Well, we have a little problem today. It's called a raccoon problem. So we have a grape arbor with lots and lots of grapes. And we always wait until they get kind of sweet before we pick them, of course. But the raccoons like them even before they get sweet. And so about this time of year, we have the same problem. The raccoons come and steal our grapes before we can get to them. And so what we do is we sleep with our bedroom window open so we can hear the raccoons when they come. So this morning at 3 a.m. I heard the raccoons I got up and chased him away, and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I'm pretty tired today. So if I fall asleep while I'm talking, just tiptoe out and let me sleep, okay? That would be nice. Good to have all you guys here today, and thank you for letting me be part of your church for these four weeks. And Diane, we both really appreciate being here. We wanted to introduce ourselves a little bit more to you, and want to get to know you better, too. So two weeks ago, we talked about our Love story, how God brought Diane and me together. in marriage, and then last week I shared about how I became a pastor. I want to share with you today how I started writing books. So when I retired in 2019, I did not want to just sit around. You know, God doesn't want us sitting around when we retire. He wants us to use our whole lives, as long as he gives us strength to serve him. So I sat down and I came up with a list of 12 ministries I wanted to do, and I put them in priority order. And number 12 was writing books. So I knew that I would not get through all 12 ministries during my retirement, so I thought maybe I'll cover three or four, the top three or four. So I knew I'd never actually write a book. That was number 12 on my priority list. But one day I was at Home Depot picking up something, and I went up to the counter and I gave them my Visa card, and the cashier said, what is your zip code? Now, you who are older maybe can identify with this. I blanked. I couldn't remember my zip. First time in my life, I couldn't remember my zip code. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't remember it. And she said, oh, don't worry about it. So then I went out to the parking lot. Two things happened. Number one, I remembered my zip code, 97008. Never forgotten it before or after, just that one time. But the second thing I thought, maybe my mind is going a lot faster than I thought it was. start writing things down so I don't lose the different things God's taught me over my lifetime. And so writing books went from number 12 up to about number 3 or so, and I started writing at that point. Now I'm not the kind of prolific author that your Pastor Scott is, that's for sure, but I've written a book on prayer. And I've written a book on parenting. And I just finished a book on delighting in God's word, which is what we're talking about here in these four Sundays that I'm with you. So let's review what we learned last week. I hope you can remember some of those pictures. We'll start with the five basic questions. One rhymes with what? Sun. Commands. Two? Shoe. Examples. Three? Tree. God. What does it teach us about God? The whole Bible is about God, so you can always learn about God in any passage of Scripture. Four? Floor. What do others say, like using a study Bible or commentary? Five, hive, what am I going to do with it, right? You always want to, that's the most important question. Because James says you need to be doers of the word and not hearers only who deceive themselves. So you always want to find something you can put into practice. So those are the five basic questions. And if you want to keep it simple, just stop right there. You don't have to go any further. You'll get plenty out of just those five things. But if you want to go on, six rhymes with sticks. Emphasis, you picture Pastor Scott beating a stick on that pulpit, you know, to emphasize a point. So what's being emphasized in that section of scripture? Seven, heaven, purpose, or purpose, right? What's the purpose? And usually it's related to what's being emphasized. That's usually the purpose of that passage. And it's really important that you get the purpose of that passage. A lot of people have all kinds of applications to scripture that are not really relevant to, and not even accurate, because it's not really the purpose of that passage. You need to know what the purpose is. 8 rhymes with gate, surprises. What surprises you about that passage? A lot of times I read in the Bible, I think, now why? Why is that there? Like the lever at marriage that Pastor Scott preached on last week. That's kind of weird, you know? Why is that there? And that leads you then to all kinds of study that will help you learn deeper things. Nine rhymes with mine. So what questions do you still have after you've read the passage and studied it? What questions do you still have? Keep a hold of those questions or ask a pastor or elder, read a commentary, see if you can find out some answers. Because a lot of times you get your best insights when you ask the right kinds of questions. And 10 rhymes with hen. Context, that's right, context. What's the context? So picture a hen texting on her cell phone, okay? So what's the context of the passage, which is obviously very important to interpret it correctly. What I, you know, I wanted to, I asked you to do 2 Timothy 2, and to be honest with you, I don't have time to let you all share what you learned, but if you go to 2 Timothy, go there right now, and I'll just show you a few things that I learned as I studied this passage. So 2 Timothy 2, we're kind of going through 2 Timothy, in the four weeks that I'm with you here. 2 Timothy 2, I'm not even gonna go over the first five questions or so. In fact, I'm only gonna take the last few questions that I ask. What surprises you? So here's what surprised me, verse 22. Chapter two, verse 22. Paul says to Timothy, flee the evil desires of youth. Now, the reason that surprises me is that Paul is about to die. Timothy has been with Paul a long time, and yet he still indicates that Timothy's a youth. That's very interesting because that means when Timothy first went with Paul, he was