Teaching: Principles for teaching and Bible study

Thank you for coming. I want to read first of all in Luke chapter 24. Luke chapter 24.

And we could start reading at verse 25. This is in resurrection. The Lord Jesus talking to the two on the way to Emmaus.

Then he said unto them, O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Now he's made known to them in the breaking of bread in their home.

Come down further in the chapter. Verse 44. This is now with the 11 in Jerusalem.

And he said unto them, these are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures and said unto them, thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.

Now we want to look on the outline starting at page 5 on principles of interpretation. And I have a another scripture reference there, 2nd Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15, where it says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And so that's what we're going to be talking about basically tonight is the idea of the principles on which we would rightly divide the word of truth.

Now I think what we have in Luke chapter 24 would teach us that the Lord Jesus is really the central message of the Bible. If we lose our focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to go off onto tangents. Now we all have our little bents, our little twists, and I learned many years ago that my thoughts can go off on tangents.

And I need the help of other people to to balance some of the tendencies and thinking that I can have. Now of course we all like to think we're well-balanced people and not given to extremes, but we're all just a little bit warped. We all have our tendencies, we all have our biases, we all have our prejudices, and it's a wonderful thing when you can look at yourself and chuckle.

We're good at chuckling at other people. We can see the foibles in others quite easily, but sometimes it's not so easy seeing ourselves. But the scriptures themselves show us what is the basis of God in revealing the scriptures to us.

What is the focus? What is the purpose? And certainly we see some of that here, that the whole Old Testament scriptures were all directing, leading up to the coming of Christ the Savior into the world. And so with that key to the Old Testament, we have a tremendous benefit in learning profitable things from the Old Testament writings. And you can see that clearly he is the center message of it all.

Now I'm just going to run down through these headings and topics that I have outlined here. And as I think I mentioned last night, the reason I put it in so much detail on the outline is so that you can go over it yourself and read it and think about it and get help, use it as a resource. There are books written on this subject that would give you a lot more extensive help, but this at least gives you just a few points that I think are key.

And I've obviously missed some areas that could be emphasized. But the very first issue in looking at the Bible and interpreting the Bible is, are you going to take it literally or spiritualize it or allegorize it? Now I'm sure if you were to go to any number of churches and to open up the first, how many chapters of Genesis? The first 11 chapters of Genesis? Many churches would suggest that it's myth, it's mythological, that it's not intended to convey historical reality, but rather a spiritual meaning of God and the human race, but not to be taken literally. Well, I would disagree with that emphatically.

That's the very foundation of the revelation of God, and God intends it to be understood as solid historical reality. So the idea of literal is taking words in their ordinary, commonly understood meaning. And there's called the golden rule of interpretation is, if the plain sense makes good common sense, seek no other sense.

And so that's a good starting point. Now, in saying that, I also want to qualify that, that taking a literal interpretive approach to the Bible does not eliminate the idea of symbolism. There are symbols in the Bible, there are figures of speech, and I've listed quite a number here, and I'm just going to run down through them as quickly as I can.

And in some cases, the wording itself gives you the clue that something is being given as a figure of speech. Now, what's a figure of speech? Well, it's really, the modern day term is a word picture. And so a simile, that's a technical term for this, usually begins with like or as.

And I'll just give you an example on the outline, you wear as sheep going astray. Now, we are so familiar with this, if we've been reading our Bibles and, you know, I've had a foundation in Bible knowledge for many years, that we don't even stop to do the interpreting. We instinctively know that it's just using it as an illustration.

And obviously, going along with that, the imagery of the Lord as the shepherd, and that's the next one in a metaphor. A metaphor is really the same as a simile without using the term like or as to introduce it. And so you get this beautiful Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.

Well, we know that that's not talking literally as out in the pasture and we're going to go out on that hill tomorrow morning and, you know, he's going to shepherd us there. We can interpret it, it's almost transparent in its understanding. And so there are many of these in the Bible.

I am the door. But there are certain verses that have been doctrinal battlegrounds for centuries, like the next one that I have written down, this is my body. The Lord, when he broke the bread in instituting the Lord's supper, he took the bread and he break it and he said, take, eat, this is my body.

And I'm sure most of you know there's a doctrine called transubstantiation, which tries to suggest that the bread literally becomes the body of Christ. And not only that, but they throw in the deity of Christ along with it too. So you get Christ in all his fullness in that bread.

And when you take that communion, you are eating Christ. You are taking him in and so getting eternal life. And so why don't we understand it that way? Well, very simply, we recognize that the bread represents his body.

