I'm going to have you turn to Psalm 51, verse 17, and we'll take a look at this one last figure of speech. We've been going through figures of speech and looked at 11 of them and ran out a handout last week. And we've got the one last one here, but that's not what we're going to emphasize tonight. We're going to hit this quickly, and then we're going to get into another part of the foundational rules, where we've been dealing with the Bible must be interpreted grammatically for a number of weeks now. I think it's been at least six weeks, if not seven. But you'll notice number 12 there, I don't know whether you call that litotes or litotes, but anyway, there are figures of speech in which a thing is affirmed by the negation of the opposite. Instead of saying, he is strong, this would say, express it this way, he is not weak, okay. And Psalm 51, 17 is the only one I want us to look at. Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, thou wilt not despise. He's not going to despise it because he loves it, amen. And so that just kind of tells you how that works. There's some other kinds of non-literal language and speech forms that we can identify. And one of those is a word repetition. And I'm fond of saying, if the Bible says it once, you know, pay attention. If it says it more than once, you better really pay attention, especially when it's right there together. And so there's that. And then you've got the oxymoron, the figure of speech, which apparently is contradictory The terms appear in a conjunction, but these are of incidental concern to the interpreter of the Word of God. They're very minor. Just be aware that you may run across some of these. But tonight, we got an extended handout there. You'll notice, boy, they handed out a book. We're going to take a look at some things here. as we deal with the Bible must be interpreted historically. This is very important tonight. I'm not going to be in a lot of scripture, really not going to be in much scripture until we get to the illustration, and we'll be dealing with illustration, showing you what we're saying from the book of Jonah, okay? And that'll help you understand what we're talking about. The Bible must be interpreted historically. The Bible is a historical book, and with a historical setting. And accordingly, it can only be fully understood and properly interpreted in the light of history. If you ignore the history of what's going on, you're not going to come away with a proper interpretation. Each portion of Scripture must be understood in its original historical setting. Now understand the historical setting includes any background or knowledge about the author. What are we told about the author in the Scripture or from dependable historical sources? What we know about the Apostle Paul can help us greatly as we interpret what he wrote. Do you agree with that? When you know the mindset of the Apostle Paul, when you know his background, that he was a Jew that persecuted Christians, when you understand that he did a 180 when he got saved. I mean, as hard as he went against Christ, he went for Christ. All of these things, this knowledge that we have of the Apostle Paul is key to proper interpretation of Scripture. An example we're going to use, and we'll hit it here a little bit later, but we're going to use the book of Jonah. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and call the Assyrians to repent. However, Jonah rebelled against God's word, fled in the opposite direction, and to better understand the narrative, it helps to know the background of Assyria, don't you think? You need to know about Assyria. It's crucial also to know the history between Assyria and Israel. And these nations were very bitter enemies, one against the other. In fact, Assyria would, some decades later, conquer the Israelites and force them into exile. And the nation's histories show us why Jonah despised the Assyrians so much and longed for their destruction. I mean, he wanted to see God judge the Assyrians. Well, it's because of that background, and you're not going to understand how could a man of God hate a group of people like that. Additionally, I understand that their histories also makes a serious repentance at Jonah's preaching even more miraculous. Now, a great key for understanding the historical setting on any passage of Scripture is to faithfully apply what's called the five-point question rule. It's always good to know who is speaking or writing. Need to know something about them. To whom is it being spoken or written? You can make some wrong interpretations if you don't understand all of this, if you don't take time to take a look at it. What is being spoken or written about? When is it being spoken or written? Why is it being spoken or written? And we also, I'd like to add another one there myself. Where is it being spoken both from and to? Like when we were in Philippians, remember, and I think I even mentioned it this past week as we were mentioning Paul's