probably very, very young. Scholars estimate that he was probably somewhere between 15 and 21 or 22, something like that. So he's a teenager or maybe just into his 20s. And yet Paul, even at that age, Paul sends him on very important missions. Paul sent Timothy to the church at Corinth to straighten out that church that was so wild and so out of control. He sent a young man like that. And that says to me, we ought to be giving our kids big responsibilities. We need to be able to trust them to do things like that. Paul took Timothy under his wings. He trained him, even as a young man sent him out. And so even as Paul's about to die, he still talks about Timothy being a youth, which is very interesting to me. What questions do I still have? Verse 1. First one, you then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. I want to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. How do you do that? I'm not 100% sure. It may have something to do with depending on God, depending on Christ Jesus for his grace. Maybe that's what he was referred to. I'm not sure. So that's a question I still have. I just kind of file it away. And someday, maybe when I'm reading somewhere in Ezekiel or somewhere else, I'll understand what Paul's talking about here. The context is important for the whole book of 2 Timothy. If you go to chapter four, you find out that Paul is about to die. He's at the end of his life. And that's really important in understanding the whole book, because what Paul is doing in this book is he's telling Timothy, he's challenging Timothy to suffer for the gospel and to step up. And chapter one, fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. I commissioned you for a ministry, now do it your best. So he's really pushing Timothy and challenging him and encouraging him to step up to the plate, because Paul's about to leave this world. And Timothy needs to step up. He was one of Paul's greatest, maybe the greatest disciple of Paul. And then number, after I go through the questions then, if I'm going past five, I just skip five, what am I gonna do about it until I've done the other questions? So now I'll go back to five, now what am I gonna do with this passage? And the one that really got to me was verse 22 again, where it says, flee the evil desires of youth. Now, am I a youth? Thank you. I'm not. Let's see, Melissa, is that right? I got it right, good. I'm not a youth, am I? But obviously, we who are older also have evil desires, right? So we also need to flee those evil desires. But look at how Paul tells Timothy to do that. He says in verse 22, flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. You don't try to resist those evil desires on your own. You do it along with others who are going in the same direction. That's why the church is so important. That's why fellowship is so important. And I wrote down, I want to be more open with people about what I'm struggling with and get their prayers and get their encouragement. So that's how I'm trying to put that chapter into practice in my life, being more open with my challenges, my evil desires that I need to flee from. and getting their help, because we need to do it together, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Okay, now I wanna move on here, because our time is short. I'm gonna skip question 11, and just teach question 12 today, and then next week I'll go back to chapter 11. And the reason I'm doing that is that Scott, Pastor Scott set me up big time. Remember his sermon last Sunday? Leverant marriage. That is weird, isn't it? I mean, think about it. You have a brother who marries someone, and then he dies and doesn't have a son, then you need to marry that woman. And it's kind of like, That's weird. That's weird. But if you understand it, and Pastor Scott explained that so well to us last week in his sermon, why it's important and how in their culture that was a way of caring for the widow and carrying on the brother's name. And it had to do with inheritance rights with the land. There was a whole bunch of factors, and Pastor Scott brought that out last week. So you have to understand something about the culture in order to understand the scriptures and interpret them rightly. So it's not just weird, you just have to understand the culture. So 12. rhymes with elves, like Santa's elves. 12 rhymes with elves. As I just picture a group of elves, and these elves have their own language, they have their own culture, okay? 12 rhymes with elves, culture. So I ask the question when I'm reading scripture, is there a cultural issue here? And there oftentimes is. Reading the Bible's like going to a foreign country. You know, your reading is, first of all, it's in a different language. It's in Hebrew and Greek. We have the English translation. Thank the Lord for that. It's so helpful. I'd hate to have to learn all these languages. And even though I've studied some of them, I certainly haven't mastered them. So it was written in a different language. It was written on the other side of the world. And it was written 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. I mean, it's a different culture. And you've got to understand something about the culture. Because if you go to a different culture today, you'll see differences from our culture But to know why there are differences and the significance of those differences is very, very difficult. Very, very difficult. So I'm gonna give you some examples here. Is it possible, do we have any math teachers here, any math teachers? Anybody that likes math? Okay, good. Is it possible for the number seven to be bigger than the number 1,000? What do you think, Andrew, no? No, that doesn't make sense. No math teacher would agree on that. But in the Bible, seven can be bigger than a thousand. Okay, I'll show you. Look at Revelation, Revelation chapter four. Revelation four, and we're gonna look at verse six. So you got these creatures that are around the throne of God. Revelation chapter four, verse six. It says, also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center around the throne were four living creatures. and they were covered with eyes in front and in back. And then look at verse 8. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. So these creatures have hundreds of eyes, maybe thousands of eyes, all over. What does that represent? This is a vision. Each thing is representative of something. It's representative of their great knowledge. They can see everything, you know? They have great knowledge. They have a thousand eyes, or whatever, we don't know how many, but hundreds of eyes. They have great knowledge. Now if you look at chapter five, the very next chapter, verse six, it says, then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, this is Jesus, of course, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The lamb had seven horns and how many eyes? Seven eyes. Jesus has complete knowledge. The number seven, as you know, in the Bible oftentimes means completeness or perfect, perfection. So his seven eyes, he's got more knowledge than those creatures have, even though they have thousands of eyes. So seven, in this case, is more than a thousand. I'll give you an example from our own culture. Can 10 miles be the same as one mile? A math teacher would say, no, 10 and 1 don't equal each other. Well, I was driving into Portland on Highway 30. I think it is from, where is it, Verona, or somewhere, Vernonia, wherever that is. And as you drive into Portland on that freeway or that road, that highway, there's a sign that says Portland 10 miles. One mile later, it says Portland, entering Portland, it says. So the sign says, Portland, 10 miles. One mile later, it says, entering Portland. Now, someone from another culture would look at that and say, that's a contradiction. There's a mistake there. It said 10 miles to Portland, and one mile later, it says, I'm here. But see, in our culture, that's not a problem at all. Because we know that 10 miles to Portland means 10 miles to downtown Portland. Entering Portland is going into the city limits, right? So there are things in our culture that would be really weird to people in other cultures. They would think that's a contradiction. It's not a contradiction, you just have to understand the culture. So when I read the Bible and I see something weird like that, I don't ever ask the question, is this true? I believe the whole Bible's true. I ask the question, how is this true? That's the question to ask. How is this true? Okay, now I understand how it can be true to have a sign that says 10 miles to Portland and then one mile later entering Portland. I understand that. I understand how seven eyes can be greater than a thousand eyes in the biblical culture. So understanding culture can help us in a lot of ways. So Don, you like apologetics, don't you? There are so many issues where people who are critical of the Bible look at it and say, well, that's a contradiction, or that's dumb or something. It's just because they don't understand the culture. If they understood the culture, it would be clear. And there's weird things in the Bible from our point of view, like leverant marriage. But as Pastor Scott explained it last week, when you understand the culture, it makes sense. And there's misinterpretation. So for example, look at 1 Timothy 2, verse 9. 1 Timothy 2, verse 9. First Timothy 2.9, Paul says, I also want women to dress modestly with decency and propriety, adoring themselves not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes. Now, a lot of times people read that and they say, well, women should dress modestly, and they think in terms of sexual modesty. Now, that would be true from other passages, but not from this one. That's not what this is about. When you understand the culture, what the rich women in their culture did was they would braid their hair, and they would braid into their hair gold and pearls. They would show off their wealth. And that is the kind of modesty that he's talking about here. Don't try to make yourself bigger or better than others. Don't go showing off your wealth. When you come into the church service, you're not trying to be better than the other people. That's what's being talked about here. And when you know the culture, then it makes perfect sense. It also helps us see an application. Are you guys biblical Christians? How many? Raise your hand if you're a biblical Christian. Okay, not one of you obeyed what the Bible says today. The Bible says four times, actually five, greet one another with a holy kiss. Nobody kissed me today when I came in. How come you didn't kiss me? You got to understand the culture. What happens, a lot of people just throw that verse out. They say, oh, that was back in those days. No, you have to understand the culture. The culture is that's the way they greeted each other with warmth as brothers and sisters in Christ. So for us, how do we do that? We don't kiss each other. We shake hands, we hug, we greet each other warmly with words. That's how we obey that verse. You see what I'm saying? You have to somehow, sometimes you have to take off what I call the cultural clothes of the command and put our cultural clothes on to see how to apply it to our lives. When I was in Israel, when I went to school in Israel, when I left, I had an Arab friend, and it embarrassed me. He came up as I was leaving, and he kissed me, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, six times. I think it was three times on each cheek. Well, that's what they do in their culture. That's how they shake hands, or say goodbye, or give a hug, okay? So it really helps with application. It helps with significance, too, to understand. So look at 1 Peter 2, verse 24. It talks about Jesus dying on a, Tree. It doesn't say he died on a cross, it says he died on a tree. So, 2.24. Okay, now, I wasn't using this translation. This translation does use the word cross, but in the Greek it's tree. Does yours say tree? Verse 24. He himself bore our sins in his body, and literally, it's on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. Now, why does Peter say on a tree instead of on a cross? Well, a cross is made of wood, so it's a tree, so it's not inaccurate or anything, it's true, but why does he use the word tree instead of cross? And the answer is, In the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, here's what it says in Deuteronomy 21. If