The Simple Man's Bible Study

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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You know, I'm my own worst critic. I watched the last program back.

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In fact, I watched with the premiere. That was a lot of fun. And as I did so,

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I realized that I found myself very distracted. In fact, I did, while I was doing the program, found myself very distracted.

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And so there's a couple of things I needed to cure or correct since then. And so some minor changes were needed, at least on the set here, because as I'm looking for my notes,

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I'm looking for them over here. And it's really not a natural place for me to be looking for them. So as you see me looking around right now,

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I'm checking all my equipment. I'm doing this solo, folks. So I've got a video board here.

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I've got a lot of different gadgets going on that I usually am operating for James during the dividing line.

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But doing this solo, I need to keep things in a familiar place. And so first thing

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I did was added a screen right here. You can't see it. But I added a screen right here for my notes, giving me direct line of sight where I'm just able to look down and up, look down and up, and keep my eye on the camera as much as I can, much like a teacher would be at a podium, except I don't have to look down.

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I just look right here. So the distraction was that I wasn't direct line of sight.

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I had my notes over here and over here. And this particular screen is the

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ATEM screen. It has 10 different windows on it. It's very distracting. Got a whole lot of different things going on.

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And it just wasn't well organized. So I needed to change that. So I fixed that.

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And then the other thing is, and I had to laugh, the microphone boom, you notice the microphone is in a different place now.

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It was going this way. And I had to laugh as I'm watching it back because it was like right there next to my face coming up this way.

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So the boom, you can see on the video. And for some reason, I did not realize this was happening.

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I kept moving this way, either that, or the mic kept moving that way. And by the end of the program, the mic is totally blocking my face.

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And it's like, OK, I got to fix that. So yeah, my wife will tell you, I love to do, after I teach,

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I love to do after action reports in my head. And I do encourage teachers to do this. You can be your worst critic, but legitimate criticisms of your work will help you improve next time.

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And hopefully, in this particular episode, you will see an improvement over how I handled it last time.

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As promised today, we will be focused on what I call the simple man's Bible study.

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And this involves the simple act of contextual reading. We're going to go pretty quickly today.

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We've got a lot to do. I've literally got 100 slides. And at the end, there is a passage

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I want to look at just to demonstrate for you how this is going to work. And so as we get rolling here, let's go ahead and get started.

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By the way, so the simple act of contextual reading is what we used to call reading comprehension.

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That's right, it's something you learned in fourth grade. The simple act of identifying the who, the what, the where, the when, the why, oh yes, don't forget the how, those things, well, if you were in fourth grade like I was in the 70s, while there was still some semblance of reading, writing, and arithmetic in grade school, in the public school system, that was still going on.

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And so we were taught reading comprehension. And the basics were those things.

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I mean, obviously, in junior high or middle school, they call it now in high school, English and reading got more complicated and more detailed as you start learning certain terms and what they mean, et cetera.

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But on a basic level, you should be able to open your Bible and you should be able to follow those five plus one principles and be able to identify, be able to learn contextually from the scriptures as you're moving along.

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So we're going to be doing that today. So the study of scripture, first of all, falls under the category of spiritual disciplines.

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And I'm going to say some things today that some people may go, oh no, Rich, my professor said this or my professor,

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I don't really care what your professor said. This is simply my way of putting together a simple way of approaching the scriptures and learning from them.

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And so the study of scripture falls under the category of spiritual disciplines and it involves three primary ways of study.

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Yeah, there's more, but the primary ways of study, I want to break down for you, and then we're going to focus on the third one today.

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That's going to be our mission. So the first one is the daily reading thing, okay? In a one -year chronological

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Bible study, you're reading sections of scripture with the goal that after 12 months go by, you've read the entire

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Bible in the year. You hit the reset button January 1st and you either take on a different process or different study that would accomplish the same thing.

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But like I said, I use YouVersion .com. YouVersion is an app and I think it's an excellent app.

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And my favorite of all the ones that they did, I really got a lot out of it, was the one -year chronological Bible.

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I did that for a few years in a row. Daily reading on a schedule is designed to read the entire

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Bible in a year. I know that there's all these different methods out there and you'll find them on YouVersion, and so I recommend that.

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The daily reading, number one, as I pointed out earlier on the earlier side, is valuable for familiarity, familiarity.

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The idea is that through the repetition of reading and covering the entire

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Bible in a year, you become more familiar with the message of scripture on the whole, okay?

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And the other thing is, because it's repetitious, it keeps the words center of mind. So you begin to learn from the scriptures as you read them and your recall, your ability to bring those scriptures to mind becomes more easily done, okay?

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So move on. But the problem, there is a problem with this, understanding doesn't always follow.

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You know, I mean, just a couple of years ago, I don't know how many times I've read Acts over my lifetime, but a couple of years ago, as I was teaching through the book of Acts, I was amazed, amazed at the things that I was learning that for whatever reason just didn't register with me before.

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The understanding of and significance of these things, and we're gonna dig into one of them at the end of the program, just wasn't registering with me.