He was standing there in his own physical body and he says, this is my body. And so we know that when we break bread on Lord's Day, we are partaking of a symbolic supper that has very precious significance, but it is symbolic, not literal. And so again, a parable, a parable is just an extended simile.

And you get these expressions like the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that sowed good seed in his field. The Lord made many parables and he would start them with that kind of an expression. And so the parables are stories that are an interesting story in themselves, but the Lord wasn't just entertaining people with some common everyday stories.

He was teaching spiritual truths and actually using, and I never have in all the nights I've been here, I never have referred to the second last page on the outline, page 11. I'll just draw your attention to it here, called Excellence in Teaching with the Seven Laws. Now, this is just a little book that is an abridgment from a larger, older book written about a hundred years ago or more called the Seven Laws of Teaching.

And it was written by, I think, a Christian who was a Baptist minister, but was also head over the educational system in Michigan or something like that. And he wrote this Treatise on Excellence in Teaching and it's been considered a classic. So this other Christian, Carl Schaefer, took it and distilled it down into a shortened, simplified version, and I've just given you the headings of it.

And so there's the law of the teacher, the law of the learner, the law of the language, the law of the lesson, the law of the teaching process, and the law of the learning process, and so on. If you go down through it, I was really just drawing attention to number four, the law of the lesson. In the parables, the Lord Jesus was seeking to make known spiritual realities through common everyday stories that illustrated it.

And so this is the principle, the truth to be taught must be learned through truth already known. That is, the new and unknown can be explained only by the familiar and the known. So lessons are best begun with common and familiar experiences.

Now, you know, that's how education works, step-by-step, learning, adding to knowledge, building on the foundation that you already have. So when we come to the word allegory, it's really just an extended metaphor, and that's where instead of being introduced by saying, now, you know, the kingdom of God is like this, you're just talking about something and the whole story is an illustration that teaches a spiritual truth. And the most clear one that's in the Bible, in the New Testament, is actually called an allegory.

And Galatians 4, verses 22 to 31, we have the story of Hagar and Sarah, Isaac and Ishmael, and the two covenants. And of course, many of you would know the story of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Well, that's called an allegory.

It's a story, but it's actually a parable of a spiritual journey of faith. Then we come to another one called paradox. Paradox is an apparent contradiction.

It's something that sounds contradictory. And I'll give you an example here, Matthew 16 and 25, whoever shall save his life shall lose it. Whoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.

Now, that just sounds totally contradictory. So it's an apparent contradiction, but it is teaching a reality. And then there's irony.

And have you ever heard somebody say something sarcastically to you that they mean exactly the opposite of what they're saying because they're saying it in sarcasm? And believe it or not, Paul uses that in his writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, where he is picturing himself as a father with his children who are, you know, hassling him for his parenting. And he says, you know, I'm sorry that I didn't take any wages from you. I didn't take anything from you when I was with you, laboring among you.

Just forgive me this wrong. You know, I've wronged you. I'm sorry.

He's really using sarcasm because he means exactly the opposite. And so there's a number of those in the scriptures, and it's good to recognize them when they are there. Personification is just a thing or quality that is given the characteristics of a person.

And a good example is in Psalm 85, where you have that verse, mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. And so there you have, you know, this kind of as if these are people meeting together.

But it's really talking about principles that are sometimes in conflict. It's wonderful when they come together peacefully. And I'm sure if you haven't thought about it, you would be able to recognize that many times in assembly life, we need to find the way of having mercy and truth meet, of having righteousness and peace meet.

Because sometimes when there are problems, we are determined to have justice. We want justice. We want punishment.

And so there's no peace, as long as there is an atmosphere of demanding justice or judgment. And so righteousness and peace have kissed each other. They've come to terms and are now in harmony.

I'm going to drop down to hyperbole. Hyperbole is just deliberate exaggeration. And the Lord used that in Matthew 23 when he talked about those that he called hypocrites who strain out a gnat, one of these tiny little bugs, strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

Well, I mean, that's just hilarious, really, if you think about it literally. And yet sometimes we can be that ridiculous. And that's the scary thing.

We can be so careful and scrupulous and determined about some issue, and then something that is actually far more important, we can just blow it totally and not recognize its importance. And so the Lord had a lot to say about that kind of imbalance in his audience, particularly the Pharisees. Context is so important.

I'm sure you've heard in real estate that there's only three things that matter in real estate. Location, location, location. That's what they say.