a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day. And then here's the reason. For a hanged man is cursed by God. So the significance of what Peter is telling us is that Jesus didn't just die, he took the curse for us. He was cursed by God. In fact, that's the reason the Jews wanted him to be crucified. They could have killed him by stoning him, right? But someone stoned can be a martyr. If you die on a tree, if you're hung on a tree, it says in Deuteronomy, you're cursed by God. And the Jewish leaders wanted the people to think, this can't be our Messiah because God is cursing him. See, the significance comes out when you understand the culture. I used to thank Jesus every day for dying on the cross, or for dying, just for dying for me, you know? Now, I usually thank him for taking the curse for me when he died. I think that's, to me, that's even stronger. So when I talk about culture, the 12th question, culture, look for cultural issues, here's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about beliefs. I'm talking about values. I'm talking about language. I'm talking about customs. And I'm also talking about history, what was going on in history at the time. I'm even talking about geography. So look at Matthew 2, Matthew 2, verse 3. It talks about when the Magi come to Jerusalem. And they ask, where is he who is born King of the Jews? And look what happens when the Magi say that. In verse three, it says, when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. Now I understand why Herod was disturbed, that there was someone born king of the Jews, because he was the king of the Jews at that point, but he wasn't born king. He wasn't of the line of David. So he wasn't supposed to be king. And if there's someone born king, we got a problem here. Herod's got a problem. So I can see why he's disturbed. But why was all Jerusalem disturbed? Weren't the Jews looking for their Messiah to come? Shouldn't they have been excited to hear that maybe our Messiah is here now? Why were they so disturbed? So if you look into the culture, the history, what was going on there, and learn about Herod, you can read about this in any history book or in the study notes of a Bible. Herod was a madman. Herod was so possessive of his power that he actually killed one of his wives, and he actually killed two of, I think it was two of his children, two or three of his children, because he was concerned that they might be plotting to take over his position. So the reason that all Jerusalem was disturbed was, if Herod's disturbed, what's gonna happen next? What is he gonna do? And what did he do? He killed all the babies. in Bethlehem, right? He was a madman. So that's why they were all disturbed. When you understand something about the history, the culture, the history, it helps you understand why these things are there in the Bible. And even knowing about the location or the geography can be helpful. So for example, if I raise my hand, what does that mean? What does it mean if I raise my hand? Ask a question. If I'm in a classroom, it means that. But what if I'm in a courtroom? swearing to tell the truth. What if I'm in an auction making a bid? What if I'm out on the street and I see you out there? I'm waving hello. Or if you're leaving, I'm waving goodbye, right? What if I'm in a church service? Well, if I'm the pastor, I might be blessing you. If I'm someone in the congregation, I might be praising God. I mean, it all depends on where you're at, right? What if I'm in a restaurant and I raise my hand? I'm calling for the waiter to come, right? So where things happen is important too. You got to know, you know, if you're out, if you're driving your car and a policeman raises his hand like this and you think he's waving hi to you and you drive through, you might end up in jail, right? If you're at an auction and you want to ask a question, you raise your hand, you may end up buying something you didn't want. So, you see, all these things are important to understand the culture. So I'm going to tell you two things about the culture of the Bible that's different from our culture, okay? There's hundreds of things we can talk about here. I only have time to talk about two of them, two very important ones that will help you understand the Bible better. The first one is what we call collective identity. So if you look at all the cultures of the world, our culture is very individualistic. It's very. It's almost on the extreme end of individualism. So our identity is focused on ourselves as individuals. We're very autonomous. We're not strongly integrated into groups. Ties between individuals, even in the same family, are fairly loose compared to many cultures. we tend not to get our identity from the group that we're part of. Now, the biblical culture is way on the other side of the continuum. The biblical culture is more collectivist. It's more, we call it, Corporate solidarity. They're parts of groups, and that's really important. That's how they define themselves. Not so much as individuals, but what family they're a part of, or what group they're a part of, or what nation they're a part of. Like the Jews. They were Jews, right? And everybody else was what? Gentiles. They're all outside, right? And so that was really important to them. That was their identity. They didn't see themselves as autonomous. but they're part of cohesive families or in-groups. So I'll give you an example. We had a Sudanese pastor living with us, and his culture, the Denka culture, is very collectivistic, more like the culture of the Bible. And one day he said to me, hey, Rick, you know, if you want a home, a house loan, a home loan, you want to buy a house in Sudan, they don't ask you how much money you make. They don't ask you how much debt you have. You know what they ask you? Who is your grandfather? If you have a grandfather who has a good reputation, then they'll make the loan to you. It doesn't matter what your situation is. You're part of a group that is faithful, that is loyal, that pays back loans. And I thought, wow, that's more like the biblical culture than ours. Even the word family means something different in the Bible than it does to us. So we think of family as father, mother, and