All right, good to see you all again. Let's open in prayer, okay? Father, I thank you for this wonderful church, these brothers and sisters in Christ that Diana and I have been able to meet over the last few weeks. And sorry that we're not gonna be able to continue here, but we thank you that we can have this one more time. And I just pray that you will make it profitable for your people. Lord, we're here to build each other up spiritually, as Paul says in Colossians 1, to make every person mature in Christ. And that's what we want. We wanna be mature in Christ, and we need your help, Lord. And one of the things you've done to help us is given us the Holy Spirit, given us your word, and given us each other to edify each other. And I pray we can do that today, and that you'll help me as I share these things. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, well I know that I've been throwing a lot of terms at you and a lot of different things. I'm trying to get, you know, 14, 15 hours of class into four sessions, which is really impossible. And my wife, Diane, very wisely suggested that I don't push on with more terms and different things like that, but just to go over some scriptures with you. And I would like to do that. However, on the other hand, this is the last chance I have to be with you, and I would like to at least familiarize you with some things you want to be looking for in Scripture, especially I want to show you today that the Bible is not only true, but it's also beautiful. And when you start seeing the beauty of the Bible, it helps you appreciate it more. So here's what I want to do to kind of try to compromise a little bit here. I'm going to push on and give you some more terms. But I think what Diane said is very wise. So I want to give you two ways that you can kind of review these things and get deeper into them if you choose to do so. Number one, I'm going to give you one of my books. I just wrote this book on Delighting in God's Word. The subtitle is A Very Practical Guide to Learning to Understand and Appreciate God's Word. So I'll give each family one of these books. Now, they're at the printer right now, so I don't have any copies to give you today. So all you have to do is email Pastor Scott or Pastor Nathan. And they'll tell me how many people want them, and I'll give them that many books, and they'll get them out to you, okay? It's about the same size as Pastor Scott's books, about 250 pages. So it's not small, but it's not real big either. But it does get into a lot more detail. It explains everything a lot better than I've been able to do in just the short time I've had with you. And it also covers a number of other issues that can help you learn to delight in God's word. So I wish I could give every single one of you a copy, but that would be pretty expensive. So one per family, okay? If you're here as a single, you get one. If you're here. Part of a family, your family gets one. So just email Pastor Scott or Pastor Nathan. They'll tell me the total, and I'll get those books to you. As soon as they're printed, they should be printed sometime in the next two weeks, OK? The second possible way, if you want to get more into this material, is some of you came to the seminar I did at our church in Beaverton on parenting. I'm going to be doing something like that on this subject, delighting in God's word, on a weekend, a Friday night and Saturday in March, and a Friday night and Saturday in April, and a Friday night and Saturday in May. Five hours on each of those weekends, so 15 hours total. And if you wanna be part of that, you can sign up for it. I don't get any money for it, so it's not gonna be very expensive. There is a catch, though, and that is this. I started to, presented some of this material at our church we had about 50 or 60 people and we really couldn't get good interaction with that many people and now here there's more than 50 or 60 and we're not getting good interaction here either we can't really do that with this many so I'm gonna I'm gonna limit it I'm gonna cap it at 20 people only 20 people will be able to be part of that But I'll let Pastor Scott and Pastor Nathan know when the sign-ups begin. And if you want to be part of that, you can sign up to come to those three weekends. And that's when we'll really be able to take scriptures together, study them together, and really apply this material and go a lot deeper. And I think it would be very, very helpful. And if you're not able to get into the first 20, then we'll put you on a list and I'll do it again and eventually be able to. get you involved, okay? So any questions on anything we've done so far or anything I've said today or anything about Diane or about me or anything just before we get started with the material today? Any questions you have at all? Anyone? Okay. Let's get started then. The purpose of this class, remember, is to help us learn to delight in God's Word more and more. Oh, there's the outline. Yeah, thank you, Nathan. Get that out to everybody. So remember I began the first session with the problem we all have. We're born with an inclination towards sin, not an inclination towards God's Word. We're born with, you know, oftentimes scholars call it a sin nature or a sin inclination. And I told you five things that you can do right today and every day to overcome that or to move towards delighting in God's Word. So the first one was to own the problem, realize that the Bible is not the problem, okay? God didn't write a boring book. The problem is in our hearts. And so we own the problem. And when you own the problem, then you know what the next step is. repentance, going to God and asking him to change our hearts, repenting of our sin, and asking God to help us delight in his word. And then the third thing to do is to act in faith, to get up from that repentance or prayer and to start reading the Bible. And remember the second session that I did with you, I showed you that repentance