Well, you could almost say when it comes to interpreting the Bible, it's the same thing. It's context, context, context. And so that's why it is a very important thing to me when I am trying to understand a word, a term, how it's used.

I look in its context, the context of the verse, the context of the paragraph, the context of the chapter, the context of the whole flow of thought. And unless it makes sense in that context, I'm not going to be satisfied that I am understanding it accurately or interpreting it correctly. Now, the next one is similar to that.

It's really context in a different sense, using the word background, historical, geographical, and cultural. One of the problems, again, that we have in reading the Bible today is that it was written thousands of years ago. There are customs, there are cultural things that are referred to and used that we're not familiar with anymore.

And I think about how far removed so many people are from the agricultural background, and many of the parables are agriculturally based. And so you have to explain the parable, what the parable actually means, and then apply it instead of the parable being the explanation. And so background is very, very important again for us to wrestle with.

We don't live in the So, as we are removed so far in time and so far in distance, and from that cultural background, it's valuable to have some of these helps. And a couple of books that, there's really many books that could be used, but one called Old Testament Bible History by Alfred Eidersheim, and then one in the New Testament called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by the same author. He was a Jew himself, and he did a lot of research and so on in the culture and so on of the times.

And I found it very, very helpful when I was studying through Egypt to Canaan, and I read through that commentary. It just illuminated so many facets of the wilderness journey, and made it come alive, and he could describe what this particular spot looks like, the topography, and all that. It just makes it come alive and makes sense out of a lot of details.

And one area of the New Testament in particular that I find is very helpful is in Revelation 2 and 3, where you have the messages to the seven churches. Those messages are filled with allusions to the background of the city, the economy, the culture, the activities. And once you get those details, those messages almost interpret themselves because they're so transparent.

And so some places especially that it is very, very important. Now, one thing that I'm just going to make comment about in regard to this is that the Bible is filled with geographical references, with points of reference in history, kings are named, empires are named, battles, wars, all kinds of details. The Bible is rooted in actual history, in a physical location in the world.

It's real. A contrast, a very stark contrast, is the Book of Mormon. I don't know if you've ever read the Book of Mormon.

I was given one time and so I read it and it actually was good for a laugh. It would be humorous except I know there are so many people who have been deceived through that system. It's a fictional account of Jews coming across from the Middle East to North and South America.

I'm not sure if it's around the time of the Babylonian captivity or sometime around that when they're being exiled. And they make this journey in an ark and they establish civilization in the Americas and they build these cities and they have wars and they virtually exterminate one another. And there's one last fellow named Moroni who writes the history and records it and puts it on these gold plates and hides it in a cave somewhere and then lo and behold an angel reveals it to Joseph Smith.

Well, the problem is it doesn't correspond to anything anywhere, either geographically, the locations of cities of mountains and rivers and all of these kinds of things. It's pure fiction and it is a source of somewhat of difficulty for the Mormon archaeologists and historians who try to find places in some of the ancient civilizations of the Mayans and the Aztecs and different places to try to make it sound like, you know, this is maybe where this was. But there's nothing that really corresponds to historical reality.

Whereas you can go over to the Middle East if you're physically fit and have lots of time and you can start digging and you can dig down and discover some of the ancient cities of Palestine and there's been so many confirmations of the biblical record that its historical reality is established over and over again. And so it's something that should be made use of even in our own presentation of truth to show that many times, for instance, I'll just give you an example. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was ridiculed for many years by people who thought that's just one wild story.

And another example of the mythology of the Bible. Well, back in the 1970s, there was an archaeological team that dug down into the ruins of an ancient city that they discovered by the name of Ebla. And this city, when they uncovered it and got actually some of the writing tablets and deciphered them, there was actually trade documents of business with neighboring cities, Sodom and Gomorrah and some of the other cities of the plains.

And so the historical validity of the Bible account is evidenced. And so there's just been so many of that kind of confirmation. So we don't need to be intimidated or embarrassed at the false claims that are sometimes made.

There was a few years ago, I picked up a National Geographic magazine and was really disgusted by the...it was something in the steps of Abraham. And that article was just basically claiming that it was just mythology, that there's really no much likelihood that there was ever a historical individual called Abraham. Well, that's just rubbish, absolute rubbish.

Obviously, there's not going to be much archaeological evidence. He lived in a tent. He didn't have too many concrete foundations and all of that kind of thing.