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I don't know why, I don't know why. And I've heard a lot of people talk about this, you know, even preachers who've taught through a book several times in their lifetime, and toward the end of their life, here they come learning brand new things that they never noticed before.

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So the thing is, though, with daily reading, if you stop to dig in, you can fall behind in your scheduled reading.

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And so that's also a risk. So it doesn't allow you to really actually stop and dig into a passage and really flesh it out or sort it out or dig into it.

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The next topic is called devotions. Now, devotions are something that's very important in spiritual practice.

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It's a very important spiritual practice. The idea of devoting oneself to God through a soul -searching section of scripture or scriptures.

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I'm gonna say this again, it's the idea of devoting oneself to God through a soul -searching section of the scriptures.

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So that's the primary function of it. It involves contemplation and introspection.

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So as we're dealing with that soul -searching section of scripture, we're contemplating what it means, what it means to us spiritually, and we're looking inside and we're comparing it, we're measuring ourselves as we should.

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Okay, we should do that every day. Weighing one's own standing before a holy God is the goal here.

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Considering what he's doing with me, devotional speak of all these things. An example, some good old ones,

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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon is an excellent devotional. The Valley of Vision, it's a

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Puritan book. Valley of Vision is excellent. Just looking at the Psalms and the Proverbs, the

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Proverbs, as you go through all these different Proverbs, there's actually a study out there.

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It's not written, it's simply a practice. There are 31 Proverbs, 31 chapters of Proverbs.

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And most months in the calendar year have 31 days in them. And so if you're simply devoting yourself to reading a

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Proverb a day and doing introspection, contemplating on the message there, a lot of folks just do that every single month.

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And the next month, August 1st is coming on Friday. Start over, chapter one.

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That's an excellent tool. But do be careful with some devotionals. They do and can get, tend to get sappy.

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And you don't want sappy. We want concrete things that God has to speak to us.

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We don't need guys spiritualizing the concept of, oh, I was standing in my kitchen looking out into the wilderness and suddenly that's what this meant to me that day.

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Well, what if you weren't in your kitchen looking out in the wilderness? What would it mean then?

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That's a John MacArthur kind of question that he used to ask. It involves deep thought and often meditation on God's holiness and our need for his sanctification.

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Going before the Lord with our burdens and hearing him speak to us through his word, asking

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God to write his word on our hearts through prayer, taking our burdens before his throne, crying out for help, mercy, and healing, or just expressing our love for God.

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The simple act of just, Lord, I love you. I love what you've done for me. I love what you've, the grace and the mercy that you've bestowed upon me.

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And remember that a devotion to scripture, a devotion in scripture, is devotion to God.

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I'm gonna say that again. The devotion of scripture is a devotion to God, okay?

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It's a spiritual exercise, okay? So that's where the devotions break down. Now the next one, this is where we're gonna camp out today, is deep study, okay?

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But Rich, you said it was a simple man's Bible study. You know what? The first thing you know about a simple man is he's not afraid to roll up his sleeves and do,

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I'm gonna say a four -letter word here, work. He's not afraid to do the work.

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And learning from God's word, studying God's word, praying that God would write it upon your heart, memorization, all these things require work.

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And that is the case with deep study. It seeks understanding, asking the who, what, where, when, why, and how.

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It is contextually driven. The idea here is that we let the word speak to us.

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We're not here trying to impose our preconceived ideas upon the text, okay?

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It contains valuable history. In general terms, there's valuable history, but it can get much more specific than this, so we need to keep that in mind.

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That history means something. It's not just a matter of taking in information, oh, this happened and that happened.

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It's important, valuable history, okay? The root of our theology is found in deep study.

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I'm gonna say this again. The root of our theology is found in deep study of the word.

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Theology, remember, I said this last program, theology is the study of God, okay?

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It equals, it informs what we learn about God, and we find our theology chief, in chief, in the pages of the scriptures, okay?

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The root of our theology and our anthropology, so our study, the study of God.

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Anthropology is the opposite of that, what we learn about man, okay? So one thing we need to keep in mind here as we're doing our study, there are preconceived ideas, preconceived assumptions that we carry with us everywhere we go, everywhere we go.

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As we, you know, you think about what is commonly known as the self -centered individual. We'll look at someone and say, that person is so self -centered.

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Their entire world is about them. Everything around them is about them, okay? Well, this is a self -centered anthropology, the way in which

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I look at mankind. So the big question is, is my life, is the way that I look at the world around me man -centered, me -centered, or is it

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God -centered? That's the big question here, okay? So these two things contrasting reveals in general terms our theology, what we learn about God, our anthropology, what we learn about man.

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It reveals God's nature in theology, his ways, and character.

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And in anthropology, it reveals man's nature, his ways, and character.

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Now, deep study follows the references, and we'll at the end go through one of those references, those cross -references

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I talked about in the last program about using the index properly. So deep study follows the references and fleshes them out.