is more than just praying. It's not enough just to pray. Repentance is also taking action. It's turning away from the things that we were doing and turning the right direction. So the third step then is to get up from your prayer and do the right thing, which is to read God's word. The act in faith, trust that God will give you grace and change your heart, but he does it slowly. And we have a part to play too. And so we keep reading God's word until he transforms us by the renewing of our mind. That's Romans 12 too, right? And then the fourth thing to do is to persevere in Bible reading. Don't give up just because it's hard or boring or something at first. It takes time. It takes time. And I use the illustration of coffee, that when I first drank coffee, I thought it was the terrible, bitter stuff. But as I had to drink it to stay up later at night when I was in college, I acquired a taste for the very thing that was at first bitter to me. And so as you keep reading God's word and as you learn to apply it and to put it into practice in your life and you see how it works because it's God's wise word, it will eventually acquire a taste for it. And then the fourth, fifth thing I said to do is to sharpen your Bible reading skills. And then I gave you some questions you can use. I gave you five basic questions, and I gave you some memory things to help if you went over those. So one, sun, commands. What commands are there? That's the easiest thing of all to see. What are the commands that are there? Two, shoe. Examples. Much of the Bible teaches us through example. Like I use the book of Genesis as an example. Very few commands in Genesis that would be for us today. There's a couple right at the beginning, but most of it is examples. Isaac, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, great examples, but also bad examples that we should not follow, like Esau. So you got examples to follow and bad examples to avoid. And the New Testament, in fact, twice in the book of Corinthians, it says that the Old Testament people, what happened to them, happened to them as examples to keep us from setting our heart on sin as they did. That's twice in Corinthians. So a lot of the Bible teaches us through example. Three, tree, God. So what does it teach you about God? The whole Bible's about God. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth right to the end. So everything you're reading, ask yourself, what does this teach me about God? When Jesus confronted Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus, Saul said, who are you, Lord, right? Who are you, Lord? Who is this? And you can learn about who God is through every chapter of the Bible. Four, floor, others. What do others say? And I encourage you to not just be in your own individual echo chamber, but to look at what other people say. Use a study Bible or a commentary or ask one of your pastors or something else to get a perspective on what you are reading. And then five, hive, what you're gonna do with it, right? Or the application. If you don't apply it, It just becomes an intellectual book. You gotta put it into practice. As I've quoted several times from James, be doers of God's word and not hearers only who, what? Who deceive themselves. We deceive ourselves when we don't put it into practice. And we also don't learn to delight in it. It's when you put God's word into practice that you begin to see how, that it really works. It really works. You really are blessed, as you do. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later today. So we talked about those five basic questions, and if you want to keep it simple, if I'm going too fast here, which I probably am, then just stick with the five basic questions. You can get plenty right there. If you want to move on, I gave you five intermediate questions last time. Six sticks, remember, pastor, Pastor Scott beating the pulpit to emphasize the point. What's being emphasized, okay? Seven, heaven. You picture a porpoise, you know, jumping through the heavens. What's the porpoise, the purpose? What's the purpose of the section you're reading? Eight, gate. You picture your gate that somebody painted purple with yellow polka dots, and you're surprised when you see that. What surprises you? When I read the Bible, there's always something that Why is that there? Why did God say that? Why did Paul do this, you know? And those kinds of questions oftentimes lead to deep insight. And nine is the questions. After you've studied the whole section, let's say it's a chapter you're doing, what questions do you still have? Nine, mine, and you picture these question marks floating out of the coal mine or the dark mine, okay? And so what kind of questions do you still have? And those, sometimes I just file them away in my mind. I don't have any answers. I just, I still don't understand this. Like the end of Romans 12 says, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. What does that mean? Well, I think I might know what it means, but I'm not absolutely sure. I've had that question in my mind for a long time, and I'm starting to get some answers. Sometimes you just have to file away the question, and eventually you'll get answers. Other times you can talk to someone who knows the Bible better than you, and maybe they can explain it to you. And then 10, hen. Hen texting on a cell phone. Picture a hen texting on a cell phone. Context. What's the context? And that's really important. Now last week I mentioned question 12. I skipped over 11. 