But, you know, there are whole peoples of the Middle East who trace their lineage and their heritage back to Abraham. And so these kinds of things that are said sometimes, they really just betray the bias and the ignorance of people. Now, grammar, I don't think anybody wants a grammar lesson here tonight.

But unfortunately, grammar matters. And I know, at least in Canada, the educational system has devalued grammar. And as a result, the generation that is growing up now gets very little training in analyzing grammatical structures.

And you can sometimes see that in the writing that you see commonly here and there. And language has its own structure. It has its own laws of structure.

And so Hebrew and Greek have their own structure. And so without having to become a Greek scholar or a Hebrew scholar, I certainly appreciate something like Vine's Dictionary of the Bible, where he goes into definitions and the way it's used in different places. Those are helps that can give you help.

And you can have a fair level of confidence that the translation in English that you are reading is well-written and it conveys quite accurately what is written in the original. Sometimes you can get help just from a Bible dictionary. And I would suggest as well, I haven't really put down commentaries as such, but I have found Vine's collected writings to be particularly useful because he's very brief, very concise.

You don't have to read five pages to get a comment on a verse. And much of the help that he gives is just helping you to see what it's really saying. He'll give some of that technical help and make it fairly understandable.

And so I would certainly recommend that. So there are many other Bible commentaries too that can just help to explain some of those critical differences in the Greek language. Now, you know that the scribes, they developed into that work from the time that the Jews shifted from Hebrew into Chaldean when they were in the Babylonian captivity.

And then later, when Greek language took over in Palestine, the Greek language became the common language. And so scribes were those who were the students of words. And they taught the scriptures.

They explained it and translating and interpreting was certainly part of it. Another principle that is quite important in number six in this lineup is the word synthesis. And that's really talking about the harmony of doctrine and the truth in the scriptures.

I'm sure you've heard this mentioned many times that the Bible does not contain errors and it doesn't contradict itself. But there are some times it seems to come pretty close, doesn't it? And I could point out to you a few passages where right flat on the surface, it's saying exactly the opposite. Just, you know, Romans 4, justification is by faith without works.

James chapter 2, without faith, without works, faith is dead. You know, so you're justified by works and not faith alone. Well, if you, when you get that, you're either going to say, oh, well, there it is.

It's in contradiction. So you can choose which one you want to believe. No, you need to understand how it complements each other, how those two truths.

And if you look at, look at it carefully, you will discover that in the context of Romans 4, the works that are being talked about are the works of fulfilling the law, fulfilling the law's commandments. And by that, meriting righteousness, a righteous standing before God. So it's the works of the law as described in other places.

When you come to James 2, the word works is used in a totally different sense. It is used in what we would say action. And so if you put the word action instead of the word works, you would get the right sense.

Faith without action is dead. That's pretty simple. So does your faith work? Does your faith do anything? Well, it says if it hasn't done anything for you, if it hasn't done anything in you, it hasn't done very much.

And so that's the sense in which, and it's interesting that both Paul and James take Abraham to prove the points. And to confirm that in James 2, he adds to Abraham, Rahab the harlot. She was justified by works.

Well, it's pretty obvious she wasn't justified by the works of the law. She would be condemned to death on the basis of the law for her sins of her life. And so it's obvious that it was referring to her action.

She didn't just believe about it. She took action. She responded.

And so her faith was active and it was real. And so it's important then as we go through the scriptures, and especially when we come up against some of these stumbling blocks for us to hold a confidence that it is a harmony. There is a harmony in the truth of God.

And it's important for us to hold back our judgment on a certain interpretation until we can see how it fits with other scriptures. Now, one thing we do have to be careful about in using this principle, and very often, I mean, we use it instinctively. We will say, well, I know it can't mean that, what it looks like it's saying, because that would contradict some other clear truth that we already know.

So that's a protection. But we also have to guard against the danger we might assume that we know a truth, just like many people assume that no one can know for sure that they're going to heaven. No one can be so presumptuous to have eternal life here in this world.

And so because they make that a fundamental assumption, any verse that suggests eternal security, eternal life, and so on, they write it off, explain it away. So I always try to start with what it says, to seek out what it means honestly in that context in which it's found, and then to relate it to the other passages as we find it in the Bible. Now, number seven lists quite a number of points that are all connected together.

And these are fairly important to the law of first mention, and of progressive mention, total mention, and no mention. Now, I had a little bit of hesitation using the word law here, but that's the way it's commonly referred to. A law sounds like it's pretty rock solid, guaranteed.