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One of the things that is common is what's known as proof texting. I call it cherry -picking.

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So you take a verse, and you pluck it out, and then it's off to the races as to what this verse means to me, and a lot of preachers will build an entire sermon on what that particular verse says, and they're extrapolating all kinds of information that if you take that verse back into the context he found it in, it isn't saying any of those things, okay?

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But Rich, we find this in scripture. The apostles did not proof text.

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The apostles did not cherry -pick verses. They were limited in the amount of space that they had to write with.

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They were writing, their scribes were writing things by hand, and what they were doing is called invoking, and we're going, when we get to the end,

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I promise you, we're going to look at one of those invoking passages with the apostle

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Peter as he stands before the Sanhedrin, and they knew what he meant.

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We'll get into that. We're going to break that down, but the idea here is if I tell you, if I say to you something out of Psalm 23, if I'm going to cite all of Psalm 23, and I simply say, the

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Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, you know what I mean? I'm sending you to that verse.

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I'm sending you to that chapter, okay? And so, and boy, I tell you what, it better be

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Psalm 23, or else my critics are going to have a field day, but yeah, you know, off the top of my head, that's my recollection,

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Psalm 23, Lord is my shepherd. So it establishes context, even if it's just a portion cited, we're going to go back, and we're going to look at the whole context to see the big picture, even though he's just given us a sliver of it.

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Then we come back, and we look for apostolic application. So the apostle gives us an invoking verse, okay?

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It's just a small sliver of it. We go back, and we look at the whole passage. What is it saying?

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What's going on there? And we don't stop there. We're not to go to that and go, oh, this is what he means.

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And he means all these other things. And next thing you know, you're off to the races with a whole new sermon.

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But if you actually come back and see what he does with it, you're so far off base, it's incredible.

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Well, the idea here is we need to look for the apostolic application. As the apostle invokes this, he's doing it for a reason, and he has a point.

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In fact, he has what I call, he's making a fact statement. He's giving you a concrete point that you're able to take a stand on.

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Now, in application, we're going to see things. This can get a little complicated, and as we move forward,

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I don't want it to be complicated, but there are types. So you will see in reference that so -and -so was a type of this or a type of that.

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There are dual applications in the Old Testament that have an immediate context and purpose to them within that day and time, within that history, okay?

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But in many cases, this individual and that person's life has a secondary image or a secondary purpose that leads us to a

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New Testament application, and we call that a type. And yeah, I know I'm being simple here.

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Shadows, oftentimes we see things in the Old Testament that are mere, and the

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New Testament calls it this, are a mere shadow of what is to come, a mere shadow of what is to come.

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What do I mean by this? Think on it this way, and this analogy is not new with me.

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I'm pretty sure I know who I first heard this from, but it's an excellent analogy.

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If you're standing in a grove of trees, of orange trees, and the sun is high in the sky, and you look down, you can see a shadow on the ground.

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And if that orange tree is in full bloom, you should see a bunch of circular images on the ground, on the shadow on the ground.

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Now, if you reach down and try to, if you, let me get my hand, if you reach down and try to grab that round, circular object, what are you gonna come back with?

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Well, you can't grab it. It's not, there's no substance there. It's just a shadow.

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The shadow tells you something. It is a reflection of something, a sort, okay?

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The shadow is simply a reflection of the real substance, of the real thing.

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So when your eyes come up and behold the tree, there's the orange, and when you reach up, you can grab the orange and take the substance of it for yourself.

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So there is the shadow and there is the substance. And so in many cases, application, apostolic application will look at the types and they will look at shadows of these things that were testifying of what would be fulfilled in the

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New Testament. This is the next point we're making. Fulfillments, oftentimes, so those types and shadows, they're prophetic in nature.

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They're prophetic in nature. They were prophesying things that were to be in the future, things that came to be in the future, and we call these that came to be fulfillments.

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Jesus Christ coming is a fulfillment of prophecy, okay? Our soteriology, fulfillment, again,

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I'm using big words here, Christology. Our doctrine of Jesus, our belief, the teaching about Jesus, the things we learn in the text of Scripture, soteriology simply means salvation.

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The teaching, New Testament teaching of salvation. All these things come into play here and we need to identify these things as they come along.

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And like I said, the example we're gonna have here with Peter at the end goes into both of those subjects, okay, deep study produces illumination.

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Think of, when I say illumination, think on turning a light on from within the thing.

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What is a lamp or a lamp that has a full shade around it?

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When you turn that light on, the light illuminates from within the lamp, okay?

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It produces clarity. The Scriptures have a clarity to it.

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You may think, well, no, wait a minute, Rich, I think the Bible's very confusing. Well, if you haven't actually done the study yet and you read things that you're utterly unfamiliar with, most people are, yeah, it's gonna be confusing.

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But when you actually do that work, roll up your sleeves and dig in, the clarity comes and you begin to understand the history behind the

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Scriptures, the history of God's appointing of his people and in the New Testament, all of that comes full circle and becomes complete as we identify who the people of God are as the

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Apostle does in, for instance, Romans 11, okay? So we're gonna look for consistency.