12 is culture. Are there cultural issues? And we talked about a couple different things. Like I mentioned that the biblical culture is much more collectivistic than our culture, which is much more individualistic. A good example of that is we had a Sudanese boy living with us. His name was Deng. And his culture that he came from was very collectivistic. And so the second day I think he was there, I went out to the window. He went outside to play and I was a little bit worried because he doesn't speak English, you know. And I wanted to make sure he was okay. So I look out the window and I thought, you know, He's got shoes just like mine. Now in our culture, in our house, we take off our shoes at the door. So when we have guests, a lot of times there's a whole bunch of shoes at the door. And so I look at him and I said, well, you know, he has shoes just like mine. And then as I looked more, I thought, those are my shoes. And sure enough, see, in his culture, it's not my shoes, it's our shoes. We own them together. That's the kind of culture he came from. It's our shoes. In our culture, it's my shoes, okay? You see the difference. Now, I'm not saying that the biblical culture is totally collectivistic. It's certainly not like communistic, that kind of thing, where everybody supposedly owns everything, which doesn't work out at all. You have commandments like the Eighth Commandment of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not steal. Well, you can't steal if Everybody owns everything, right? There is individual ownership. I think it's more family ownership, though, actually, than individual ownership. So the Bible's culture is different from ours, but it's not totally different. I also mentioned the honor-shame culture. And I really enjoyed Pastor Scott's message about a woman who has a husband and the husband dies and doesn't leave, you remember last week, the child and she ends up marrying all seven brothers, none of them have the child, so whose wife is she gonna be? Look at Matthew 22. There's a really interesting thing about honor and shame here in Matthew 22. Because our culture's not what anthropologists would call an honor-shame culture. But when you're really collectivistic, when you're really concerned about your culture, what they say about you, you're really tightly integrated into your family and into your in-group, you're really concerned about what they think. And so if you look at chapter 22, verse 29, And look what Jesus says to these people. Jesus answered them, he's answering the Sadducees about this woman who dies, or the husbands die and don't leave any children. But Jesus answered them, you are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. Now what is Jesus doing there? He's correcting them, and in their culture, he's shaming them. I mean, look it, what if Pastor Scott preaches a sermon and then you go up to him afterwards and say, you know, Pastor, your problem is you don't know the Bible. Pretty shocking, that's exactly what Jesus is doing. He's going to the religious leaders, the Sadducees, who are supposed to be the teachers of Israel, and he's saying, you're wrong, you don't know the Bible. That's the problem you guys have. You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. He's publicly shaming them. And then, you remember at the very end, that would be verse 46, And Scott actually showed us this, verse 2, last week. Why did they not even dare to ask him any more questions? It's a public honor-shame issue. When you go up in public in their culture and you ask someone a question, you're challenging them. They were challenging Jesus, and Jesus answers them well and puts them in their place. Jesus gains honor and they get shame. And they didn't want any more shame, and they didn't want him to have any more honor. So they're not even gonna ask him any more questions. So culture's important. You know, Pastor Scott explained what the Sadducees were and what they believed. When you understand that, this parable makes, or this question that they ask makes perfect sense. We also looked at Matthew chapter one. Remember the genealogy of Jesus? And what did we see there that was surprising? There were women in the genealogy, and there were Gentiles in the genealogy. Why do you have Gentiles in a Jewish genealogy? Matthew's making a point. The Gentiles are also included in the people of God, not just the Jews. And in fact, here's an interesting thing. Who were the first people to come and worship the new Messiah when he was born? The Magi? In the book of Matthew, the Magi, but who really were the first to worship the Jewish Messiah when he was born? Yeah, the shepherds were in Luke chapter two. It's the shepherds that come. Now, when you're writing a biography of someone, Matthew's writing a biography of Jesus, you can't put every detail. It says, the last verse in the book of John says, you know, if everything that Jesus did was recorded, I don't think even all the world could hold that many books. So when you're writing a biography, you are being selective. Matthew, purposely doesn't mention the Jewish shepherds. He makes the Magi the first ones he reports coming to worship the Messiah. Why is that important? The Magi were, are the Jews? No, they're Gentiles. So again, Matthew's making a point that the Gentiles also are included in the Messiah. You see the same thing, by the way, in chapter eight of Matthew, where Jesus Well, remember the Roman centurion comes to Jesus and says, you know, will you heal my servant? Jesus says, sure, I'll come and heal him. And the centurion says, you don't need to come to my house. Just say the word. I'm a man under authority with those under me, and I say to one, come, and he comes, and I say to another, go, and he goes. Just say the word. And what does Jesus say, remember? I have not seen such faith even in Israel. This Gentile has more faith than anyone I've seen in Israel. So Matthew has this theme going through and he's trying to show us that the Gentiles are also included in the people of God. So praise God because I'm a Gentile and I can be included too. Okay, so I asked you to look at 2 Timothy 3. Let's look at that real quick, and then I'm going to push on to some more material. 