children. What do they think family is in a collectivist culture? So there was an African man who came to the United States to study, and he left his wife and children back in Africa. And he was eating with an American family, and one of the people in the family asked him, are you going to bring your family over while you're here? And he just laughed. Because to him, family is not mother and father and children. It's mother, father, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, second cousins, great uncles. It could be 1,000 people. You can't bring 1,000 people over, right, to visit you while you're in America. So the whole, like in Genesis 224, it says, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife. Now, in our culture, okay, leave means you go and get a house someplace else. That's not what they did in their culture. They usually lived with the parents of the husband. They didn't leave physically, they left in a different sense. That's what Genesis 2.24 is about. I was studying the Bible with a man from a culture more like the biblical culture, more collectivist, and we were reading in Mark chapter one where it says, going a little further, Jesus saw James and John, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, even them in a boat mending their nets. He called to them and immediately they left their father and they hired servants and followed him. Now here's what my study Bible said. Listen to this. The fact that hired men were present implies their fishing business was prosperous. Leaving this to follow Jesus meant leaving a nice living. That's wrong, and it's very American. That's how we Americans see it. They left a prosperous business. They left money and prosperity to follow Jesus. The man I was reading with, he wasn't even a believer, but he was from an Asian culture that was very collectivist, like the Bible. And he said to me, well, that can't happen. You never leave your father. A son would never just leave his father and go off follow somebody else. See, that's the real issue here. Not that they left a lot of wealth, a nice living. They left their father. They left their family, which is unheard of in their culture. So you just have to understand better how the culture sees things. I was having lunch with a man from a different Asian culture that was also collectivistic. And I asked him, what's the difference between our culture and your culture? He said, in America, no, he said, in my culture, if a teenager is sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, Every adult that walks by will say, you shouldn't do that. That's wrong. You shouldn't do that. In America, the adults just walk by. And when he said that, I thought, whoa, that's very interesting. That's because we're so individualistic. Everybody should make their own decisions, do their own thing. But in the culture that this other man was a part of, you take collective responsibility. If God does it that way, if he sees things more like that guy did than like we do, then we're in big trouble. And if you read the prophets, that's exactly what happens. God punishes whole nations, even though many of the people might be innocent. He'll punish the whole nation. You read Isaiah, he talks about that, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. You know, in our culture, we've had over 60 million unborn babies killed. Now, we're not involved in that, but that doesn't mean we might not get the punishment that our nation is getting or will get because of that, right? This is really important. So they took collective responsibility for sin, like in Daniel chapter nine. Daniel asks God, he confesses the sins of his nation, even though he himself was not guilty of them. There's no indication that Daniel did those things that he's confessing. He's confessing the sins of his nation, because there's a collective responsibility. Oh, there's so much here we could talk about. You think about the way other cultures would see our culture, our individualistic freedom, everybody gets to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and the way they want to do it, they would call that anarchy. We call it freedom, right? So look at the Book of Judges. What happens when everybody does what they want to do? Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, right? Isn't that the theme at the end of Judges? Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, and you have anarchy, terrible situation. God punishes the whole nation because of the sinful people there that were doing what was right in their own eyes. Missionaries had a real problem with this whole idea of a collectivist kind of mentality when it came to household conversions. You know, you go to a tribe or something, and the chief of the tribe decides to become a Christian, and then the whole tribe, yeah, we'll all become Christians. And it's kind of like, no, no, you can't do it that way. Every single person individually has to commit their lives to the Lord. And so in Acts chapter 16, you have household conversion. I think it's Lydia's household, the whole household converts at the same time. And missionaries used to have real problems with that. But now that we understand better how collectivist people think, it's not really a problem. The way they think is like this. If our leader thinks that following Christ is the right thing to do, then following Christ is the right thing to do. And we all need to do it. So it's not just follow the crowd kind of thing, but they all are committing their lives to Christ because their leader believes it's best and they are part of that group. They follow the leader. So you see how different this is from our culture. Another thing to think about is what it means to be part of a family. Jesus said, remember when his mother and brothers come to take possession of him because, or take charge of him because they thought he was out of his mind. And he's sitting in his house with his disciples, or in a house with his disciples, and his disciples say to him, hey Jesus, your mother and brother are outside, and they want you to come out there. And Jesus says, who are my mother and my brothers? And then he answers his own question. Whoever does the