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Deep study brings about consistency of thought and there is a consistent message in the

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Scriptures that reveals God, who he is, what he's like, who man is and what he's like.

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And it produces a closer walk with God. God speaks through his word and we listen and grow closer to him.

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I'm gonna say that again. God speaks to us through his word. We listen and grow closer to him.

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Now, on this point, if you come to the Scriptures and you're repelled by what you read, that's also a message you need to heed.

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You need to understand your reaction to God's word. If it doesn't draw you closer, something's wrong.

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Something's wrong because you're rebelling against the God -breathed Scriptures. You're rebelling against your creator, okay?

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Against your maker and this is critical. So when we come to the

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Scriptures and we understand the New Testament message, the first thing we've gotta understand is the changed life and the changed life results in a love for God and produces a love for God's word.

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Him speaking to us is vital, that we love him through his word speaking.

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Then there comes preparation. When we prepare, it is important for us to prepare our hearts.

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2 Timothy 2 .15 tells us to be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a workman, work, there's that word, who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

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So in preparation, we need to come to the

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Scriptures with diligence, ready to work, with our mind focused on the Scriptures, pushing out all the noise that are around us and we need not be ashamed because the end result is we are accurately handling the word of truth.

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First point in doing this is to prepare your heart and mind. I already had that accurately handled.

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Okay, so I don't know why sometimes these slides, I don't quite get them in proper order and that one was out of order.

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Okay, moving on. Preparing, pray for illumination. We talked about illumination before.

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Pray that God illuminates the word for you. Pray that God illuminates the word, that he will shed light on our understanding, that he will open our hearts.

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Pray for discipline, that we would be focused on the task at hand.

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Now, you may think like I do that as we get to reading a passage of Scripture and suddenly as we're moving through it, or even just a book, you get two or three pages in and suddenly you realize that you haven't been concentrating on what it is that you're reading for quite some time.

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Your mind is off, wandering around, thinking about all the things going on, all the pressures and anxieties of your life, all of these different things.

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We need to recognize, we need discipline to focus on the word because our minds tend to wander and distractions are bound in this life.

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And I will tell you that if you think this is something that's just a modern day problem, it is a frustration that John Calvin, some 500 plus years ago, wrote about, in that as he would go before the

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Lord in prayer, wanting to focus his mind and his heart on his prayer before God, that it was just a few moments would go by and he's doing this very thing.

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This is something that's just natural to man and we have to exercise discipline and get focused on what the task is hand, mentally push out all those distractions.

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And pray for an open heart. I mentioned this earlier. We need to listen and hear him speaking that he would write his word on our hearts.

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Accurately handling the word of truth involves, as I said before, being a good detective.

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Follow the evidence where it leads, don't invent it. Don't invent the evidence, follow it.

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Be patient. That's a big one because I'll tell you what, effective Bible study is an exercise in patience and there's times when we're going through,

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I mean, everybody complains about all the genealogies in the Old Testament. Well, you know what? Those genealogies matter.

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And if you're going to understand the New Testament, because as we start doing this follow the index thing, you're gonna find yourself oftentimes right smack in the middle of those sections and if you don't, if you cannot read through them, you're going to hit mental roadblocks that are gonna keep you from understanding, okay?

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That's the enemy's playground and you don't wanna be getting in the middle of that. Push aside your familiarity.

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It's easy to already have the answer. Resist that, okay? So you don't wanna anticipate the text here.

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We don't want to anticipate the text. You may think, well, I've read something that I've never noticed before.

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See, I got distracted here. Okay, let me go back. Push aside your familiarity. Sometimes you read things that are similar and you, next thing you know, think you're reading the same thing over here.

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Or even worse, as you're reading along, you take a preconceived thought from a human agenda, a natural man mindset, and you impose it upon that text.

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You think that, oh, this must be what this is talking about and then you go on with that assumption.

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You gotta let the word speak and you may very well find, as I've often found, it's got nothing to do with what

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I thought it was gonna talk about. It's talking about something completely different and I gotta stop, go back to the discipline factor and go back and start over and read it again so that I'm understanding what it's actually saying, okay?

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Don't anticipate the text. Investigate and find things. Investigate and find things, folks.

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This is really important. Again, I'm gonna keep saying, at the end we're gonna do that very thing.

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Investigate and find things, but as you're following along point by point by point, this is where we're writing things down, we're taking proper notes, we're doing that outlining function so you have a chief point being made and sub points underneath it and then another chief point comes along and sub points underneath it, okay?

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So this is where I mean journal them. Journal these thoughts, write them all down, take notes, outline form if possible, okay?

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Follow the text point by point. This is the simple task of contextual reading.

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You're following the context of the author and you're a passive participant, not an active participant, okay?

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Now, things to avoid as we do this. Before we dig into this, things to avoid and that is what

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I call the agenda -driven methodology. The agenda -driven methodology be careful, like I said before, that you don't lead the text.