2 Timothy 3, that's part of the homework for this week. And the only thing I asked you to do with that is to see if you saw any cultural issues here. I want to point out three that are sort of cultural issues. If you know a little bit about the background, it really helps you understand it. So verse 1, But understand this, that in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. What are the last days? Now, we think of the last days as just before Jesus comes back, right? And sometimes you hear people say, are we in the last days? And we're in the last days. Well, the truth is, the last days started when Jesus came. If you look at Acts chapter two, Peter in his sermon. quotes from the book of Joel, where it says, in the last days, these things will happen. And Peter says they're happening now. We're in the last days. And in fact, he mentions what's going to look like in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, all these things. And then in verse 5, he says, they'll have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power. Avoid such people. So they're in the last days already, and Paul's saying to Timothy, you stay away from those kind of people. We're in the last days. So when you understand that, it helps you understand certain things about the Bible. The last days are not just before Christ comes, but it's this whole period of time from his first coming to his second coming. And then look at verse 12. Verse 12 says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Now, when I read that a long time ago, I thought, wait a second, I wanna live a godly life in Christ Jesus, and I'm not persecuted. What's the deal here? Nine mind questions, so that was my question. I wanna live a godly life in Christ Jesus, but I'm not persecuted. And yet it says, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Well, look at the context, question 10, context. Look at the next verse. While evil people and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. When you're living in a culture where evildoers and imposters are going from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived, then you, if you desire to live godly, you're going to be persecuted. See, we're in a very unique situation because our country was founded very much on biblical principles. And some of those are holding on in our culture. However, we're losing them quickly. More and more people are deceiving, and more and more people are being deceived. And in that context, then we are going to be persecuted if we stand for the truth. And then one other is verse 16. Let's see, is that the right verse? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Verse 16, all scripture is breathed out by God, or as God breathed, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. The word reproof or rebuking is interesting. We are supposed to use God's word to rebuke or reprove people, or correct people, as it also says there. In our culture, that's hard to do, isn't it? Remember the illustration I used last time, where the person in the more collectivistic culture, he said, in our culture, when a teenager is sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, every adult that walks by says, you shouldn't do that. That's wrong. You're going to get cancer. Don't do that. And in America, the adults just all walk by. Because we're not supposed to judge anyone, right? We're not supposed to correct or rebuke people. But the Bible says we are. And that's what the scripture is for. For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. So a cultural issue here. In our culture, how do you rebuke people, even in the church? And by the way, if we're supposed to rebuke each other in church, that means we also need to learn to take rebuke in the right way, right? It's not easy to do in our culture because it's very individualistic. You're not supposed to tell me what to do. But that's not biblical. I'm going to push on now, okay? And we're going to talk about language. The eleventh question, the one I skipped over last week, eleven rhymes with leaven. It sort of rhymes with leaven, doesn't it? Eleven, leaven. And when I think of leaven, I think of a loaf of bread. So think of a loaf of bread, if you want a picture in your mind to remember it, just picture a loaf of bread sitting on your table, and the loaf of bread is talking to you, okay? It's a silly picture, but the sillier the picture, the easier it is to remember. So that's what the 11th question is, language. Are there language issues in the section that you're studying? You see, the Bible is not only true, but it's also beautiful. Listen to this word. I think it's in your notes, maybe. Ecclesiastes 12, 10. The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. Notice, delight, truth. The word of God is both truthful and it's delightful. It's beautiful. And the more you recognize that, the more you'll appreciate it. So I want to show you some things about the Bible that make the language of the Bible beautiful. Now I'm not talking about Hebrew and Greek. I'm assuming you don't know the original languages. And to be honest with you, I don't either. I studied three years of Greek, but I would never say that I know Greek. You know, pastors really don't know it either. I mean, you have to be a scholar who spends all your life studying this stuff to really know the language. I only know enough to be dangerous probably. So I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about how language works. One fourth of the Bible is written in poetry. Actually, it's 28%. 