences this, therefore it's right. That's really what it comes down to. But he says when it comes to the interpretations, he said that I need to, quote, stop following principles, or sorry, instead of following the principles of interpretation or any degree that you may have, you should follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit to interpret for you.

Now what he's doing there is it sounds very spiritual when someone says something like that. Oh, let the Holy Spirit lead you in an interpretation. My response was actually, well, the Holy Spirit has led me through the study of the scriptures to reveal that you're wrong.

Now how can you say that I'm wrong, which is what he's going to try to argue? Because if he argues I'm wrong, I was led by the Spirit. Now either the Holy Spirit is contradicting himself, or one of us is claiming blasphemy because one of us is wrong and saying it's from the Holy Spirit.

Now I couched mine to say that the Spirit led me through what? Through the study of the scriptures. He's ignoring that when a passage of scripture doesn't agree with what he says, jettison that and go right to what I feel.

Feelings is a horrible way to interpret the scriptures. Many people actually do it. This is the biggest area where we have problems in Christianity is that people are not putting the time in, being diligent to, and studying the principles that are required to interpretation.

I don't mind if someone disagrees with me, never at all. Just disagree with me and come to me with scripture, but to take a passage out of context, to make it mean something that the passage doesn't mean, that's not impressive.

That's not going to convince me. Why? Because I'm looking to be convinced by God in His Word. This is what I hope that you guys will do as students here. That you would put aside personal preferences and experiences to see what scripture actually says.

I actually was involved in the charismatic movement and came out of it because of the fact that I actually studied the scriptures and put my views aside to see what scripture says and discovered that what I was being taught wasn't exactly right.

And that's what brought me to realize that I needed to make some changes with what I believed. And I'm always willing to do that if convinced by scripture and scripture alone. Someone else's experience is not going to be very convincing.

And if you are going to interpret the Bible and say, well this is what the Bible means because this is what I experience or how I want it to mean, then you're going to, you may be right once in a while, but a lot of times you're probably going to be wrong because you're probably going to be using your flesh to interpret scripture and not the Holy Spirit.

So when people say that they're being led by the Spirit more often than not, they're not. That's the problem when people argue and say, well they can't be wrong because the Spirit led them. Well, the Spirit wouldn't lead you to interpret the Word of God against the principles of language.

He used language. He's not going to have you believe something that is opposite to intended meaning. So when a Bible says that something will cease, it doesn't mean that it won't cease. You know? And it doesn't mean that, well, we just need to understand this in light of some other passage that explains something totally unrelated but uses the same word.

That's not what we do either. That's what makes this so important. It makes this important because so many people will say, thus says the Lord, when that's not what the Lord says. And to credit to the Holy Spirit, or not really credit, but to say the Holy Spirit has said something that the Holy Spirit has not said, is not a place that I would want to be.

That's why we have to be careful and diligent, okay? It's the diligent worker that rightly divides the Word of God. Not someone that just comes to the Bible casually, okay? So I say that to say this is why these lessons are so important.

Investigation Before Interpretation

Now in today's class, we are continuing with our keys to interpretation. Now the last two lessons, we looked at identification, the importance of identifying the type of literature that we have before us, whether it's a historical narrative which will be interpreted differently than poetry or wisdom literature or letters of instruction.

They all have their own set of rules of how you're going to interpret those as their specific type of literature. Now this week, we're going to look at investigation. It's going to be a big one for this week is investigation.

And then the next weeks, we'll look at interpretation and then implementation. Now what I said in the beginning of class is really what you see here. The first thing we want to do is identify what type of literature.

Then what we're looking at today, we want to start investigating things before we ever get to the interpretation. And the last thing we do is implementation. But a lot of people start with that last one.

They start applying the Word of God and because this is what they experience, they say, well, this is what God's Word means, therefore this passage must mean this because that's what I experience. Not good.

This week, we're going to look at five important questions, five important questions, the most important questions you can ask during the investigation of the Word of God. There's nothing new here. There's nothing earth shattering.