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We have the answer and now we read that answer into the text. You don't have the answer. Now, you may have the answer, it may be fine, but you're not learning from the text and the context of the particular passage at hand if you're shoehorning these things into it, all right?

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Again, you're the passive participant here, okay? That, no matter how right you may be, is still agenda -driven methodology.

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So, let's go through some of the games that get played oftentimes by the agenda preachers.

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The agenda preachers. The leapfrog. You think, okay, what's this, a child's game?

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Okay, well, actually, it very much is a child's game. The leapfrog. I don't like what this verse says, so I'm not gonna preach it.

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I jump over it, okay? So, as you're going along and you come across verse 10 and verse 11, it's like, oh, well,

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I don't wanna go there. But if, look at verse 12. Verse 12 gets me back on track.

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So, you may end the sermon this week on verse 10 and next week, it picks up on verse 12 and nobody ever looks at verse 11.

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I've actually seen this happen and I was like, well, what just happened? Again, agenda -driven methodology.

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So, beware of the leapfrog. Beware you don't do it and always be on guard and notice when it gets done in your hearing, okay?

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Reading it backwards, this is a fun one and we deal with this in places like John 6, verses 37 through 45, for instance.

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We deal with this in Romans 9. We see folks do this all the time. You start at the end of a passage, insert an idea from my agenda into that passage and then read it backwards, back into the context.

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And so, I don't like what this says forwards, so I'm gonna go to the very end of the thought. I'm gonna impose a totally different idea on it that works and then

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I'm gonna read that back into what came before. And it's amazing how many preachers and teachers get away with doing this.

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It is very dishonest and it's very deliberate. Preachers, I don't care how much you hold to your agenda.

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I don't care what your mission is, what message you're trying to get across.

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If you do this, you need to stop it. It's wrong, okay? Shoehorning, shoehorning's a fun one.

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Taking an unrelated verse and inserting it into the one at hand, all right?

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This is where the proof texting thing starts to happen. So, we're grabbing verse, grabbing verse, throwing them, putting them in order and then we start bouncing through the different verses in order to make up, to follow an agenda.

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And if we were to actually go and find the context of each of these verses, they're not talking about anything that I'm getting at, but my agenda's the more important thing.

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And this is related to what's known as running away from the text, okay? And so, you're reading along, you don't like the point that's being made and so, we're just gonna drop this text and we're gonna run somewhere else that we think actually contradicts this text.

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Not be bumping into things here. Things that we actually contradicts this text when it doesn't, okay?

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And we shoehorn that idea in. And so, suddenly, we take the context of where we're at, turn it on its head in order to keep it from speaking, okay?

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Essentially, you're gagging the text. You're putting words into the apostle's mouth, the writer's mouth that he didn't intend, okay?

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And so, that's a big problem. So, beware of shoehorning and beware when you see someone or hear someone doing it, okay?

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Then, there's the fun one. I call this three -card money, three -card money. If you're familiar with the three -card money game, the con, because it is a con game, okay?

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There's actually four cards, okay? So, the gamesman has three cards on the table but what you can't see, and I can never do three -card money because my hands aren't very big and so,

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I can't hide a card in the palm of my hand. But as he's picking up the various cards, you're trying to pick the one that he's shown you.

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Well, the one that he's shown you is actually in the palm of his hand, okay?

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He's palming it. So, three -card money in scripture, in this tactic, is where they hide the key point from you in order to prop up their agenda, okay?

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So, we're working through a text. There is a key point in understanding the text and if I simply jump over it, if I simply insert another idea into it, or if I simply ignore it entirely, okay?

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I'm playing the three -card money game. I'm hiding the key point in order to prop up the point that I wanna have made, okay?

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So, that's some examples of what to watch out for, watching for the agenda.

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Things to look for, okay? First of all, in understanding the text, do we identify the nature of the text that we're reading, okay?

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In the Old Testament, we have a three -part division. There's the law, the prophets, and the writings.

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So, when you're back looking at the Old Testament, this is what's known as the

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Tanakh, or the Torah, the Nevi 'im, or the Ketuvim, okay? The law, the prophets, and the writings, okay?

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That's the breakdown. So, if you're in the first five books of the Old Testament, you're looking at law, okay?

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If you're looking at Psalms and Proverbs, you're looking at writings, or there's other books in there as well.

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And then, we get into the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, major prophets, minor prophets.

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All these things have value and purpose, and we need to understand them. In the New Testament, there is a four -part division.

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Some guys will make it five, and I'll go over that in a second here. I see Acts, the book of Acts, as historical in nature.

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It is a historical narrative, but it is filled with doctrine. It is all over the place.

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And so, I see Acts as a continuation of the Gospels in narrative form. So, in breaking down the

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Gospels in Acts, then we have the Epistles. So, Epistles to Romans, to the

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Ephesians, to the Philippians, on down the line, okay? So, when some who divide by five will break the

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Epistles apart, and there are Pauline Epistles versus General Epistles, and that's where the fifth one comes in.