28% of the Bible is written in poetry. Now, if you don't like poetry, that's bad news to you. And I was one of those guys. I didn't like poetry. until someone showed me how it works. And once I saw how it works in the Bible, I got very interested. I want to show you how it works. Basically, biblical poetry is based on what's called parallelism. Parallelism. Parallelism is you almost always have two lines. It's called a couplet. Two lines. And sometimes there's three or four, but usually it's just two lines, and they both say something related to each other. So I'm gonna give you some examples so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. Look at Psalm 24. Psalm 24. Now I'm gonna simplify things a whole lot here. You know, when you teach a child to read, a lot of you teach children to read here. I think that's a wonderful thing. We taught our children to read. And when you teach them to read, you start with what's called a pre-primer. A pre-primer is a book that has simplified English. So it's mostly consonant-vowel-consonant words, like Sam can run, or like the one we used, the one I used with kids, the pig can jig, okay? Now that's not really how English is. That's really simplified. But it helps you get started in learning to read English and sound out words, right? So I'm going to do the same thing with Hebrew poetry. I'm going to really simplify it and give you a pre-primer introduction. So the first kind of parallelism is called affirming parallelism. That means the second line says the same thing as the first line, just with different words. So look at Psalm 24. Here's a good example. Psalm 24, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And then the second line says the same thing. The world and those who dwell therein. Do you see that? It's just saying the same thing with different words. It's just like if I said, I'm going to the store, I'm driving to Safeway. I'm just saying the same thing with different words, right? That's called affirming. The second line affirms the first line, okay? The second verse does the same thing. For he founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers. It's just saying the same thing twice in different words. Verse three, same thing. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? What's his holy place? The hill of the Lord, Jerusalem, where the temple is. It's saying the same thing twice. Verse four does it again. Okay, verse 4 is a little more complicated, but it says, "'He who has clean hands and a pure heart.'" What does it mean to have clean hands? "'Who does not lift up his soul to what is false.'" What does it mean to have a pure heart? "'And does not swear deceitfully.'" So, you got basically two lines, and the second line affirms what's said in the first line, affirming parallelism. Okay? Another kind of parallelism, poetry in the Bible, is called opposing parallelism. So look at Proverbs chapter 10. Almost all of Proverbs, they're almost all opposing parallelism. Okay, so Proverbs chapter 10. This is where the short Proverbs start in chapter 10 after the long nine-chapter introduction. And it says the Proverbs of Solomon. Now look at the first one. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. The second line is saying the opposite of the first, right? A wise son makes a glad father. A foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Mostly when you have opposing parallelism, the second line begins with but, and it's just the opposite, okay? And by the way, don't interpret this wrong. This doesn't mean a wise son makes a father glad, but not a mother. And a foolish son is sorrow to the mother, but not the father. That's not what it means. Father and mother are just two different words for parents here. So you kids here, you want to make your parents glad? then you be wise. And if you are foolish, you will make them very, very sorrowful. Look at verse two. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit. And now the opposite, but righteousness delivers from death. Righteousness does profit. Look at verse three. The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, and now the opposite, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. Verse four, a slack hand causes poverty, now the opposite, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. See how it works? So you have two kinds of parallelism. Affirming parallelism, the second line says the same thing in different words. Opposing parallelism, the second line says the opposite thing. A third kind is called advancing parallelism, where it just gives you more information. It doesn't repeat the same thing. Look at chapter 18. Chapter 18, verse 13. Chapter 18, verse 13. This is an example of advancing parallelism. If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. It doesn't say the same thing. It doesn't say the opposite thing. It just says more. It gives you more information. So that's called advancing parallelism. Now, these are tools that biblical poets use to make it beautiful, not just true, but also beautiful. But it also helps us interpret it and understand it better. So let me give you an example. Look at Colossians 1.15. The Jehovah's Witnesses love this verse. Colossians 1.15. Because they don't believe Jesus is God. Colossians 1.15. And if you talk to Jehovah's Witnesses and you get into it a little bit, they're gonna bring up this verse, okay? 115 says, he, that is Jesus, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And they'll say, see, Jesus was created. He was the first one created. Now, the first thing I'd point out is it doesn't say the first created, it says the first born. So now let's ask ourselves, what does it mean first born? Now, the 11th question I taught you is language, and the 12th question is culture. So let's start with culture. What did it mean in their culture to be first born? Yeah, it meant preeminence. You see, the firstborn son got a double portion of the inheritance because the firstborn son is the one that was going to take over the family, the leadership of the wider family, not just, you know, mother, father, children, but the bigger family, okay? The clan, you might say. So in biblical culture, to be firstborn means you have Preeminence. So it's not saying that Jesus is the first created. It says he's the firstborn of all creation. He's over all the creation. And the reason is is because he made it all. The very next verse, for by him all things were created. Now, the other way you can approach the Jehovah's Witnesses is you can look at affirming parallelism. Okay, look at Psalm 89. Psalm 89. In Psalm 89, you have the biblical poet using affirming parallelism to explain what firstborn means. Psalm 89, verse, okay, let's see, 27. 