There's some that I remember learning when I took a class in journalism. But how to investigate a story. We're going to learn five quick questions that you can ask with every passage of Scripture. Not all of them will have answers, but it is very important.

You want to have an understanding of God's Word? This is the second most important thing you can learn. What was the first? Well, we dealt with that some time ago and it was the importance of context, context, context.

If you remember the importance of reading the passage in its context, its literary context, historical context, cultural context, you read it in that form, you're going to answer a lot of things. But when you look into what we're going to look at today and you look at these five questions that we're going to ask and you read through a text that you're studying, and as you read through a number of times you'll see these different questions that you can ask yourself, you're going to see how helpful it is.

If you want, we actually have, if you email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, we'll email you a sheet that we have to help with your study. It basically is just a one page sheet that you can put the passage of Scripture that you want to study and it asks these five questions and it has spaces for you to fill in just so you get in the habit of practicing it.

But you'll see that you can take a regular sheet of paper and you can do it yourself as well. You want to, when you read different portions of Scripture like this to investigate, it's helpful sometimes to read in several different versions.

If possible, you want to read through the different versions and like I said, you want to take this, you want to write down some of the significant answers to these questions to find some helpful ways in this study.

What Is Happening in the Text?

Now, what are the questions? Well, the first question that you want to ask yourself with any text of Scripture is what? Yeah, that's the question, what, not what's the question, what. We're not playing who's on first, what's on second.

This is not what's on second, okay. This is what. What is going on? You want to identify the theme, the key themes, events, any of the key indicators to the structure of the text. Now, you want to look for reoccurring words, things like the word ungodly that shows the word ungodly.

It shows up in the book of Jude. Some phrases like in Romans, in the King James, they'll say God forbid very often. Addressing specific groups such as in Ephesians, it talks about husbands and wives and children, you know, employees, employers or slave master, we'd understand today as employee, employer.

You want to note Old Testament quotations in the New Testament. Now, let me show you where this can be very helpful. Maybe if you've done your devotions, you said, you know, I'm going to start by reading the Word of God.

I'm going to read the Word of God. I'm going to start with Genesis. Oh, Genesis is pretty good, entertaining, I enjoy reading it. You then get to Exodus and, you know, there's a lot going on, a lot of drama.

And then you get to that, oh, Leviticus, oh, that one, you know, it just doesn't seem to sit well, does it? All these rules, hmm. Let me start by just, just take a look, see if you can maybe see something that's somewhat repetitive in the book of Leviticus and see if you could figure out what maybe is going on in Leviticus and what it's about.

Now, just an idea, as you go through the first several chapters, I'm not going to go through all of those, but if you go through the first several chapters, you're going to see certain words like cleanse, pure, or derivatives of that showing up very often.

The cleansing, purity, holy, those appear quite often. Then you get in verse 18 where now the book is going to shift and you tell me if you could figure out the purpose of this book, I'm going to just read to you individual portions of verses or full verses, but I want you to realize, son, I'm not going to repeat any of them.

Every time is going to be a new verse, okay? So I'm not repeating a verse, I'm not repeating like Leviticus 18 .1 and then I'm coming back to 18 .1. No, it's like 1, it's 2, it's 3, it's just going to be, I'm saying that because you may think I'm actually making this up, but grab your Bible, start in Leviticus 18, go to the end of the book and you see how many times you have these phrases start showing up.

You just stop me when you kind of figure out what the theme is, okay, because it may be a little bit, it may take you some time. But here's what it says, I am the Lord your God, that's in 18 verse 2. And I'm not going to read all of them, I may skip over, but 18 verse 4, I am the Lord your God.

Verse 6, I am the Lord. I'll stop giving the quotation numbers, but you figure out if you can figure this out. I am the Lord, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord, I am the Lord.

Have you gotten any repetition yet? Maybe not. Okay, let's just keep going because I'm not even out of chapter 18 yet. Oh sorry, I'm in 19. I am the Lord, chapter 20, let's look at there. I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord, I am the Lord.

