And if you've got a prayer list, then you've got one of the handouts there that you will need. And we're not going to be in any particular scripture to start this with. We're going to talk about some things, and then we'll take a look at some things of what we're talking about in the scripture. But tonight, we come to the fourth particular law of biblical interpretation, and that's this, the law of application. You know, the Lord intends for the Bible to be applied in our lives. He does. It's to be applied to the church, and our church life is to be applied in our family, in our family life, and it's to be applied personally to us in our personal walk with the Lord. And here's the law, what the law, how the law states, the scripture must be correctly interpreted before it can be applied. With any passage of Scripture, there is only one correct interpretation, but there can be many proper applications. So we have to look to find that one correct interpretation. ask the Lord to help us apply it in a right way. And by the way, let me go ahead and say this, in applying the Word of God, one area of the Word of God, the application should not go against any other of Scripture. That's a wrong application. If you're applying it in a way that's not consistent with the Word of God, that's not good. In applying the Word of God to any situation, it's important to note three kinds of applications. First of all is precepts. Precepts are those things which the Bible assuredly declares, commandments. In other words, it's cut and dried. There's no gray area. The Lord said, thou shalt do this or thou shalt not do that. If the Bible commands or forbids something, there is clearly no room for debate. We're duty-bound to obey its precepts. In fact, even the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord said, if you love me, keep my commandments to his disciples. There's also principles, and that's those things which the Bible implies from principles found in the Bible, and from that we get convictions. For example, just one example, believers should not smoke or chew tobacco, not because of a command, there's no command in Scripture that says you shouldn't smoke or chew, but because of the scriptural principle that a believer's Physical body is to be kept from hurtful activities and to be kept pure for service. This body is the temple of the living God. We got the Holy Spirit within. And so just that principle tells us that there should be some things that we don't involve ourselves in. And we know that 1 Corinthians 3 verse 16 and 17 says, Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. And then 1 Corinthians 6, 19. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. And then preferences. And preferences are those things which about the Bible is silent. It's personal choices, basically, is what we're talking about here. For example, a man may wear a tie. I like to wear a tie to church meetings for personal reasons, but that's a practice which is neither mandated, maligned, nor mentioned in the Bible. There were no ties back then, that I know of, when I was going to Tennessee Temple. When we got into the very first class, the orientation, remember Dr. Faulkner just really raking us preacher boys over the coals there. You need to always make sure that you got a long sleeve shirt on. And you're tied. You've got to have your suit just so. And I think that summer it was 105 degrees. This boy don't wear long-sleeved shirts and 105 degrees. So sorry about that. There's nothing in Scripture that says that needs to be done. That's just a long-standing preference that he watched other preachers, he was under other preachers, and he followed other preachers. And that's okay. But don't try to make it a requirement that God didn't make it. It's not a requirement. I mean, you take a look, Booker outdresses me every week. Every time he's here, he's outdressing me. And anyway, now let's see some examples of this law of application. And we may look at some of these and I haven't determined yet how many we're going to look at and some of it will leave you for further study, but we'll begin and we'll see how it goes here. We deal a lot in the Old Testament. A lot of folks take and say, well, you know, Old Testament, we live in the New Testament days. I'm all about New Testament. Forget about the Old Testament. Well, that's not what we're supposed to do as part of the Word of God. There are some things that are given in the Old Testament that are meant for us to learn to apply in our own walk. Historical narratives often have a spiritual application, and a lot of the Old Testament is, and a lot of the New Testament is, too. It's a historical narrative of things that took place. These things actually took place, okay? Let me just say that. They took place. When we're talking about the story of Noah's Ark there in Genesis 7, It's a historical account of the building of the ark of safety and the great flood, and it yields the spiritual application of Christ as our ark of salvation. We are in Christ just like Noah was in the ark. The ark went through the storm waters. Christ went through the judgment for us. You see, the storm waters were the judgment of God upon the inhabitants of the earth, and only those that were in the ark, a picture of Christ there, were delivered. So, that's a great, great story. But it was a true story. Then there's a story in 2 Samuel 9 of Mephibosheth. Now, I think most of you were with us when we were in 2 Samuel 9. I know Brother Marshall was not here at that time, but we dealt with Mephibosheth when we were going through there, and it's the heartwarming account of King David's kindness to the house of Saul. and it offers us a spiritual application of the grace of God. If you remember, he was looking to do kindness to someone that was left of Saul's family after Saul was assassinated and treated so horribly. Of course, he had a relationship with Jonathan, who was also dead at the time. Well, this was Jonathan's son. who was injured as they were trying to flee the enemy that was attacking. And he had fallen and became lame. And that's a picture of what sinful mankind, how sinful mankind is. Man fell, lame. We became cursed. Saul's family, he was from a cursed family. He was living in Lodabar, which means no pasture. And it pictures the sinner outside of Christ. But this story actually happened. That's the important thing. Understand it actually happened, but it pictures some things that we can apply in our life. David in this story is a picture of God the Father seeking the lost. showing kindness for the sake of another and bringing the lost into a family relationship and inviting the saved sinner to sit at his table. He actually brought Mephibosheth in and treated him like a son and said, you know, you're at my table. And so it shows the grace of God, the grace of God, a wonderful thing there. 2 Kings chapter number 5, we also saw the healing of Naaman. Again, this historical account presents a rich picture of salvation. If you remember, Naaman was a captain who had leprosy. And of course, leprosy in the Bible, if you know anything and have been around church circles long, you understand from scripture that leprosy is a picture of sin. It's no respecter of persons. It calls us separation. In fact, you can read about that in Leviticus 13 verses 44 through 46. It carries the sentence of death with it. You eventually die a very painful death and it requires a divine cure. There was nothing that could cure someone with leprosy. The only one that could cure was God. And Naaman is a picture of a self-righteous sinner offering the wrong price. Let's go over there to look at 2 Kings 5. We'll turn to this one. 2 Kings. chapter number 5, and we're just using some examples here. There are other examples we could use because the Bible is full of them. In fact, you hear me when I preach out of the Old Testament, you'll hear me talk about the types and the pictures and the application, what God wants us to get out of it. But there in 2 Kings 5, we see, let's look at verse number 1. Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance into Syria. I mean, this guy's a Gentile. That's a resume there. But he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. You know, there's a lot of supposedly great people in the world, but we all got a sin problem. no matter how great you are, no matter what you've accomplished, no matter what your background is, what your resume is, if you got untaken care of sin in your life, if your sin's not been taken care of by the gospel, then you got a problem. And it says there, And the Syrians had gone out by companies, there in verse 2, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she waited on Naaman's wife. So here you've got a little Jewish girl that's waiting on this Gentile's wife. And look in there in verse 3, she said unto her mistress, Would God my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy. She had confidence in the man of God there. And one went in there in verse 4, and told his Lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, I will send a letter unto the king of Israel, And he departed and took with him 10 talents of silver and 6,000 pieces of gold and 10 changes of raiment. Now you notice he sent a letter to the king. So he was offering the wrong price. coming to the wrong person, verse 6, and he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy. I've sent you a bunch of stuff. Do that. Nobody can go to God and no matter how much money they got and offer money, just make sure I get to heaven with the money. I'm sending you money. I've got this sin problem. Just take care of it for me with the money that I'm going to give you. But it didn't work that way. And he was seeking the wrong kind of prescription. We'll see that in just a minute. But we see the king is confused in verse 7. And it came to pass when the king of Israel had read the letter that he rent his clothes and said, Am I God to kill and to make alive that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? Wherefore, consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me." He thought that this guy was just trying to stir up a war. Verse 8, And it was so, when Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king and said, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses, with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought..." See, that's his problem. I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper. He thought that was like a TV preacher here. That's what they love to do, bop you on the head and yay, you shall be healed. That ain't the way it's done. That's not the way it's done. And so he was seeking the wrong prescription. But the cleansing that he got is a picture of how we are saved. Requiring faith. There in verse number 10, he said, you know, you got to go and wash. You had to believe that that was going to do it. Amen. And he initially didn't. It took some humility. Verse 12. I mean, Jordan was a dirty river. Verse 12, Are not Abana and far, far rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near and spake unto him and said, My father, If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he hath said unto thee, Wash, and be clean." That's pretty simple, isn't it? Wash and be clean. Look and live. That's what the Lord tells us to do, look and live. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. And so it took faith, humility, and obedience. It is verse 14. Then went he down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God. And his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. He returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood before him and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. That's faith, amen? And he was convinced. So we see this cleansing picture there. What a wonderful thing. Another one I want us to turn to is Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4. And this is a New Testament story of the Lord Jesus Christ. Very familiar. If you've been around the Scriptures any length of time, you've probably heard many a message out of this story. And you've probably heard some of the application of what I'm going to share with you tonight. Because Mark 4 verse 35 is Undoubtedly, if you're going through a storm in life, and not a literal storm, but if there's some area of your life you've got trouble in, it kind of shows you how you need to look to Jesus. Amen. Mark 4, verse number 35. And the same day, when the evening was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over to the other side. When they had sent away the multitude, they took him, even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. So, you know, we know storms come, don't we? And they just come. A lot of times you don't know that it's coming. Our daughter, right after we left, she said they were talking about storms and they didn't have anything. She said everything had moved through and lo and behold, here comes a storm. you know, after everybody else had moved out and took a tree down. They wound up having it blocked the driveway and wound up having to go out, my son-in-law and Levi had to go out there and clean it up. But, you know, they'll take you by surprise sometimes, the storms of life that will come, just like storms will get us by surprise. I know we got all kinds of stuff to be able to tell in advance that they're coming, but you really don't know. You really don't know. But storms will come. Storms come even when we are in the will of God. I mean, these guys, Jesus said, let's go to the other side. They were just obeying the Lord, going to the other side. And the Lord says in John 16, 33, in this world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. Amen. And so, storms make it appear that Jesus doesn't care. Look at verse 38. And he, talking about Jesus, was in the hindered part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. And they awake him and said unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? Well, did Jesus care for them? Of course he did. You know, storms can make it appear that Jesus doesn't care. Why am I having to go through this? If Jesus really loves me and I'm one of His, why am I having to go through this? Storms bring us to Christ. They came to the right place there. They didn't have the right attitude, but they did come to the Lord and they awoke Him. And we see that in verse 39, He arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was great calm. You know, the Lord can make the storms in our life settle down too. He sure can. Look at verse 40, and He said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith? Storms reveal our problems. Our problem usually is that we don't have faith, and the Lord is trying to teach us faith. And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? You know, storms reveal something new about Jesus, don't they? When you're going through a storm, you can learn some things you didn't know. I can't even begin to tell you how many times you've gone through a storm and you've learned more about the Lord as you're going through that. Amen. Well, I believe that's the end of your handout, and that's a good place for us to put up a stop. I do have another handout over here I brought in case we got beyond that point. But we'll come look at the latter part of this, Lord willing, next week. But application, the law of application, not done yet with it, but we'll come back. But that's our Bible study for this evening. Let's go ahead and pull out our prayer list and pray for the needs and we'll be dismissed.