saying, Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. He wrote that from prison. Is that important? Yeah, really important. It wasn't because he was in great circumstances that he rejoiced. He rejoiced in the Lord. He rejoiced where he stood with the Lord. The more one is familiar with the whole counsel of Scripture, and we're talking about from Genesis to Revelation, then the more the ancient cultures become familiar to us, leading to a more accurate interpretation. What I'm saying is, the more you know of the Bible, the more you read the Bible, the more you study the Bible, we become more familiar with the Word of God, and the better we are able to see how it all ties together. A lot of times whenever I'm preaching, I'll refer you to another area of Scripture that ties in with that, maybe that we've studied before. to show you that particular thing. Now, how can we begin to find these things that we're talking about? And as far as the background for all of these things, the historical settings, including the audience, the historical setting, the cultural background, the place and situation that prompted the writing of the text, How do we go about finding this stuff out? Well, let me help you out here a little bit with this, and the very first thing that really helps is if you have a good study Bible. Okay, a good study Bible. Now, I've just taken one study Bible, and it's one that if somebody is asking me what, maybe they're young in the faith, what's a good Bible for me to get? I'll get one that has helps, such as this. And the notes that I've given you, I've given you three pages of notes here. They come, and we're going to look at it, the aspect here from the book of Jonah, and show you how a study Bible can help you with these things that we've talked about. These come from the Life Application Bible. I believe Ms. Evelyn's got a copy of that. I think that's what you bought. I lent her mine, let her take a look at it for a little while, and it's what I recommended for her to have. But if you see here, having a good study Bible is a good place to begin, and page number one there shows you the reason for that. If you'll look there on the right-hand side, it gives you some vital statistics of the book of Jonah. Up at the very top, it gives you a timeline of when Jonah's ministry began, when he preached in Nineveh, and when it ended there. And it puts it in relationship to other things that were going on with his contemporaries, so that you can understand that. Look at the vital statistics though. He gives you the purpose. The purpose is to show the extent of God's grace. The message of salvation is for all people. Nineveh, there were Gentiles. They were wicked Gentiles. So wicked that God was just going to wipe them out. Totally wipe them out. And sent Jonah just to warn them. And we see here the author is Jonah, the son of Amittai, to whom it was written. It was written to Israel and God's people everywhere. God wanted them to understand that he cares for even the heathen. The date written, approximately 785 to 760 BC. The setting, Jonah preceded Amos and ministered under Jeroboam II, Israel's most powerful king. It gives you some dates there, and it gives you another place that you can look that up in 2 Kings 14, verses 23 through 25. Assyria was Israel's great enemy, and Israel was conquered by them in 722 BC. We know that Nineveh's repentance must have been very short-lived. You need to know, too, that the book of Nahum brings to light the judgment that God eventually brought on Nineveh because of their turning back into sin. The key verse in this book, chapter number 4, verse number 11, And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand? God is concerned about souls, isn't He? He is. Some key people there tell you to look for Jonah, the boat's captain and the crew. Some key places, Joppa, that's the place of course where we know that Jonah was fleeing to Tarshish from Joppa. Some special features here. This book is different from the other prophetic books because it tells the story of the prophet. It does not center on his prophecies. In fact, only one verse summarizes his message to the people of Nineveh. There's only one verse of the message. Jonah 3 and verse number 4. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and none of us shall be overthrown. Now what you think about, he had the whole time he was in the belly of the whale to prepare a good message. The good message was what God wanted him to give. That was the message. He didn't have to go to the belly of the whale. to get that message. God had already given him that message, but yet he had failed to preach what the Lord had told him to preach. Now, let's take a look at a good study Bible. It also has a You'll see a lot of times that we'll have an introduction, such as what we have here on this first page. And I want to pay close attention to just a couple of places there toward the end of the first paragraph, where it says, suppose that in the midst of such thoughts, God