Huh, he seems to be repeating something. What do you think Leviticus is about? Do you think maybe, just maybe, the Lord's trying to tell you something? Hey, I got all these rules, first half of the book, it's all about cleansing and purity, all these rules that you gotta keep and people go, you know, all the atheists go, look at these rules.

They don't even understand the purpose of the rules. What are the purpose of the rules? Second half of the book. So we would realize who God is. He's not us. God is God, not us. We follow the rules, you know why?

Because he is the Lord. He is the Lord God. We are the creation. We're the creatures. We are not the ones who make the rules. I know, I know, some people act like they do. But God is the Lord. That's basically what he's trying to say.

He's trying to set things in order so we realize he is the Lord. That's what's going on. That's the what. We see that when we see the repetition. Maybe this will help when next time you do your devotions going from book to book all the way through and read every book of the Bible in a year maybe.

But when you get to Leviticus, maybe this will help you have a fresher way of looking through Leviticus. Because Leviticus has a lot of repetition in there. And when you start noticing that, you kind of see what is going on in the book.

What's going on? He's trying to say he is the Lord. He's the Lord our God. And he's trying to let us know that. That's the what. That's the first question to ask yourself. You want to ask yourself, what?

What's going on? What are the events? What's happening here? Not every passage will have an answer to all these questions. A lot of them, the larger the passage that you take, the more you're going to get to answer these.

And you may get more things that are going on. If you're looking through the book of Exodus, you're going to have a lot of what's if you go through that whole book. Or Genesis, a lot of things are going on there.

So you may want to look at it from a big picture. But then you're going to want to get down into small pictures and figure out the little what's that are going on. Well, after what, we want to ask who?

No, no, no, no. It's not, that's the guy on first base, okay? For those of you who remember that, you know, Abbott and Costello routine, okay? Who's on first? What's on second? Maybe you can figure out what the rest of the players are.

But who? You want to ask here, you want to determine who the writer is. Sometimes that can be important. It's important to understand if you're reading the book of Philemon that Philemon is someone that Paul knows and Paul is writing to Philemon because he's writing about a runaway slave.

And he's basically writing to Philemon saying, look, I know this slave ran away and he was no good to you. He caused you all kinds of problems and he ran away but he came to Christ and he's very valuable to me now.

And I know that having, you know, we think maybe Paul led him to Christ. Now I led you to Christ. Now maybe I led your slave to Christ. He's valuable to you. If there's anything he owes you, put it on my account.

In other words, Paul is appealing to him. You have to understand what's going on there. There's three key individuals. Paul, Philemon, and Onephisus. And you have to understand those three characters, who they are.

That helps in understanding it. That's the who. So understand who the writer is. Who's the recipient or recipients are. Any other characters mentioned in the text you're seeing in Philemon, you see all of that.

You see the who, Paul. You see the recipient, Philemon. You see the other characters, Onephisus. And they're all important, okay? You want to note any other things about their nationalities, their occupation, their family, their character.

Any other significant events that tell you about the individual. In other words, you read the book of Jonah. And in reading Jonah, you come to realize that Jonah is a prophet that tells us about his occupation.

We see he's sent to Nineveh. Well, we can study out and find out who are the Ninevites. Why would Jonah have such a hard time with the Ninevites? Why would he not want to go? Was it just because he was afraid of them for some reason?

There was good reason to be afraid of the Ninevites. If you understand who the Ninevites were, they're pretty wicked people, especially to their enemies. And, oh, by the way, guess what? The folks that were enemies of the Ninevites were, yeah, the Israelites and those of Judah.

So, you see, here you have a prophet of God and he's being sent off to Nineveh. Could he be afraid? Sure, but that's not why he was. He actually gives us the reason. And we're going to see that in the next question.

But we see that he provides the reason that he knew God was merciful and he really didn't like the Ninevites. It tells us something about his character. See, Jonah's character was he knew God's character.

