12 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Part 1

Well, welcome back to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of

Biblical Harmoneutics.

That's sounding repetitive for some because you've been watching live and we've kind of

felt like we're in a loop.

We're in the twilight zone, repeating over and over and over, or we're just having technical

difficulties.

All right.

So we are in the School of Biblical Harmoneutics.

The keys to understanding God's word, that's the syllabus that you have over there.

And if you want to get the syllabus, go there and enroll.

And that way you can get yourself a syllabus and follow along with us.

Get all the notes that we have and you can grab those.

So let us begin by

looking at where we've been to start.

And that is that we've been looking at the different keys to interpretation.

We looked at identification and investigation previously.

Identification was where you want to figure out what the genre, what type of literature you're dealing with, so

that you can know which principles you're going to follow in the interpretation.

Each style is going to have its own principles.

Then you're going to look at the investigation.

That's the five key words that we want to look at.

What were those five?

Who, what, when, where, and why.

You want to ask those questions.

Once you figure out the type of literature, you want to investigate and get that

overview of what's going on.

And then we're going to dig into the interpretation itself and that's what we're looking at this week.

And then next week we'll look at, or the week after, we'll look at the last

key, which is how to apply it.

But I got this book here, just start reading it.

Can you see that?

Let's see if that's, looks like that's good.

So that is, this is The Expositionary Genius of John Calvin.

The thing I found interesting is that John Calvin was known for his expositional preaching and this was

basically what, the same things we're teaching you here is exactly what Calvin

practiced faithfully.

And he's got an interesting quote that shows the importance of doing this work.

Why is this so important to put all this time in?

Well, here's why.

This is a quote from Steve Lawson here.

It says, the real genius of John Calvin's preaching lay in his careful handling and proper

explanation of the biblical passage he was expounding.

In biblical exposition, substance is to be desired above style and

doctrine before delivery.

That's an important thing because, you know, a lot of people focus on the applications and the style and their

illustrations and how they're going to deliver it and they don't focus as much on, you know, understanding

the doctrine of the text and the substance of it.

Alright, so the meaning of the text is the text.

Without a proper meaning, one does not have the text per se.

Therefore, a false interpretation of scripture is not scripture.

That's actually really important to say because what that's saying is that you need to make sure you have a right

interpretation of God's Word if you're going to say this is God's Word.

And you're going to have to follow the principles to do that.

And that's what we're teaching you.

We want to teach you those principles.

Now this lesson is one of the lessons where we now get to the exciting part of interpretation.

We're now going to start to use all the stuff that we've learned up to this point and now put it together.

All those Bible study tools, the Bible handbooks and dictionaries, encyclopedias and those things, we're now going to start

to put all that into practice in this key.

This is the most important key and this is the one that takes the most time.

This is an important thing.

So we want to rightly divide God's Word.

And so once we have those initial impressions from our five questions that we did during the investigation, we have the

general observations of the text.

Now we want to start employing those tools that we study to start doing our interpretation.

So what's the first thing we're going to do?

Well, we're going to want to chart the passage.

Charting the passage means going back to English or whatever class, if it's a

different language, but we go back to what we learned in English class.

We used to have to do those diagrammings, right?

I hated that as a kid.

And then I grew up and started studying the Bible and realized that's what I do.

We have to chart a passage.

Now the passage, how do we do that?

We're going to start from the largest section and work our way down, keeping in mind that chapter breaks,

paragraph breaks are not inspired, but they are helpful.

So what we want to do is we want to get the idea of the book.

What's the theme of the book?

Now this is where your study Bibles may have an introduction to each book.

That'll help your Bible handbooks, your Old Testament, New Testament surveys.

All those works will help you in this effort because they're going to give you the overview

of the book.

So that becomes helpful.

So that's where we're going to start at the book level, the largest level.

Now, granted, if you're just trying to understand a passage, you don't have to go and read through the entire book.

But the more effort you put in, the more you're going to get out.

Now, when I prepare sermons, the average sermon, when you look at all this work that we do, you're going to see

it takes time.

The average sermon for me that I'm going to prepare to stand before people and says, this is what God's Word says,

I spent on average about 30 hours per sermon.

Now, the first time I get to the first sermon of a new book, I'm starting a new book, I

put about 60 hours of work before the 30 hours of work for the

first sermon.

60 hours because what I do is I start reading the book in its entirety in many different translations,

taking some general notes, taking a general outline, getting an idea.