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And then, the last point would be the Revelation, apocalyptic prophecy, apocalyptic prophecy.

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And some guys will take it and break it down in different ways. But again, I tend to lean towards the four, and I simply put the

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Epistles all together, and I don't split them up. But I don't see a problem with splitting that up either.

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Moving forward, things to look forward is the narrative, it's historical, looking for the history. And as the narrative flows, you'll see doctrine being teaching occurring.

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And we will see that coming up in Acts chapter four. Identifying the text at hand, its nature, its purpose.

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Is it narrative? Is it poetic? Poetic, for instance, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, those would be in the writings category.

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Is it prophetic? Metaphors are often there for a reason, and it is a spiritual exercise in both poetic and prophetic, okay?

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We talked about types and shadows. Things that were said by a prophet, and the people who heard them, maybe not even the prophet himself, understood what it is that was being said.

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But this is God speaking through the man. Is it teaching? Is it a direct, there are fact statements being made, this is true, this is true, this is true, this is true.

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Are there certain presuppositions that aren't being explained? In other words, we're not looking to try to prove this point through any kind of evidence, we're simply declaring the thing to be.

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The thing is, and that's it. That's all you're gonna get. This is a teaching fact statement kind of context that we're dealing with.

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Is the teaching direct? Is it a parable? So for instance, in the

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Gospels, you're going to find Jesus using parables. And the idea in the parabolic language is that something spiritual is going on inside those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, and that something spiritual gives them the ability to understand what is being said.

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And those who don't have eyes to see, those who don't have ears to hear, those who don't have that spiritual giftedness cannot hear, cannot see, cannot understand.

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It's hidden from them on purpose. Are we seeing types, are we seeing shadows?

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Like I said before, look for fact statements. Romans 118 would be an example of a fact statement.

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You can look that up here as I'm wanting for time and I'm not even sure how far down the road we are here, but that's okay, we're going to keep moving on.

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In the study of Scripture, really on a personal level, your chief agenda, your chief objective is to make it your own.

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That is the chief objective in the simple man's Bible study. And that is,

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I don't stand before God for you, no one else can stand before God before you.

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You are responsible for what you believe. I am responsible for what

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I believe and we each have to go to the Scriptures and learn and be edified and grow.

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But ultimately, it is not for me, it's not like going through the supermarket where I have all these, or the drugstore for that matter,

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I have all these pre -packaged theologies on the shelf. Oh, that one looks cool and I'll pull that down and put it in my basket and that one looks cool and I'll throw that down and put it in my basket.

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When you go to check out, everything that's in your basket is something someone else believes.

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You may think it's cool, but you didn't learn these things for yourself. Someone else did the work, someone else is now telling you what to believe.

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And that may be fine, you may be in complete agreement with everything that's in your basket, but ultimately, ultimately, none of it belongs to you.

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And so, this is again, where the simple man's Bible study comes and you roll up your sleeves and you make it your own.

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The simple act of contextual reading, now this one, my critics are going to have a field day with this point, so I'm gonna ask you folks, hear me out, hear me out before your heads explode.

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Okay, calm down, take a deep breath, drink some water, put the commentaries away.

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Far too often, a Bible study from a diligent researcher involves the

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Bible in the middle and a commentary over here and a commentary over here and a commentary right there.

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And as we read along, we go see what this guy had to say and we see what that guy had to say and we look at what that guy had to say.

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Put the commentaries away, they will come out and be valuable later.

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Right now, your job in this study is to focus solely upon the word of God and follow where it leads you.

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We will come to the commentaries later on. A commentary, it may be an excellent opinion, he may be a brilliant theologian, it's still one man's opinion.

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Even if he agrees with a whole bunch of other men, it's still one man's opinion. Okay, so no matter how smart he is, no matter how brilliant he is, no matter how deep he is, we need to recognize and put it in its proper place.

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It's still not scripture. And that is our chief purpose right now.

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It is an external influence, okay? If we're gonna let the word do the talking to us, we need to focus on the word.

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And while the commentaries have value, the insights of godly men should be something we test ourselves, test what we've learned, and we'll do that here in a little bit.

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But it comes at the end. The purpose of study is to make it your own.

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Okay, so we're almost toward the end of the lesson here. Bring them out in the end.

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You've done your work, now see what they see. So that's the idea here in bringing it out in the end.

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It becomes the professor who takes you, he's given you the assignment, and the assignment is to learn the word, learn the passage, understand the passage, follow the proof, follow the cross -references, learn the context of those cross -references, come back and see what the apostle or the writer does with it, okay?

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And then you learn these things. You've got your notes, you've got your conclusions, you've figured it out, you understand it.

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That's the idea. You understand it, okay? And now you open up the commentary.

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This is the test of your work. Does the commentary see something you missed? Does the commenter see something that you missed?

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Oh, was it there and you missed it?

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Or does the commentator have an agenda? That always must be on the back of our mind, okay?