27. God says, I will make him the firstborn. And then it says the same thing in different words. The highest of the kings of the earth. So to be firstborn means to be the highest, to be preeminent, as Dan said, okay? In Colossians 1, it's not saying that Jesus is the first one created. It said he's preeminent over all the creation. He's the firstborn of all the creation. So affirming parallelism, understanding how the poetry works can help you understand what it means, what the Bible means. I will make him the firstborn, which means the highest of the kings of the earth. Same thing, just in different words. Okay? Now, let me go on a little bit here. In poetry, and this is not just Hebrew poetry, not just American poetry, any poetry, you have a very high concentration of figurative language. Because we believe the Bible is all true, it's all true, right? Sometimes we say we believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Now, I don't say that. And the reason I don't say that is because it's not exactly right. It's not that we believe in a literal interpretation, we believe in an ordinary interpretation. So here, I'll show you what I mean. So in Psalm 18, it says, God is my rock. Do you literally believe that God's a rock? No, of course not. That's a metaphor, right? That's a metaphor. It means God has some qualities that are like a rock. You know, he's stable, he's strong, he's a place of protection, okay? When Jesus says, I am the door to the sheep, I mean, he's not literally a door, but we understand that, we know what it means. He's the entrance, it's a metaphor. We're not sheep, are we? Not literally, but we know what that means. See, the Bible uses language just as we do, in a normative, ordinary way. And so that's what I say. I interpret the Bible in ordinary ways, in ordinary language. So let's just take this metaphor thing. So when David says in Psalm 18, God is a rock, God's my rock, we know that that's a metaphor. It's not to be taken literally. But then we have to ask, okay, what is it about God that's like a rock? And that gets a little bit harder now. What is it about God that's like a rock? His stability? His strength? David used rocks to protect him in fighting battles and running from Saul. He got behind these rocks and stuff. What is it, and usually the context will help you here. But it does take some work. Metaphors take some work. Psalm 23, verse one. The Lord is my what? Shepherd. Is he literally a shepherd? No, and we're not literally sheep. But we really like that metaphor, don't we? Why do we like that metaphor? The Lord is my shepherd. You know, we feel like, oh, the shepherd comforts the sheep and loves the sheep, and those things are true, but that's not really what the metaphor usually means in scripture. To be a shepherd in scripture is usually to be a leader. He leads the sheep. It's interesting, did you know that the word for pastor in the New Testament is exactly the same as the word shepherd. In fact, in 1 Peter 5, Peter says to the elders, he says, Shepherd the flock of God, which has been given to you. You know, shepherd them. You are pastors, you are to be shepherds. A pastor and a shepherd are the same. So in the Bible, the idea of being a shepherd, that metaphor, is more the idea of leading. He's the leader. He's our leader as our shepherd. Why does the Bible use so many metaphors? It's not just in the poetry, but it's all through the Bible. I'll show you a good example of why it does this. Look at 2 Timothy, Chapter 4. I'm making you run all over the Bible today, aren't I? 2 Timothy, Chapter 4. And Paul is talking about, this is actually the last chapter of the last book that we have from the Apostle Paul. He's close to death. And he says in chapter four, verse 16, At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. Now listen to this. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. Now was Paul literally rescued from the lion's mouth? Well, he might have been if he thought that the sentence would be the lions would eat him. They threw Christians to the lions back then, but that's probably not the case, especially because Paul was a Roman citizen. He would have been beheaded when he died in about 67 AD. But when he says, I was delivered from the lion's mouth, I was rescued from the lion's mouth, that's a metaphor for the Roman Empire and what could have happened to him, right? He could have just written, I was rescued from death. What's more powerful, to say, I was rescued from death, or to say, I was rescued from the lion's mouth? See what I'm saying? Yeah, the lion's mouth is much more, it's beautiful, it's powerful, and it's memorable. You remember that. Wow, I was rescued from the lion's mouth. So he uses a metaphor to help us understand what he's talking about here. Now let me show you another thing that is oftentimes used in the Bible. Yes, this is a long word here, okay, anthropomorphism, but it's really a simple concept. It means using human terms for God. It's all the time in Scripture. You read about the arm of the Lord, right? You read about the fingers of the Lord, Psalm 8. When I consider the work of your heavens, the moon, and stars, which you have set in place, what is man? Remember, and this talks about how the moon and the stars, when I consider the heavens the work of your fingers, does God have fingers? God doesn't have fingers, that's anthropomorphism. God's arm is not weak that it cannot save. That's an anthropomorphism. God's eyes run back and forth over the earth looking for those whose hearts are fully his to strengthen them. He doesn't have eyes. God's ears are attentive to their cry. That's another psalm. He doesn't have ears, but we understand exactly what that means, don't we? His ears, notice he's listening to us. His eyes, he's seeing us. His arm, he's powerful, okay? So