So when I read through a book, say the book of Titus, I get a breakdown of it in my head somewhat,

and then I'll put it on paper.

But I kind of have an idea of the main sections of the book.

So I'll see a section in chapter two.

I'm going to see, it's going to talk about older men and younger men, you know, older women, younger women, the

section of Titus, you know, specifically Paul instructing Titus.

So I see those breakdowns.

If I'm doing Ephesians in chapter five, I'm going to see a breakdown.

He talks about submitting one to another.

And then I see these breakdowns, a husband -wife relationship, parent -child relationship, master -slave relationship.

Those are breakdowns.

So you could break those into the husband -wife relationship.

The whole thing could be broken down into submission.

Then you could break husband -wife, child, parent -child, master -slave, or you could break it down even further into husband,

wife, parent, child, actually not parent, it's fathers, master -slave.

So you could break it down like that and then deal with the individuals inside, individual passages.

So what you do is I go through the entire book and study it out.

Now once I have an idea of the book, I put down the theme of what the book's about.

So say the book of James, the book of James is about understanding what true

genuine faith looks like.

What I'm going to do there is I'm going to have that theme throughout my thinking as I'm going through the

book.

This is what James is about.

And I know that because of the repetitive words and things like that, that I looked at last part when

I'm going to ask those questions.

Well, those are some of the things I'm going to do as I'm going through this whole book.

So I do that.

I start at the book level.

Then I'm going to go down to each chapter and I'm going to read through each chapter and get an idea, a general

idea.

Then I'm going to go to each paragraph.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to divide each passage into the different paragraphs.

These are the units of thought, different what's called a precopy.

A precopy is a basically a unit of thought that you're going to have there.

And many of the Bible translations actually have those precopies with the one sentence or have a

couple words that give an overview of that precopy, that passage, that grouping.

So actually that makes it a little bit easier for you.

So they've done some of the work for you, but don't rely on what they've done.

They could be wrong.

Study it out.

So you can say, look, this is based on my study of the scripture for this reason, this reason, this reason.

That's why I hold to this view.

Now what we're going to do then is we're going to divide it up.

Usually if you have a newer translation, it's actually broken out into paragraphs.

It makes it easier for you.

But if it's not, if it's like a King James Bible, you can look at the bolded numbers

of the verses and that's usually the new paragraph.

Okay, so that could be helpful to you.

Now some of this is going to be more helpful if you're looking at some of the instruction type literature versus

poetic literature.

But you'll see that this becomes a helpful way to do this.

Now you want to determine what the first thing you're going to do is when you're doing this is you want to

do the same thing for the preceding, post seating verses.

You basically want to get the context.

Context is important.

All right.

It becomes very crucial in understanding what's going on when we

understand the context.

So this becomes helpful way of doing things.

So how do we do it?

How do we break it down?

Well, what I'm going to do is when I do those general things, I start with the book, I get to chapter,

I'll take a paragraph and I'll get just main thoughts.

But then I go down to the sentence level.

And then what I'm going to do is work my way back up.

Okay, so how do I know the meaning of a sentence?

Well, I'm going to start with the noun or subject that the noun, the thing

that it's is the main subject of the sentence.

Once I have the noun identified, I'm going to look for the verb, the predicate, the action that either is

the noun is doing something.

And so the action, it's going to be an action or it's going to be an action to the noun or different things.

So you're, you have a noun and your verb.

That's going to give you your subject and your action.

Then you're going to look for the complete thought.

Okay, your complete thought.

That's what a sentence is.

It's a noun, a subject, a complete thought.

The subject, predicate, complete thought.

So what you're doing there is getting the idea.

So what I'm actually going to do when I start with a new passage of Scripture, actually when I start with a new book, and this is why it

takes me so much time, the 60 hours, part of it is I take the entire book

and I do this by putting the entire book, I take it out of my Bible software, I put

it into Microsoft Word or Pages, and I start to basically do a block diagram.

What I do is I start reading it and anything that's supportive, I indent.

And then anything that's the main thought, I put it to the left.

So basically what I end up with is all my main ideas, main

things are to the left, the support is to the right, so that the main ideas kind of stick out more.

And I see what's supporting the main idea.

So that I can use the language to understand that something is supporting the main idea, it's not the main idea.

We're going to look at some examples of this in a few moments of how this can make a

major difference.

Because sometimes just a single word can make all the difference in the understanding of what a passage

means.

So we want to make sure we get those single words right.