will of my father is my brother and sister and mother. So he makes his followers a family. Now, remember what family meant in those days. There was intense loyalty to family members, intense loyalty. In fact, Paul even says in one place in Timothy, he says, if you don't provide for your relatives, and especially the members of your own family, you're worse than an unbeliever. I mean, there was intense loyalty to the family. So we as brothers and sisters in Christ, in Christ's family, we should be intensely loyal to each other. Much deeper way than we realize in our culture. There's a lot here to say. But when we read the Old Testament, we ought to understand that this is not It's not just a Jewish document, the Old Testament. It's actually a record of our fathers and our mothers. You know, in Romans, it says, if you have faith, you are a son of Abraham. In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells the Gentiles, he says, I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses through the cloud and the sea. They all ate from the same spiritual food and drank from the same spiritual rock, for they drank from the rock that followed them, and the rock is Christ. In other words, he's saying to the Gentiles, those are your fathers back there. So if you're part of Abraham's family because you have faith, the same faith as Abraham, then you're part of this family and the Old Testament is a record of your family and my family. Moses and David and Abraham are our fathers. Mary and Esther, Ruth, those are our mothers. So you read the Old Testament in a whole different way. Look at 2 Timothy 1. I asked you to look at this chapter last week or the week before. So here's an example of what I'm talking about. where you get additional insight if you understand the culture, this idea of collective, kind of a collective way of looking at things, collective identity. In verse, I'm sorry, yeah, 2 Timothy chapter one, I wrote, I put down 1 Timothy here. 2 Timothy chapter one, verse, 28, there aren't 28 verses, so what am I looking for here? I'm looking for verse 16, verse 16. It says, may the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus. So Paul is praying a blessing for his whole household, the whole household of Onesiphorus. Did they all serve Paul? Did they all do something? No, it says, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. So Paul is praying a blessing for the whole household because one of them, the leader of the household, had served Paul and brought Paul refreshment and wasn't ashamed of Paul. You see that all through the Bible, where if one person in a household does the right thing and pleases God, God blesses the whole household. I can give you many examples, but we don't have time. So let me go on to a second thing I wanted to share with you before about the culture, and that is it's an honor-shame culture. We are not an honor-shame culture. But the Bible culture is an honor-shame culture. Honor and shame were very, very important. And that's true in any collectivist kind of culture, where you're part of a group, you wanna be sure that the whole group approves of what you're doing. So preserving harmony in the group is more important than individual freedom. For us, individual freedom is more important. And so what they try to do is they want to live consistently with the values of their culture. And if they do, then they acquire honor. And if they don't, then they're shamed. And the shame is very, very much to be avoided in these kind of cultures. is because an individual is embedded in a family, then if that person is honored, the whole family is honored. And if that person is shamed, the whole family is shamed. Have you heard of honor killings in Muslim countries? Honor killings? Like if, say, a daughter in a Muslim culture, a Muslim family comes to Christ, that shames the whole family in their culture. and the dad might actually kill the daughter. It can be that extreme, because that's the way you recover honor again, by getting rid of what caused shame. And it can be that extreme, at least in some cultures today, it's that extreme, honor killings in Muslim nations. Now a shamed person is very much rejected by the community, and again, that's why they wanted Jesus on a tree, because he was cursed by God, he was shamed. And a shame person couldn't be their Messiah, at least that's the way they thought. Now thankfully, Jesus took our shame on the cross so we could be honored in God's eyes. So there's two ways to get honor in an honor-shame culture. One is to be, do the right thing in the eyes of the community. That's called acquired honor. And the other is ascribed honor. you're born with it, if you're born into a honored family. So if you're born into a family of a rabbi, you have a lot of honor, just because you're in the rabbi's family. If you're born into a slave's family, you don't have very much honor at all. So when Jesus goes back to his hometown, and he acts like a rabbi, he teaches, what happens? They rejected him. And it was all a matter of honor, because Jesus says, a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, right? So that's what you see. They thought, OK, you're a carpenter's son. You don't have the kind of honor that should be teaching us. You're a carpenter's son. You don't have that honor. So they rejected. They didn't give him honor. They shamed him. But that's what Jesus did for us. He took our offenses from us by taking shame on himself. You know, church discipline, I don't know how your church works with that. Our church, we practice church discipline like the Bible talks about. I assume you probably do too. It doesn't work real well in our culture. People can be excommunicated by a church and they'll just go somewhere else to another church. In their culture, it worked well because having shame, being rejected by your community was very, very powerful. Listen to this verse in 2 Thessalonians. It says, if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him so that he will be put to shame. That was powerful in their culture. and it often brought the person back into the fellowship in repentance. Leverate marriage, what Pastor Scott talked about, and I guess he's gonna talk