anthropomorphism, you know, the Mormons, here's the mistake the Mormons make. They think it's literal. They think that God is an advanced, evolved person, man, with a body. Because it says, you know, God has an arm, God has eyes. They don't understand it as an anthropomorphism. Now, it's easy to refute them, because in Psalm 91.4 it says this, God will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge. Well, has God a bird? No, he's not a bird. Again, that's not anthropomorphism, but it's figurative language. It's not literal, right? It's not literal. One that we oftentimes miss is when it says God remembers things. For God to remember doesn't mean the same thing as it means for us. Because God never forgets. And God is never lacking in understanding everything there is. He's omniscient, right? When it says God remembered, like sometimes it will say God remembered Joseph or something like that, it means God is going to act in his favor. God is gonna recall him to mind in order to act on his behalf. And when it says God forgets, he doesn't literally forget. That's an anthropomorphism too. It's assigning a human quality to God. God doesn't forget, it just means that God's not gonna act against He's not gonna act on it. So I'll give you an example. It says in Isaiah 43, 25 that God forgets our sins. He doesn't literally forget our sins. He knows everything. In fact, that would be a terrible view of God to actually forget our sins because I remember my sins, at least some of them. Do I know something God doesn't know? Did God forget them? It just means he's not gonna use them against me anymore. When it says, in some places in the Bible, it says, God does not remember our sins against us anymore. That's what it means, okay? It's not that he literally forgets. Let me show you something else. This is called a chiasm, okay? A chiasm is when you have affirming parallelism but they switch it up. So look at this. I think this is interesting here. Verse two of Psalm one says, his delight is in the law of the Lord. And then the second line says the same thing. And on his law, he meditates day and night. But notice something, the law of the Lord is at the end of this sentence. It's at the beginning of this sentence. So if we attach them like that, and then his delight is in the beginning of this sentence, and how he delights, he meditates day and night on it. You see the X there? It makes a big X. It just so happens that in Greek the X is chi, that's the letter chi. So it's called a chiasm when they switch it up in the second line, the opposite of the first. And this helps us to understand, if you're delighting in God's Word, what are you going to do? You're going to meditate on it day and night, okay? So it repeats the same thing. It's affirming parallelism, but it switches it up. Just another thing that the biblical authors do. Think about this verse here. So God created mankind in his image. In the image of God, he created them. So God created mankind in his image. In this image, he created them. So it makes an X like that, okay? Those who humble themselves will be exalted, but those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Same thing. It goes back and forth like that. Now look at this right here, day and night. What does that mean? Can you literally meditate on the Bible day and night? This is what we call Amirism. I'm giving you a lot of terms here, but like I told you, I'll give you the book if you want it, or you can come to the seminar I'm going to do where we'll spend a lot more time on these things. Amirism is where you take two opposite things. Day, night, and it means everything in between, too, also, okay? Now, again, you don't literally day and night. Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy 1, I pray for you day and night. Well, you know, that just means he prays a lot. He keeps going back, praying for Timothy. That's something else that we're going to talk about. That's a hyperbole. But a mirrorism is where you just take two opposite things. Look, think of the first verse of the Bible. In the beginning God created what? The heavens and the earth. How would we say it in our culture? In the beginning, God created the universe. He made everything, okay? And that's the way the Hebrews would say it. The heavens and the earth, that's Amirism. You take two opposite things and it means also everything in between. Another thing they do is generalizations. So in, and it's not just in poetry, it's in a lot of the Bible. Like Paul says in Thessalonians, he who sleeps, those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk, get drunk at night. Okay, that's not always true, right? But it's generally true. Look at Titus. There's a great verse in Titus where it's obvious that he's, it's a generalization. Look at Titus chapter one. Titus chapter one. Titus chapter one, verse 12. I mean, we do generalizations a whole lot. I tell people from other parts of the country, I'm from Oregon where it rains all the time. Does it rain all the time? Well, you know what that means, right? Yeah. If someone says, I haven't slept for three days, you know what they mean by that? It's not that they literally haven't had any sleep, but they haven't had much sleep, right? I'm so hungry I can eat an elephant. Well, you know, not literally, but. Okay, so look at, it's a generalization. So look at verse 12. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Now think about that. Cretans are always liars. And then Paul says, well, this Cretan who said that is true. You see what I'm saying? It's a generalization. They're not every single thing they say is a lie, because this Cretan is saying that, and Paul says it's true. He's generalizing, just as we do. We do it all the time. Well, that was a generalization right there, right? We do it all the time. We don't do it all the time, but you know what I'm saying. So I'm just trying to show you that biblical poetry and language, a lot of times, it just uses language the way we use it today. It's not anything different. You just have to understand how we use language today. We use generalizations a lot. Hugh sleeps, sleeps at night, Paul says. Well, I worked graveyard at one point in my life and I slept during the day, right? So you understand that. Okay, so that gets to the next one. is hyperbole. Hyperbole is intended exaggeration, not just exaggeration. I really have problems when people exaggerate. I think of that as lying or close to lying. But if you intentionally exaggerate, and I know you're exaggerating, it's not a lie. It's just making a point. Like, for example, In the Bible, when you go up to a king and, well, okay, sometimes in the Bible, the kings will say, I will give you anything up to half my kingdom. Well, that's hyperbole. It's intended exaggeration. They're not really going to give you half their kingdom. Herod says that to that woman who dances, you know, what do you want up to half my kingdom? That's hyperbole. Jesus says, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. Well, first of all, just gouging out your eyes and throwing them away is not going to stop you from sinning, but he's using something strong to say you got to take strong action. He's using hyperbole. In the book of Mark, it says all the people of Jerusalem went out to John the Baptist. Did all the people go out to John the Baptist? No, he's trying to say lots of people went out, okay, you get that? People who want to criticize the Bible will look at things like that and say, ah, that's wrong. Not every single person went out to John the Baptist, but they don't understand how language works. We do this a lot, hyperbole, and so does the Bible. I can give you millions, Okay, see that was a hyperbole right there. I can give you millions of examples. I can't give you millions, but I can give you a lot of them, okay? Here's what David says about Saul and Jonathan when they die. He says, Saul and Jonathan are swifter than eagles. Well, they're not really swifter than he goes, but you know what he's saying? We all understand that. They're very quick. They're very fast. Here's what Luke says about the people of Athens. Acts 17, 21, he says, the Athenians did nothing except to tell or hear something new. Again, that's kind of what they did a lot of, but it's not that they didn't do anything else. In fact, that's really kind of sarcastic, isn't it? He's putting them down. He's like, these guys, all they care about is trying to talk about something new, okay? So now I wanted to give you some examples from Proverbs chapter 10, but we're gonna run out of time fast. So I'm gonna just go to Proverbs 10. Maybe I can give you just one or two examples of what I'm talking about. Okay, Proverbs 10, look at verse 15. It says, a rich man's wealth is his strong city. The poverty of the poor is their ruin. So it's the second line is saying the opposite of the first, right? That's opposing parallelism. A rich man's wealth is his strong city. That's a metaphor, okay? What does he mean by that? His strong city, it's his protection. He thinks he's pretty safe because he's got all this money. He can take care of himself. He can hire help. He can hire guards. He can put locks on his doors. Rich man's wealth is his strong city. The poverty of the poor is their ruin. Look at chapter 11, verse 16, 11, 16. Remember I told you this is an honor-shame culture. 1116, a gracious woman gets honor. Violent men get riches. A gracious woman gets honor. But violent, it doesn't say but here, but that's the idea here. But what do violent men get? All they get is riches. In the book of Proverbs, getting honor is way more important than getting riches. You'll see that over and over again. And a gracious woman, one gracious woman gets honor, and violent men, plural, you can have a whole bunch of violent men and all they end up is with riches. That's opposing parallelism. And you look at the honor-shame culture and you understand that better. Look, I'm running out of time, I'm sorry. Like I told you, if you want the book and you're willing to read it, then email Scott or Nathan, Pastor Scott, Pastor Nathan, and I will give you one of those books, one per family. And if you want to be in the seminar in the spring, as soon as we start advertising it, I'll let Pastor Nathan know, and he'll let you know, and you can sign up for that if you want. And thank you so much for the time. You guys have a great church here. Diane and I love coming here. And I'm sorry we can't keep coming, but I got to get back to our church and try to do some ministry there now. So thank you for letting us come. Let me just pray in closing. You want to say something? Just want to encourage church family to email me or Pastor Scott for the book. If you've missed any part of the series of the Sunday School, we do have the recording of it as well as the handouts. It's been practical. and profitable for my family, doing our Bible studies, and helping us to see the Word of God in a unique way. And that's what we're trying to do as a church. Why we invited Pastor Rick to come out and invest a month's worth of time of Sunday school was to invest in you, to equip you and your family to be strong in the Word of God. So I encourage you, please take us up on that and send us an email. And you want to close us in prayer? OK. Lord, I just want to thank you for Woodland Christian Church. What a great church this is, and Diana and I really have enjoyed getting to know some of the people here, and I pray your blessing on them. I pray you'll help them, Lord, to delight in your word. I pray, Lord, it's your word. It's so important, and it's so true, and it's so beautiful, and I just pray that you'll help us all to grow in our understanding of your word, and our delight in your word. Because it's not only true, it's also beautiful. And I thank you for giving us such a beautiful record of your revelation, in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.