He knew God would forgive these people. And he hated these people. He did not want them being forgiven. And so he acted in a sinful way. He didn't want to go to Nineveh. He ran away. When you understand something about the character of the people, you start to see more of what's going on.

You can read the book of Job and see here's Job with his three, well, they're called friends, but they're really not very good friends. And they're basically, you know, kind of condemning Job and saying, you know, you must have done something really sinful.

We want to scoop. We want to know. You know, inquiring minds want to know. Tell us what you do, you know. And so there's a young man and it says it's because of his youth that he doesn't speak up. For several chapters, they're dialoguing back and forth.

But the young man, because of his youth, it's what you see. You see him. Why didn't he speak up earlier? Well, he gave the reason because he's young. That plays into some of the dynamic of what was going on there.

And so that becomes helpful. So we looked at question number one. You should always be asking yourself what, right? What's going on? What's happening? What are the key indicators? What's the repetitious type of language that we see or repetition type of events that are occurring?

Let me just mention the book of Judges. You see a cycle of events that happen through Judges. And it just keeps happening and happening and happening. You know, there's a time of disobedience. There's someone that comes in.

They start persecuting the people. The people end up crying out to God. God sends a deliverer. The deliverer conquers the people persecuting. And then they kind of fall back into this cycle again where they forget about God and what He did.

They go back into complaining and disobeying and doing what's right in their own eyes. That's the phrase that keeps showing up in that book. So sometimes it's not just one thing, one phrase, but a cycle of things as in Judges where you see a pattern of behavior.

So you want to ask what? You want to ask who? Again, who are the recipients? What's, you know, who's hearing it? When it comes to say the book of Ephesians, you want to study that out to see. You know, it has instructions to husbands, to wives, to parents, to children, to masters, to slaves.

Will those give you good indications of how to interpret these things? We're not going to interpret these things to what applies to a child to the parent. No, the text is telling us who this is for. Okay?

Why the Author Wrote the Book

The third question you want to ask is why? Why? Why did the writer write what he wrote? That's an important question to ask. It's called authorial intent. We'll see that more later. But what did the author intend by what he was saying?

So we want to look for reasons why the author wrote what he wrote. We have that, I mentioned in Jonah, where Jonah says, God, I knew you were a merciful God. You were going to forgive these people, and I just hate them.

I knew you were merciful, and that's why I didn't want to come in the first place. He tells us why he wrote. Okay? You want to look for some reasons. We're going to look at a couple examples of this. But this is, you want to look for something that says that this is the purpose of the book.

If you look at the Gospels, what many people see is that when they look through the Gospels, it seems that the Gospel of Matthew is written to display that Jesus Christ is King. Then we get to the Gospel of Mark, and it seems that that is trying to show that Jesus Christ is a servant.

Then we get to the Gospel of Luke, the good Dr. Luke, who focuses on that Jesus Christ was man. Then we get to the Gospel of John, where it seems to very clearly indicate that Jesus Christ is God. So you see, each one of those, though the text itself does not indicate it, but by looking over the whole course of the book and the way it's written, scholars have started to realize that each of the Gospels seem to be focused on a different aspect of the nature of Christ.

And so we're getting these different aspects. That helps us to understand the why. That's why you have so many references to Jesus Christ being God in the book of John than all the others. In fact, if you look at all of the verses in the Gospel of John, there's actually more references directly and indirectly to Jesus Christ being God than there are verses in the Gospel of John.

Because sometimes you could have Lord Christ, and calling Him Lord and calling Him Christ are two different references. Or the fact that Jesus Christ would read someone's mind and then in the same verse be called Christ or Son of God.

So you end up having some verses that have multiple references. So there's actually more references in the Gospel of John to Jesus Christ being God than there are verses. So what we end up seeing, though, is that we want to look at the why.

Some books have more purposes than one, such as Hebrews. Hebrews seems to have something that's specific to the Christian and also to a non-Christian audience. Something that's understood by the Jewish folks a whole lot more, but there's still things that are to be understood by those that are non-Jewish.