And so Bible software can help us with this, there's other things that can help, but there's nothing that's going to

substitute for putting in the hard work.

If you really want to study out a passage of Scripture, you really want to know what God's Word is, this is the process to

do.

Now you may not be preparing sermons.

If you're preparing Sunday school lessons, you should be doing this.

If you're preparing to teach, you should be doing this at whatever level you can.

Find the time, because it's that important to say, if you're going to say, thus says the Lord, you want to be

right.

But it's also important just for us to know what God's Word says.

And so the more time we spend in doing this, the greater value it will be for us.

If you do this along with whatever passage your pastor is preaching during the week, you're going to get a whole lot more out.

If your pastor goes verse by verse through a book of the Bible, and you put these into practice

with the book he's doing, you're going to get a whole lot more out of the Sunday sermon because you're going to start picking up on nuances that maybe others

wouldn't have picked up or maybe you wouldn't have picked up had you not done that homework yourself.

I tend to do that when I'm under another man's pulpit where he's preaching.

And I know what he's going to do.

I actually like to study out ahead of time because I get a lot more out of the messages.

I pay a lot more attention too, by the way.

But I take the entire thing and I block diagram it.

Things that are supportive, adverbs support a verb, that's supporting.

And or but, you know, the prepositional phrases, thank you.

Prepositional phrases are supporting.

So anything that's supporting gets done.

Also what I do is when I find a pronoun, I put in brackets who that refers

to so that I know specifically who does this pronoun refer to.

I think through that.

I study.

I put that in so I have that all identified.

And we may take a look at an example of some of the work that I've done with that next lesson.

But I do that work up front so that I get an understanding and gather all that work.

Okay.

So now I have that.

I have this block diagram.

And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start looking for the ideas.

So what I'm going to do there is I'm going to look for the noun, the verb, the complete thought.

I'm going to basically just for every single sentence, I am going to

put like a phrase or a sentence that explains the main thought in my own words.

And I'm going to do that for every sentence.

And then I'm going to go back up to the paragraph and I'm going to look through all of my main thoughts and I'm going to put an overarching

thought for the paragraph.

And then if there's a couple of paragraphs that make up a section, I'm going to do it up to that pericope level and then

maybe for the, even for the chapter.

Okay.

So I do that work for each of the sections.

This also helps me to keep that flow, that context, making sure as I'm going verse by verse, I'm keeping where was I?

Where am I going?

What am I dealing with now?

And so I'm always having that in mind.

Because I've done that work up front when I do go through books of the Bible, I kind of have the idea by the time I'm getting

into the sermon prep of where I am, where I've been, where I'm going, where I am and where I'm going, because

I've done that initial work.

Let's look at some examples where a noun and verb can make all the difference in a

text.

If you're familiar with this passage here, it's the great commission that many of us know.

And many people talk about this as go ye, as if go

therefore.

People translate this or preach this as if the main emphasis

of what we should be doing here is that we should be going, we,

that it's implied or some say go ye, so you go.

And that's the idea is that we should go.

That's the great commission.

But what I've done for you is I've put the verb or predicate in red and the subject or noun in

blue and all of a sudden something stands out.

It's not about going, is it?

No, the main thought is about making disciples.

Make disciples.

That's the noun, the verb is to make.

That's what you do.

Who does that?

Well, it's disciples.

What do we make?

We make disciples.

So, this is what we do.

We make disciples.

And then the rest of it supports that.

How do we make disciples?

Well, we go about our day, that's the going, and we teach them and we

baptize them.

That's how we do it.

Okay, we baptize and teach.

So, we have here a case where the noun and the verb make the difference.

Helps us to understand a passage.

Now, let me take a lengthier passage that I want to kind of step through this with you and help you see

how this works.

We're going to look at 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

Now, in this passage, let's read it.

It says, "...all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable

for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for

training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.".

Now, many people focus on those 4 things that you see there, that it's profitable.

And there's 4 things, teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

Now, let's look at those 4 and take a look.

And we see there that this is kind of a neat thing that you end up seeing there.

You have teaching, reproof, correction, training.

What are those things?

Well, teaching is about right thinking.

Reproof is about wrong thinking.

Correction is about wrong behavior.

And training is about right behavior.

So, if you look here, you see I've kind of showed where the bookends are.

You have right thinking, right behavior.

You see the 2 things that are positive, corrective, or right are in the top and

bottom, overarching.

And the 2 things that are wrong are in the middle and green there, wrong thinking, wrong behavior.