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So now if the commentator brings something to you that you missed, all right, does that have value?

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Does it inform your understanding of the passage more so? Or is it totally unrelated?

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Is he trying to play those games that I talked about earlier, where he's shoehorning, where he's running away from a text or something like that?

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And one quick example, if you will turn with me to Acts chapter four, verse 11, and I'm going to, let's see here, let's see where we go with this, because I've got a few more slides here, and then

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I'm gonna bring something up on the screens here, and I'm not that, there's a lot of trickery going on here on the

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AV board here, and I wanna bring this up in such a way that you can see what

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I'm doing without having to look at me in the process. So Acts 411, the phrase, the stone, which the builders rejected.

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All right, we're gonna go back, go back to this, all right, and, oh, look at that, you can see what

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I see. Now, let me come over here, and you can see my great big giant pointer. All right, so what's our context in Acts chapter four?

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Let's blow this up just a little bit. I know James likes to use Accordance.

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I am a Windows man, and so I like to use Olive Tree, and this is the

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LSB, and we'll start at verse one. Now, you got Peter, and he's speaking, he's basically speaking in the temple courtyard, and the

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Sanhedrin's not happy about it, okay? Yeah, okay, microphone's on still, so good, you can actually hear me.

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Verse one of chapter four. Now, as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the

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Sadducees came up to them, being greatly agitated, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus, they were proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead, and they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening, but many of those who had heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to be about 5 ,000.

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So there's a whole lot going on here, and the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees specifically here, aren't real happy about it.

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Now, it happened on the next day, the rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem, and Annas the high priest was there, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, all who were of high priestly descent, all the big dogs were there, folks, and when they had placed them in their midst, so they brought

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Peter and John down and put them in the middle, okay, and they began to inquire, by what power or in what name have you done this?

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Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers and elders of the people, if we are being examined today for a good deed done to a sick man, they had just done the healing, okay, and there was a big pandemonium over it, everybody saw it,

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I lost my place, how as to how this man has been saved from his sickness, let it be known to all of you and to all people of Israel, by the name of Jesus Christ the

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Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name, this man stands here before you in good health, okay, so the healed man is also there, okay.

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Now, here's where we need to take notice, look at that. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

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Okay, so you get the idea here, but notice the all caps, that is an

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Old Testament reference, let's take a closer look at that. So we click this index, okay, that's talking about the word and then the

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A, oh look, so you're familiar with Jesus' use of it in Matthew 21, 42, he references it, all right, so if we click on that in Olive Tree, Jesus said to him, did you ever read in the scriptures, the stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone, this came about from the

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Lord and is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it, and he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter to him like dust, okay?

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So there's that reference, now let's go back, now here's the kicker, this is the source, this is where it comes from.

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Psalm 118, verse 22, now what we're gonna do here is we're gonna go back to Psalm 118 and read the entire passage.

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So I'm looking at Psalm, the 118th

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Psalm, go down here, 118, and there we are.

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So let's read the whole thing, okay? Give thanks to Yahweh for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever.

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Oh, let Israel say, his loving kindness endures forever. Oh, let the house of Aaron say, his loving kindness endures forever.

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Oh, let those who fear Yahweh say, his loving kindness endures forever.

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From my distress I called upon YAH, YAH answered me and set me in a large place.

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By the way, you'll see this in other translations as LORD, all in caps, okay?

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The LSB translates the Tetragrammaton directly.

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YAH answered me and set me in a large place. Yahweh is for me, I will not fear, and what can man do to me?

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Yahweh is for me among those who help me, therefore I will look in triumph on those who hate me.

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It is better to take refuge in Yahweh than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in Yahweh than to trust in nobles.

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All nations surrounded me, in the name of Yahweh I will surely cut them off. They surrounded me, indeed they surrounded me, in the name of Yahweh I will surely cut them off.

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They surrounded me like bees, they were extinguished as a fire of thorns, in the name of Yahweh I will surely cut them off.

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You pushed me down violently to make me fall, but Yahweh helped me. Yah is my strength and song, he has become my salvation.

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The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous, the right hand of Yahweh does valiantly, the right hand of Yahweh is exalted, the right hand of Yahweh does valiantly.

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I will not die, indeed I will live, and recount the works of Yah. Yah has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

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Open to me the gates of righteousness, I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to Yah.

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This is the gate of Yahweh, the righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to you, for you have answered me, and you have become my salvation.

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Here it is, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is from Yahweh, it is marvelous in our eyes.

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This is the day which Yahweh has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Remember that verse?

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Grew up with that verse. Oh Yahweh save, oh Yahweh succeed. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of Yahweh.

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We have blessed you from the house of Yahweh. Yahweh is God and he has given us light.

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Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. You are my God and I will give thanks to you.

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You are my God, I exalt you. Give thanks to Yahweh for he is good and for his loving kindness endures forever.

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Okay, so let me get over back over here. We'll bring that down. All right, we're back where we left off.