But one that's clear, let's look at one in John chapter 20, the end of John. John does this a lot. He ends his book by telling us the purpose of his book. He says here, Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still early.

This was not the right verse. Oh, okay. Yep. I'm being told. Okay, so we got the wrong verse there. I will look it up. It should be John 20, verse 31. Sorry about that. That's John 20, verse 31. Let me read that to you.

John 20, verse 31 says this. Verse 30. There is no 31. Oh, there is. Yeah, there we go. So, verse 31 says, But these things were written. That's a real clear indicator, isn't it? But these things were written.

Seems like that's a clear thing to tell you what it is. But these things were written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that by believing in Him, you may have life in His name.

You see there that we have two different references to Him being God. That He's the Christ and He's the Son of God. Both are references. So, John's making it really clear. These things that I'm writing to you, I'm writing to you for two purposes.

One, that you may believe that Jesus Christ is God. That He is the Christ, the Son of God. And, he has a second reason. That by believing, you may have life in His name. So, he provides two different reasons for you to understand why he wrote this book.

One, that you know that He is God. Two, that you believe in Him. John does this again in 1 John. 1 John, this is 1 John chapter 5 and verse 13. We'll see if this one's right. You see here he says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

That's encouraging. We have eternal life. Not that we'll obtain eternal life. We have eternal life. That's encouraging to know that we have it. But, what we see here is that in these passages, we're being told exactly why John is writing.

Now, not all the authors do that for us. But, some authors do. Some tell us the purpose why they wrote it. And, that's important to know. It's important to know, especially if you go through some of the prophets and you see that they're providing God's judgment.

And so, you need to understand that when you're studying them out. So, we looked at question number one. What? Who? Why? Next, we're going to look at when. And, these aren't in any specific order. But, this is just if you take the time to, just on a sheet of paper as you're studying the scriptures, look to answer each one of these.

The passages you're studying may not always have a who or a when, not have all that. The book will always have a why that you should study. And, if you remember when we looked at some of those tools, we talked about tools that can help you.

You can look at an Old Testament survey or a handbook of the Bible. And, get the why of each of the books. That'll help you. What's going on? Some of those things will help you. Okay? And, there's always going to be a what and a why.

There may not always be a who and a when, and you may even be able to guess what the next question is. But, when? When we look at when, we want to see, observe any indicators of time in the book regarding when it was written, what was happening at the time.

Pay close attention to time of the day. When was Jesus Christ on the cross? Well, we have a time of the day. Okay? And so, that may help us understand certain things. Give us an idea of time. How long was something happening?

You know, people read the book of Daniel, and they think that because it takes only a couple of minutes, maybe 30 minutes to read the first six chapters, it's as if all of that happened in the same time.

Well, the first chapter of Daniel, he was probably about 15 years old, somewhere around there. But, by the end of chapter 6, the Medes and the Persians have come in. So, we know that Daniel was taken at the beginning of the Babylonian captivity.

Medes and the Persians are 70 years later. So, by looking at the indicators of what's happening, we now realize that when Daniel was put in the lion's den, he had to have been in his late 80s, maybe even 90s.

Could that give you a different picture? I mean, some people, they picture this young little boy in a lion's den. He was an old man. Okay? Okay, if you're in your 80s or 90s, you don't think that's old.

I understand. I agree. Okay. But, the reality is that he was not a 15-year-old boy any longer. Okay? We look at the when and we can see that. We want to pay attention to mentioning of months or years or festivals because festivals will tell us when things happen.

The Lord was crucified at Passover. It tells us the time of the year. You want to notice any holidays in connection with the text. These can unlock insight into a book. We're going to take a look at Nehemiah in just a moment.

It is important to note where the book fits in, especially if you're going to talk in the plans of Israel's history or the church history. Okay? When you study things out, you want to make sure you understand when is this happening?