But you see there's also, if you look there to the right, the thinking in blue, you see how it keeps the

thinking are paired together and the behaviors paired together.

So, what you see here is, remember when we talked those lessons on parallelism, you see all the parallelism that's going on here?

There's a parallelism in right and wrong thinking and behavior.

In other words, what this is trying to point out is that in every area of life, both in your thinking and

your behavior, the Bible is profitable for what's right and wrong.

So, right and wrong thinking and behavior.

Is that neat?

Does that help you?

So, you get to see this is where this helps.

Whatever area of life we see that the Scripture is profitable.

Okay.

Is that the main point, the teaching and the correction and instruction?

Is that the main point?

Well, if we take a look at this passage, let's break it down and take a good look at it.

Okay.

Let's put it up again.

But this time what I want to do is, I've taken the time to get rid of the supporting clauses.

In other words, the main points are not going to be the prepositions.

Prepositional phrases support the main thought.

So, if we were to cross out, don't cross out in your Bible, but we're doing this to

show you.

But if you cross out the main thoughts, this is what you have.

So, let's cross it out.

You see, all Scripture is breathed out, but the by God is a prepositional phrase.

So, let's cross that out and profitable.

And then look at this.

All four of those things that most people focus on, for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and

for training in righteousness, they're all prepositional phrases.

So, we cross all of them out.

Then what do we have?

That the man, well, of God is a preposition, that's supporting, may be complete,

equipped, and for every good work is a prepositional phrase.

So, what are we left at?

Let's read it without our prepositional phrases and see if this helps us understanding the meaning of it.

All Scripture is breathed out and profitable, that the

man may be complete, equipped.

You see, that gives it a totally different meaning than to focus on the four supporting clauses.

Do you see that?

It's not about those four supporting clauses.

They support the main thought.

Do you see that point now?

I hope that's helpful to you.

We need to be focused on the support of the main thought and keeping the main thing the main thing.

Okay?

That's what we want to make sure we do.

And so, by breaking this down sentence by sentence, that helps us to

identify what's the main thought.

Because sometimes it could be the way something's worded that can make the difference.

Sometimes we have things that are worded in ways for emphasis.

Sometimes word order is purposely put in different orders, in wrong orders, so they'll stand

out and be emphasized more.

There is a, you know, the way you put words can make a difference.

In other words, if I say, there is one God or God is

one, okay, one and God are both there.

But God is one and one God are very different.

Right?

God is one talks about the unity.

One God means singularity.

Those are very different.

Okay?

And so, when you break these down and you look at it this way, it's going to help you to see what is

the main thing being discussed.

And that's what we want to make sure we do.

We want to make sure that the main thing is the main thing.

Or as we read in Steve Lawson's book there, that the text is the text.

Okay?

So we want to make sure we're doing that.

So the first thing that we want to make sure we're doing, you want to chart the passage.

This is hard work.

No question about it.

Charting the passage is difficult work.

Charting the passage means you're going to have to put a lot of effort in to making sure

that you are breaking down each passage.

Line by line.

Verse by verse.

So that you know what it is saying.

Okay?

And this is effort.

But it's effort that's very valuable.

It's effort that you're going to get a lot out of if you build the habit of doing it.

Okay?

And the reality is once you've done that with enough books, once you do it with all the books of the Bible, you have it done.

I haven't gotten to the point where I'm re -preaching through books and I can say, I can rest on that work.

But if I have to go back to a passage, a book that I've already done that with, and maybe I

have some books where I haven't preached through them, and so I can go back and rely on that effort.

Okay?

And it becomes helpful.

So the first thing you want to do is you want to chart the passage.

Make sure you have a good chart of the passage.

The next one that we want to focus on is the context.

That's right.

Context is king.

This is where, like I said, you want to be, if you're going verse by verse, working your way through, then you're going to work through that context.

If you've gone through the whole book already, then you have that context and that becomes helpful.

But you want to make sure you have the context.

This is like, I think, the third time that we've mentioned context in here.

But that's one of the things, and this is nothing new, you know, even in this book that I mentioned, it said that one of the

things that Calvin would always do is Calvin would

first identify the specific type of text, what type of literature is.

Okay?

The example, what sort of literature.

Then he would do his exegetical precision.

In other words, here what he would do is he'd be looking, Calvin insisted, I'll read this

Calvin insisted that the words within each specific passage

were to be considered in their historical and grammatical structure.

You see, he did the same thing that we're teaching you guys to do.