told you to take the gospel to the worst of these offenders, how would you respond? Jonah was given such a task, to take the gospel to the worst people that are possible. Assyria, a great but evil empire, was Israel's most dreaded enemy. The Assyrians flaunted their power before God and the world through numerous acts of heartless cruelty. So when Jonah heard God tell him to go to Assyria and call the people to repentance, he ran in the opposite direction. And the book of Jonah tells the story of this prophet's flight and how God stopped him and turned him around. Well, you would expect as you read through the book, you're going to come across this, but it gives you a summary of what you're going to be coming across. Amen. In the last paragraph, as you read Jonah, see the full picture of God's love and compassion and realize that no one is beyond redemption. The gospel is for all who will repent and believe and begin to pray for those who seem to be farthest from the kingdom and look for ways to tell them about God. Now you'll see on page two there, on page two, you have the blueprint and it just gives you an outline here of the book. Jonah 1.1 to Jonah 2.10, we find Jonah forsakes his mission. He's given a mission by God, and he decides he don't want to do it. Well, then God shakes him up and turns him around, and we see Jonah fulfills his mission in chapter 3 and chapter 4. And there on the right hand side, it tells you Jonah was a reluctant prophet given a mission which he found distasteful. We already said, because of Assyria, when you study the Assyrians and what they would do to people and what they did to the Jews, that's the reason why he found it very distasteful. He chose to run away from God rather than obey Him. And like Jonah, we may have to do things in life that we don't want to do. So there's a lesson to learn there. Sometimes we find ourselves wanting to turn and run, but it's better to obey God than to defy Him or run away. Often, in spite of our defiance, God, in His mercy, will give us another chance to serve Him when we return to Him. Now, if you know, if you've read the book of Jonah or heard a message of the book of Jonah, you can see how this would be helpful to someone that had never picked up the book. never didn't know anything about Jonah, other than maybe they heard about Jonah and a whale, Jonah and a great fish. Maybe that's all they heard about it, but they didn't really know any of the details. But it gives you some ideas here to look for as you go through the book. We see some mega themes there. talks about God's sovereignty, talks about God's message to all the world, repentance, and God's compassion. And it gives you an explanation there and gives you the importance of that. Look down at the very bottom and let me just caution you as I, you know, I'm always kind of cautious to recommend a good study Bible because a lot of people put more emphasis on the notes than they do on the word. don't do that. One of my favorite study Bibles is the Schofield Reference Bible. I have one over at the house that I use over at the house, but it's one of my favorite. It has a note in the very front, the very first note that it has that I don't agree with. When it talks about It talks about the theistic evolution, basically, is what it's for. It puts a gap in the gap theory that's there. And I don't believe in the gap theory. I believe in the six-day creation and just like the Bible says it. But here at the very bottom, they have some really good notes most of the time. But let me caution you again. Don't get where you depend upon the notes. Use the notes and ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern what's right and what's wrong about some of this stuff, amen? But a very good note here. At the very bottom, you'll notice a discoloration there. That's where I have it highlighted in my scripture. It says, God called Jonah to preach to Nineveh. the most important city in Assyria, the rising world power of Jonah's day. Within 50 years, Nineveh would become the capital of the vast Assyrian empire. Jonah doesn't say much about Nineveh's wickedness, but the prophet Nahum gives us more insight. He says that Nineveh was guilty of evil plots against God, in Nahum 1.9, exploitation of the helpless, Nahum 2, 12. Cruelty and war, Nahum 2, verse 12 and 13. Idolatry, prostitution and witchcraft, Nahum 3, 4. And so, God told him to go to Nile, about 500 miles northeast of Israel to warn them of the judgment and to declare that the people could receive mercy and forgiveness if they would repent. So, It just kind of gives you an idea of the types of helps that this particular Bible, the Life Application Bible, is very good for someone that doesn't have a lot of Bible knowledge. They're on page 3. It gives you some additional information. You can see how all of this stuff could be very helpful. It gives you the climate of the times. There, Jonah served right in the middle of the page there. Jonah served as prophet to Israel. And it