What time of the year is this? Because these indicators will help you tremendously in understanding what's going on at the time. Let's take a look at Nehemiah 1. Nehemiah 1. It says here the words of Nehemiah.

Okay? Now, you're seeing Nehemiah here if you're going to ask the who. He provides his lineage. We don't know much about his father, but that's who he's the son of. Now, it happened to be, notice this, the month of Ket Helev in the twelfth year.

Twelfth year, what? Well, he says he was in the where. I was in Susai, the synodal. You see how many of these questions we ask? We can get just from the very first verse. We see where he was in the synodal in Suhaz.

The twelfth year, the when, tells us the year, also the month of Helev. We see here that this is giving us the month and then the twelfth year. This is the twelfth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, the Medo-Persian king.

What you have here when you look at this, you see he gives the month. But if you look in chapter 2, verse 1, it says the month was Nisan in the twelfth year of the king of Artaxerxes. Why is that important?

Because a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that here in chapter 1, Nehemiah is hearing what's going on with his people. He's being overwhelmed with that. And then what he ends up doing is saying that he is realizing that he's praying for his people.

And then chapter 2 comes along as if it's like the next day. And he's before the king and he's sad before the king. Well, because we have those two month indicators, we realize this is probably like four months between.

We don't know exactly when because he could have been end of the Helev and then the beginning of Nisan. But it could be, it's somewhere around four months. So what you end up having there is an indication that he had been praying for Israel for a long time.

I mean, have you spent four months in ardent prayer for something? Most of us don't even spend five minutes. But he spent a long time fasting and praying. That's why he looked sick before the king and took advantage of the opportunity.

That helps us to understand something of what was going on with there. Okay, so we want to ask what? We want to ask who? We want to ask why? We want to ask when? And the last question we want to ask is where?

Where Is This Taking Place?

Where is this taking place? As we saw in the synodal, it tells you where. Are there any specific geographical features? Are there any mention of localities in the text? As I mentioned, in that passage we had the exact location in the synodal, the place of the king.

So we see where that is. If we look at that, we'll see that there may be passages that talk about the Sea of Galilee. Maybe we want to do some study at the Sea of Galilee. Why would that be important?

Well, I've mentioned this in past classes, but if you understand the Sea of Galilee and you understand that it's kind of in a valley with hills around it, that often what would happen is, as would happen if you're in a valley, the storms would come from over the mountain and you wouldn't see the storm clouds being down here.

From this vantage point, you don't see it over the mountain range until it comes over the mountain range and then it's on top of you. In other words, storms would seem to come out of nowhere for fishermen.

They come up very quickly. So if you were an experienced fisherman out on the Sea of Galilee, you were used to being in some rough waters. That helped you to understand, or that should help you to understand, when they're afraid, when Jesus is sleeping on the boat and they're in the sea and there's a storm and these experienced fishermen are afraid of the storm, that must be one serious storm.

Okay? That's going to be a big storm. You've got to realize that things like that, the geographic locations, will help you to understand what is going on, give you more insight into the fear of these guys.

So when you look at that passage, you see, what do we learn about the who? Well, we learn Peter, Andrew, James, John were experienced fishermen on that sea. They would have been used to storms coming out of nowhere.

So that would help you to understand. They were experienced. This might have been a storm that really scared them. They were afraid of it. That should give you an indication of how serious the storm was.

It tells you the where and the geographic location. Okay? Things like that help us to understand. Things that help us understand, why did Jesus get on a boat to speak to the crowds on the shore? Why did He push off a little ways?

Well, if you understand the way voices travel and understand that water amplifies voices, then understanding why He pushed away from the shore, He wasn't trying to get away from the crowd. He was trying to make sure He was heard.

He was creating an amplifier for His voice. And that's what He was doing. So things like that help us to understand. So again, I encourage you when you study a passage of Scripture, just take a sheet of paper and write these things down.

What? What's happening? What's repetitive going on here? What are the events? Who's talking? Who's the recipient? Who's mentioned in the passage? Why is it written? Why did the author choose to write this?