Understand the context of things.

The context explains the meaning.

Now, let's see an area where this becomes helpful.

There is a way of interpreting Genesis, that there's two ways many interpret

Genesis.

And one is when it comes to the word day, yom in Hebrew, yom

could mean a long period of time, an age.

So it doesn't necessarily mean a literal 24 hour day.

However, when we look in context, there is a thing that we end up learning.

And that is whenever yom is word with a numeral, it always means a literal

24 hour day.

Everywhere that it's used, it means a 24 hour day.

Anywhere and everywhere that yom is used with a morning

or evening, it's a literal 24 hour day.

Okay, so those would be three key indicators in the context that can help us.

If it mentions a number, mentions morning or mentions evening, those become indicators to help

us to see whether yom means an age or whether it's specifically a 24 hour period.

So let's take a look at Genesis 1 and see if the context helps us

to understand it.

I've color coded this for us.

So here we go.

Genesis 1, 5, and it was evening and

it was morning the first day.

So you have evening and you have morning and you have a numeral and then the word yom

or day.

So I've highlighted that, those in red and the word yom in blue.

And I think, I'm sure that you guys are so smart that you see the pattern

here.

And I don't have to read through each one of these, but I will just to make sure it's clear.

And it was evening and it was morning the second day.

And it was evening and it was morning the third day.

And it was evening and it was morning the fourth day.

And it was evening and it was morning the fifth day.

And it was evening and it was morning the sixth day.

And you see there, Genesis 1, 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31.

So you can look them up on your own.

But do you notice something there?

Every one of those mentioned evening, they mention morning, and they have a numeral.

Now, if every single time that yom is used with evening, every single time yom is used

with morning, every single time yom is used with numeral, it means a literal 24 hour day.

Then I would argue that God could not make it any clearer to

emphasize that this, Genesis 1, is a literal 24 hour day.

Because He uses evening, and He uses morning, and He uses a numeral.

All three of them are in place to emphasize the day.

So when we look at the context of that, the context of the one word

day, what does day mean?

Because words can have multiple meanings.

Well, the greater context is going to help us.

Evening, morning, one.

Evening, morning, second.

Evening, morning, third.

Evening, morning, fourth, fifth, sixth.

You see, that context helps us to understand.

And then we can break it out to further context.

So it could be the context of a single word, so that we understand what the single word is.

I make this case when we study through 1 Corinthians 13, it says, when the perfect has come.

People get into a whole thing of what's the perfect, and they argue it must be perfect, must be Christ, because only Christ is

perfect.

Well, the problem with that is that the word perfect there is also translated mature and

complete in other places.

And it doesn't mean perfect in the sense of absolute perfection.

So it doesn't have to be referring to Christ.

I say that because the context determines the meaning.

Is it meaning the process of maturity or something that has matured or something that's completed like a

jigsaw puzzle?

You put that final piece in, it's complete.

That feeling of accomplishment is done.

It's complete.

It's not perfect, right?

It's not a perfect thing like Christ is perfect.

It's complete.

But it is perfect in the sense that it's done.

And that's the meaning of that word.

And so how it's used is determined on its context, okay?

Now, I hope this becomes a helpful lesson to you in learning how to put these things together.

This is just the beginning.

And next week, we're going to look at more and examining some of the context

and things like that and block diagramming, comparing passages.

We're going to look because these are important lessons.

Had this week where somebody who was arguing spent several hours with

an individual who just they have a differing view than I would on

certain things.

And I and the other people that were here in this group.

And the thing that we discovered was that when we bring out

passages of Scripture, the person would not accept what was being said because he

argued that he was being led by the Spirit.

And therefore, he would trust what his interpretation was, not because he followed

principles, but he felt it was right within him because that's how the Spirit had led him.

But if the Spirit led him wrong, well, the Spirit obviously wouldn't lead him wrong, but sometimes it could be our

spirit.

And we really what it is, is we just don't want to do the work.

And so he ignored those passages.

But then when it came to passages he wanted to use, he'd say, well, just read this passage.

Well, just reading that passage, how do you know you're not reading it wrong?

You see, you have no basis.

How do you test the spirits?

Well, you have no way of testing the spirits if your only standard is how you feel.

Because I say, well, I think you're wrong because the Holy Spirit has led me differently.

Which one of us is right?

You know, it's like crazy.

You have to be able to say, this is the principles that we use.

We've investigated, we've interpreted God's Word.

How do we know we're accurate?