about that today in Luke. What happens when the brother won't marry the widow of his brother? They spit in his face. That was bringing him shame. They took off his sandal as though he were a slave. That was giving him shame. They named his house the House of the One Without the Sandal or something like that. I can't remember what Scott told us last week. But that was all to bring shame on him. So most of the time the brother would marry the widow because they don't want that kind of shame. The whole thing about honor and shame is, you know, you see it all through the Bible. You know, like, let your light shine before men that they might see your good works and do what? And praise your father in heaven to honor him. We're his representatives. If we act in shameful ways, it brings shame on God's name. If we act in honorable ways, it brings honor on God's name. A lot of the prayers in the Bible are based on God maintaining his honor. For example, in the Psalms, you see that a lot of times in the Psalms. Or Moses, when God is gonna destroy Israel because of their idolatry, here's what Moses says. Then the Egyptians will hear about it. If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, the Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised on oath. See, it's based on God maintaining his public honor. Look at 2 Timothy 1. There's this chapter that we're looking at. Notice the honor-shame language in this chapter. So 2 Timothy 1, verse 8. 2 Timothy 1, 8. So do not be, what? Ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Look at verse 12. That is why I'm suffering as I am, yet this is no cause for shame. There's the word shame again. Look at verse 16. To identify with the prisoner, prisoners were shamed. Very much so. So to identify with that prisoner would bring shame on you. Well, Onesiphorus, he didn't care about whether you were shamed or not. He was willing to go forward and help Paul. So you see this honor and shame language through the Bible. Okay, now, I'm gonna try to help us apply this. Look at Matthew 1. Matthew 1. So here's where we're gonna do a little study together. Matthew 1. And we have to go pretty fast here, but let's give it a try. What do you have at the beginning of Matthew? Genealogy, right. What could be more boring than a genealogy? Okay, let's look at it. I'm going to read it from this Bible I have because it's got big print and my eyes are not as good as they used to be. So this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadad, Aminadad, the father of Nashon, or something like that. Nashon, the father of Salmon. Salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz, the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed, the father of Jesse, and Jesse, the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam, the father of Abijah. Abijah, the father of Asa. Asa, the father of Josaphat. And on and on it goes, and we'll just go up to verse 11, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Sheotiel. Sheotiel is the father of Zerubbabel, and on and on it goes until you get to verse 16. And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah. Thus there are 14 generations in all, from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Messiah." Now, did you get any really good insights from that part of the scripture? The point I want to make right here is that if we can get some good insights out of a genealogy, we can get good insights out of anywhere in the Bible, okay? So let's take a little closer look at this, and let's think about the culture, too. Do you notice anything interesting about this genealogy? Is there anything about the culture that would be interesting to you? For example, let me, I'll just say, I'll be the first one to point something out. For us, a genealogy is about as boring as it gets. Why do you want to start the good news of Jesus Christ by boring people with the genealogy? But see, in their culture, this is really important. A genealogy established someone's rights. So it's a genealogy of Jesus Christ, right? it shows that he's born of the Davidic line. You have the Davidic kings there in verses 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. These are Davidic kings. David was from the line of David. Jesus was from the line of David. So that's why in the very next chapter, 10, hen, Context, in the very next chapter, you have Herod, who was not born king, and you have the Magi coming and saying, where is he who was born king of the Jews? And chapter one shows that he is in the line of David. He qualifies to be the king. What's being emphasized in this genealogy? Well, again, if you know something about the culture I'll tell you what's being, does anybody know what's being emphasized here? Anybody wanna guess? Okay, first of all, women. In their culture, you don't put women in genealogies. I mean, look at the other genealogies in the Bible. Why are there, how many women are mentioned in this genealogy? Let's take a look. Verse three. whose mother was Tamar. Verse five, whose mother was Rahab. Also verse five, whose mother was Ruth. Verse six, whose mother had been Uriah's wife. And then of course you have Mary in verse 16. So is that five? Five different women mentioned. Interesting. Now let's think about what kind of women these were. You know, okay, two things. First of all, some of them are Gentiles. You never put a Gentile in a Jewish genealogy. That doesn't work. But some of these are Gentiles. So Tamar was a Gentile, Rahab was a Gentile, Ruth was a Gentile. And Uriah's wife was probably a Gentile, but we can't prove that. Mary, of course, was Jewish. So at least three of the five are Gentiles. What are Gentiles doing in a genealogy that's for Jews? And what are Gentiles doing in the line of the Messiah? Now, even further, if you look at these women, most of them are associated with sexual sin. Tamar, do you know the story of Tamar? I won't go all through it, but she enticed her father-in-law to have a sexual relationship with her. Rahab was a harlot, right? Ruth was not sexually immoral in any way, but I'll tell you right now, what she did was really dangerous. None of you fathers would ever tell your unmarried daughter, I want you to go at