gives you the dates there. It tells you the climate of the times. And Nineveh was the most important city in Assyria and would soon become the capital of the huge Assyrian empire. But Nineveh was also a very wicked city. and the main message and the importance of the message. And he tells you the contemporary prophets that prophesied during the same time. as Jonah. And so, and you'll see sometimes they'll include, you got a nice little map here to just kind of give you a visual of Jonah's journey as he left Joppa and decided to try to go to Tarshish, which is way across the Mediterranean Sea. He didn't get very far. The whale spit him back up on the shores there and he had to take a trip and be obedient to the Lord. It would have been a whole lot better for him if he had just obeyed the Lord to begin with. Amen. I hope you find that helpful. And again, that's the Life Application Bible. Just one instance of how a good study Bible can help you to discern the things that we're talking about tonight. Other things I have back here that I love, I have in my library, and a lot of these things can be accessed even online these days. You don't even have to have a subscription sometimes to some of these things. I've got two books, All the Men of the Bible. This is by Herbert Lockyer. He's a very well-known theologian. I like Dr. Lockyer. He's got All the Men of the Bible and All the Women of the Bible. It will help you when you're looking up who is this being said to. Who said it? And you can go in and maybe they got the same name as somebody else. He discerns, you know, if they got, if there's multiple Joseph's in the Bible, it lets you know what this Joseph was. Okay, that's very helpful. A lot of times people will have wrong interpretation of scripture because they assume They assume that the person's name is somebody else's scripture. You don't want to do that. I love these books. You can look them up. They're in alphabetical order. They're staples in my office. Lockyer. It's L-O-C-K-Y-E-R. Lockyer. Both of them. Herbert Lockyer. Herbert Lockyer. All the men of the Bible and all the women of the Bible. Of course, I brought these to the pool a bit before. When you're trying to find out what's going on and wanting to properly take a look at it, it's good to have a manners and customs book. The scripture that you're looking at, look it up. It has everything that you would really need to look up in a book such as this. It's got it by the book of the Bible, chapter and verse. So if there's something on that that you need to know, you can look it up and go right to it. And it's real easy to use. I've got two Manderson Custis books. I prefer this one. You can tell I prefer it. It's been taped a couple of times. I'm very careful with it because the pages will come out of it. I use it so much. This is Manners and Customs of the Bible by James M. Freeman. I've used this one since I went to Bible college. I got it while I was there. But it's one of my favorite. In your manners and customs of the Bible lands, there's a smaller, doesn't have as much in it, but it's still good too. It's by White, W-I-G-H-T. But the Freeman book is the best one. One thing about a study Bible though, you'll notice it kind of thickens up what you've got to carry around. That's the reason why I let Ms. Evelyn use this for a little while because it's a little bigger, but it is a good study Bible and it can give you the background and help you with those things. So Bible, handbooks, dictionaries, Bible dictionaries, and like I said, a lot of this stuff you can find online that you can even use free of charge. So, let's move on down in your handout there. This was expressed several different ways. I don't know who the author was, but somebody wrote, wherever you look within this book, five things observe with care, of whom it speaks and how it speaks and why and when and where. Kind of clicky, right? If you can memorize that, which it's easy to memorize something that's written that way, that can really be a help to you. Kipling wrote, I had me six serving men who taught me all I knew. Their names were what and where and when and how and why and who. Again, it's very easy to remember something like that if you memorize it. And I like how John Wycliffe wrote here, he said, It shall greatly help ye to understand Scripture, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and to whom, and with what words, and at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before, and what followeth. Now that's not as easy to remember, but He's pretty thorough in what he had to say there. Amen. All right. Well, we're going to leave the foundational rules behind, and hopefully you'll remember them. Don't leave them behind whenever you are studying Scripture. It takes time to remember those, but I hope it's been a help to you tonight. Should you ever have any questions, I can help you with. That's what I'm here for. Let's pull back on our prayer list. We'll pray for the needs and we'll be dismissed.