We're only accurate if we're following these rules properly.

Now, all of us are going to be given over to our presuppositions.

Every one of us are going to be given over to our theological beliefs that we start with.

We have to be aware of that.

And we have to be willing to question that.

Our theology could be wrong.

God's is right.

That's the difference.

And we got to get in line with God, not have the Bible try to line up with our theological system.

And every theological system thinks it's right and thinks it's based in a proper understanding of scripture.

But a lot of times theological systems try to take God's Word and fit it into the

system.

They develop the system.

And the system actually becomes what interprets God's Word.

And that's the wrong way to do it.

Use God's Word to interpret the system.

Okay.

And so you got to make sure you're doing it in the right order.

And so we want to make sure that we do things in the right order.

So that is what we're trying to do here is to use the tools.

Now is where you're going to take, you know, when you're doing these things, this is where your handbooks and your surveys

and your study Bibles, even your Bible dictionaries.

If you look in a Bible dictionary and Bible encyclopedia and you look up the book of first Peter, it's going to have an

outline.

It's going to have the main thought.

It's going to give you a breakdown and you can compare with the work you did with the work that they've done.

See if you're totally off base or you're kind of close, but you put it in your own words.

Very good to do.

And like I said, do this with your pastor's sermons every week and you're going to get a lot out of it.

Okay.

If you are a pastor, I sure hope you're following this process.

I mean, don't take the easy way out and don't take someone else's sermon and just read a commentary.

Okay.

But do the work.

Now, if you have any questions about this lesson next week, we're going to continue with this.

And because it is that important, we want to go slow with it.

If you have any questions, you disagree with us, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org

academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

We try to answer every question that we get and we hope that you'll send in your questions, suggestions,

anything that you want.

We're glad to do that.

Now, we do have, what we do as part of our ministry

here to you is with each class that we give, we want you to encourage someone this

week.

You see, we find that most of us are not very good at encouragement and we need the constant reminder to

encourage other people.

And that's what we want to do here.

So, we have a brother of encouragement this week and it is our good friend of the ministry here, Sai

Tenbrudenkait.

Sai from proofthatgodexists .org.

He's become kind of well known in the atheist community, it seems.

He has a film, How to Answer the Fool.

And it's a really good, well put together film with the help of Crown Rights

or the work of Crown Rights.

And I think American Vision is the ones who paid for that and put that together.

And so, here you have a really good film that helps to answer how do we do apologetics

biblically by using the presuppositional apologetic and teaching how that applies to the street.

He's been putting a lot of effort into that.

Some people have really been, you know, pushing up against him.

And he's been under quite a bit of discouragement in

the internet, especially from the atheists because they just can't answer the axiom that God

is.

And they really don't know what to do with the presuppositional apologetic.

And the hardcore atheists haven't really dealt with it before.

It's been around for a while.

I mean, Cornelius Van Teel and Greg Bonson have been proponents of this and

making it well aware for years.

But the reality is it was, you know, Van Teel was very high and lofty kind of.

Bonson brought it into the, kind of the intellectual debating realm.

And what Sy Timbruncate is doing is taking, really, dumbing it down in a sense for you and I, okay,

just me, so that people can understand it and take it to the streets.

And that's really what he's been doing.

And so, we want to encourage you to encourage Sy this week.

Get to know him if you don't.

You can go to his website and see lots of videos from him.

And see a lot about him and be able to get more there.

But that's available to you.

And so, we want to encourage you with that.

So, we want you to take this first key and put it into practice.

As soon as you can, start putting these things into practice.

You'll find it very helpful.

And so, we appreciate that you come out each class.

We appreciate that you help.

And especially those of you who help support us by enrolling in the class.

These classes are offered absolutely free to all of you who want to watch on YouTube or, you know, watch it live

or watch it later on YouTube, okay.

We offer it free to you.

We don't charge you.

And you get these lessons.

Lessons that you'd learn at a Bible Institute or even in seminary.

And you can get that and get these lessons and not have to pay for it.

Just invest the time.

But maybe you can help us by enrolling and getting the syllabus or just sending a donation

to the website down here and helping to support us so we can put these things together for you.

We appreciate that.

If you would consider donating monthly, it'd be a great help to us.

We're in great need right now as we're needing to hire some people to do a lot of work.

Our staff is running on very thin,

very busy, and we need to really get more help.

And so, if you could help out on a monthly basis, that would be a wonderful thing.

We thank you for it.

So, until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal

day for the glory of God.