night and lie down next to this guy at his feet. That's strange and that's dangerous. But she did not get involved sexually with Boaz. What she did was dangerous. Okay, then you've got, who else? And then Mary, well, of course Mary was accused, wasn't she? Mary was accused of being sexually immoral. So what's going on here? When you understand the culture, you start seeing some of these things. What Matthew is doing right up front is he's saying the Messiah is not just for the Jews. He's for the Gentiles too. And he's not just for people who are like the Pharisees that are outwardly righteous. He's for sinful people who need their sins forgiven. Do you see that here? Six sticks emphasis. So when you understand the culture, the women's names really stand out and who these women are. Gentiles and several of them associated with sexual sin stands out. Here's another thing that's emphasized in this chapter. It's David. How many times is David's name mentioned? First of all, in verse one, this is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Why is David first? Abraham is first chronologically, right? But Matthew switches them around and puts David first. So right from the first verse, he's giving us a hint that there's something important about David here. And then you get to verse six. Jesse, the father of King David, and then David's name is repeated. David was the father of Solomon. And then when you get to where it's 14, 14, 14 generations, that's verse 17, you're back to David again. Thus there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile in Babylon. And even if you keep going in that chapter when the angel speaks to Joseph, doesn't he say something about David there too? Look later, oh yeah, there it is, verse 20. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David. Why is David being emphasized in this chapter? See again, what's the purpose? Seven, heaven, porpoise, purpose, right? The purpose is to show that Jesus is the son of David. Because in the very next chapter, they're gonna have an argument here. Who is the real king? Herod says, I'm the king. Magi says, where is he who is born king? And chapter one shows us that Jesus is born king. There's one other thing here too. Sometimes I don't really like to bring this up because some people take this in weird ways. But if you look at verse 17, Why does he say there's 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Messiah? Now, if you go back to the genealogies in the Old Testament, there aren't exactly 14. There's actually more than that. But in his recounting of it, he just keeps it at 14. 14, 14, 14. It's not wrong. Don't think that he's wrong here. He's not wrong. He knew the genealogy's way better than we do. But when it says, so-and-so is the father of so-and-so, the word father can mean grandfather or great-grandfather. And in a couple cases, it's grandfather, not actually just father. So there's really more than 14 generations. So why does he do 14, 14, 14? So in Hebrew, the letters represent numbers. each letter has a certain number value. And it just so happens that the name David, if you add up the three, there's three letters in David in Hebrew, the D and the V and the D. If you add them up, they add up to guess what? 14. Yeah. So even in verse 17, he is, it's called, um, There's a name for this, using letters for the numbers that they did in Hebrew. I can't remember the name, but, pardon me? That's good. Thank you. Yeah, Gematria. You're right. Gematria. Exactly. And the reason I don't like to bring this up is because some people start going all around the Bible and finding, you know, how many, you know, this letter means this. This is the only place I know in the Bible where it really may be the case. We don't even know it's the case here, but it seems to be. Because he's emphasizing David. because he's preparing us for the next chapter, where Herod is the king, but Jesus is born king of the Jews. I don't think there's anything else I need to say here. But here's what I'll say, I know. What do you do with this chapter, okay? Question five, you always want to end up with what are you going to do with it? So one way to apply it to our lives would be like the Jews thought the Gentiles were outside. They couldn't come into the family. They couldn't be part of the kingdom. But Matthew shows right up front there's Gentiles right in the genealogy. And so maybe today we might think somebody, you know, they're kind of outside and we put them down and we don't really try to share the gospel with them and bring them into the family. So that's one way to do it. Another thing is the way Matthew values these women by putting them in the Jewish genealogy, which is very unusual. In fact, that's exactly what I did when I was studying this chapter. The way I decided to put it into practice was I'm going to do something special for my wife. Because like Matthew is valuing these women, I want to value my wife more. So I don't know if you remember, Diane, but the day I studied this, I got you a card and I wrote it out and put it, gave it to you. So you find ways to put into practice what you learn. Okay, homework for today, for this week. Do 2 Timothy 3 now. And try to ask these questions. See if you can remember the questions, at least the basic five. If you want to keep it simple, just stick with those five questions. If you want to go more, do all 11 questions, and look especially for cultural issues. See if there's any cultural issues in 2 Timothy 3. Let me pray, and we'll wrap this up here. Father, I want to thank you for your word. It's really true. We don't have to ask, is this true? We know it's true. It's your word, and you don't ever lie. You are always accurate. But sometimes we do need to ask, how is this true? And so I pray you'll help us to understand a little bit more about the culture of the Bible, so that we have a better understanding and better application of these things to our lives, so that we really are doers of the word and not hearers only who deceive themselves. Lord, I thank you for these people. What a wonderful church this is. I pray your blessing on them and on Pastor Scott's message now as we go to the worship service. In Jesus' name, amen.