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So you get the idea, there's Psalm 118. Focusing on verse 22 is the quote.

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But all of that, all of that is being invoked by Peter before the

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Sanhedrin. Now as we come back to the text, let me do this back again here.

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Let's put this back and we'll gotta get my big giant pointer over here.

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Let's go back over to Acts and he is the stone which was rejected. Now here's the application.

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This is wild when you think about it, okay. By this name, up here.

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By this name, this man stands before you here in good health. He is the stone, the name.

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He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief cornerstone and there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

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So you get the idea. Now, do we understand it? So we saw

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Luke's narrative as he accounts for the sermon that Peter gives.

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We see the one verse, verse 22 being invoked, all right. So what do we do with this?

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We've gone back and we looked at the entire Psalm. Now we look at the commentary and this is one of those places where that commentary suddenly takes all that information that we just went and looked up and boom, here it comes.

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First of all, the significance, Jesus in Matthew 21, 42, after the parable of the vineyard invokes this.

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Okay, we looked at that. The significance also is that it was sung at the dedication of the second temple.

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Psalm 118 was. It was sung at the dedication of the second temple. Now, in the

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Kyle and Delitzsch Old Testament commentary, we'll cite that for you on the screen here in just a minute,

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Psalms 118, this information is put forward and it's huge.

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Psalm 118 has a processional function. I'm gonna say it again. Psalm 118 has a processional function.

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The Psalm falls into two divisions. The first division, verses one through 19, is sung by the festive procession brought up by the priests and Levites, which is ascending to the temple with the animals for sacrifice.

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You see it yet? It is sung by the festive procession brought up by the priests and Levites, which is ascending to the temple with the animals for sacrifice.

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This is a sacrificial psalm. With Psalm 118, 19, the procession stands at the entrance.

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Okay? They're standing at the entrance and what do they have? They have the sacrificial offering and they've just finished, as they moved up the stairs, they've just finished

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Psalm 118, verses one through 19. The second part,

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Psalm 118, 20 through 27, is sung by the body of Levites who receive the festive procession.

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They open the doors and they receive it. Then Psalm 118, verse 28, is the answer to those who have arrived and Psalm 118, 29, the concluding psalm of all of them.

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Now, I want you to think on this here and this is our last slide for the program here. Consider this thought, okay?

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Kylen Delich, Old Testament Commentary. That's kind of cool, isn't it? I'm still getting used to doing this.

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This is part of my idea here that I can actually look at the text on the side. Isn't that cool? Anyway, squirrel.

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This is one of those areas where after you've done this process where you've studied the immediate context in the

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New Testament, you've gone back to the Old Testament and followed the cross -reference and you've come back and looked again at the focal text in the

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New Testament. You've learned things, but you didn't learn this. And here's the thing.

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How many times have you heard in your Christian life the idea that he was the chief cornerstone?

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He was the stone which the builders rejected. How many times have you heard that? But if you think about it, did you really understand what it means?

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Did you really understand why that's there? I submit to you that the men who were doing this right here, okay, and that right there, as they were going up and over and over and over time and time again,

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I submit to you they didn't know what it meant either. They didn't know what it meant either, okay?

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By the way, 118th Psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving and is believed to be authored by David and it was

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Martin Luther's favorite psalm, it is said. But going back to this, now with what you know,

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I want you to come back to this and let's look at this again with my big old giant.

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He's standing before the Sanhedrin. These guys have done that march.

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How many times have those guys done that march up and down those stairs, going to the door, another group of them receiving that offering, okay?

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And they're reciting the second half, 20 through 27. And they get to that last part, they get to verse 22 actually, and they say the stone which the builders rejected.

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Well, what is in their hands? What is in their hands? What is in their hands is the offering, it is the sacrifice.

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This is a sacrificial procession. And they don't know what this means until Peter stands before them and he says to them, he is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders.

01:00:05

This verse is talking about you and you rejected him, but he became the chief cornerstone.

01:00:21

What must have gone through their minds as they considered this?

01:00:28

Oh, I didn't know that would happen. I wasn't expecting that to jump out like that. Okay, let's bring that back down and then we're gonna come back over here and click on that.

01:00:39

And oops, I didn't wanna do that. Yikes. Anyway, so let's, and this, hopefully this doesn't really mess things up if it does.

01:00:56

Here. Let's go back to that one. There, that works. Okay, I need to make a blank slide there toward the end of my presentations.

01:01:04

That concludes our program today. I hope this has been valuable to you.

01:01:11

Next week or next program is my plan to take a closer look as we start to apply this method to learning some things as well as interacting with certain things that are going on in our day and time and what the texts that we study have to say about them.

01:01:31

And so we're gonna take a look, next time is my plan to look at Romans 11 and flow that into Romans 12.

01:01:39

And what that says to the individual who belongs to God by faith, who's had that changed life, who's had that changed heart, and who desires and thirsts to know

01:01:55

God through his word. I look forward to that when we get there. Thank you.