Maybe it would be better to say the principle of first mention. What are we really saying? Well, very simply, the first time a truth, even a term, a key term, is introduced in the Bible, it usually is significant and has a key part in the understanding of that truth right through the Bible. And one example that I find very valuable, of course, Genesis is called the seed plot of the Bible.

And there are many things that are referred to there that are the beginning of God's revelation about it. But right in Genesis 1 and 26, where you have, when God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Now, in the first place, it's in a sequence.

The sequence that leads up to that statement is God creating all the different animals, each after its kind. So there's a blueprint, there's a pattern for every created kind. And then he comes to the creation of man, and he says, let's make man in our image, according to our likeness.

And so, and I want to say this very carefully, we have been created after his kind. We are made to be like him, patterned after God himself. And so, though we were the last created, we were placed over everything else.

And the word image suggests a visible representation of something or someone that's invisible. You know, we talk about an image like a picture of a loved one. And the picture might be up on the wall, and they say, oh, there's, you know, there's grandma.

Well, grandma's gotten pretty thin. You know, she can be pasted on the wall. You know, we use this without thinking.

That picture represents grandma. That's her image that we are looking at. And so, we are the living image of God.

God could have made some vast masterpiece that would have, you know, some physical thing that would have just shone and made some kind of a representation of himself. He actually put living creatures on earth that are his visible representation. Now, that also means that our character is derived from God's character, our nature from his nature.

That is what makes us unique in the creation. In fact, I would suggest to you that just as I was saying last night about when you come to the epistles, usually the key hangs by the door, a key verse to be the key of the whole epistle. I would suggest to you that that verse is the key to the Bible, the key to the unique relationship that we stand in between God and the whole rest of the creation.

And that is, that's why it makes sense that when God would reveal himself finally and fully, it's in a man. He comes to us in manhood, not as an angel, but as a man. And forever, Christ will be the final, ultimate representation of God, a man who is the living, eternal God.

And so we find our ultimate dignity, our ultimate calling in Christ, who is the man, who is, as Colossians chapter one teaches, who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn over all creation. And so if you take that term, image, you will discover that it touches many significant doctrines into the New Testament. The whole issue of headship in 1 Corinthians 11 hinges upon the principle of image of God and glory of God.

And so the death penalty given to Noah is based on man in the image of God. And so there is, this is really a key that is given to us in the first chapter of our Bible, and it really gives us the key to the whole scriptures. The idea of progressive mention is really, as a subject is progressively mentioned through the Bible, and I could just use that same example as I've already given you some, but I'll give you another one, the promise of redemption, the promise seed.

Genesis chapter three, as soon as sin has taken place, God makes his promise of a deliverer, and that deliverer would be the seed of the woman through whom we fell. And so we have that principle beginning to be developed to Abraham, to thee and to your seed. In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

So God's promise of redemption for the world is associated with the concept of the promise seed. Isaac, and so on. You go down through, and then that's gathered together in the epistle of the Galatians where, again, it's related to Christ as the seed to whom the promise was made.

Now, another aspect of this is called total mention or full mention, and that's the idea that we do need, if we're going to, you know, try to understand some of these important concepts, we need to gather together all the references to it in the Bible and see how it's laid out through the scriptures. And we can come to appreciate truths much more deeply as we see how it goes right through and has its place all through the scriptures. And included in that is the idea that, in many cases, significant truths are brought together and dealt with in one particular passage in a comprehensive way.

And so I've given you a few examples, I think, on the outline as well, about, for instance, prophecy in Matthew 24 and 25, the subject of love in 1 Corinthians 13, the subject of spiritual gifts, 1 Corinthians 12 to 14, resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. Now, these are all vital, important chapters that give to us a tremendous amount of truth. So what do you do with no mention? Well, that gives us a lot of trouble sometimes.

What do you do when the Bible has nothing to say specifically about something? Well, sometimes this is called the law of positive pattern. And I have some hesitation in how far to take this. And so I've written quite a bit about this, and you can just read it.

I don't really have time to go into it much. But there is an important distinction I just want to leave with you between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We have used the concept of the pattern quite extensively in teaching assembly truth.

We believe in a New Testament pattern, which means it's not just left up to our wisdom, our imagination as to how a church should function. We believe the New Testament gives to us a pattern for the functioning of an assembly. Yet at the same time, there is not the same kind of pattern as is given in the Old Testament, which is what I would call a prescribed pattern.

The tabernacle had to be made to exacting measurements. The service of the tabernacle, the clothing of the priests, every detail was detailed, prescribed, and deviation from it was dealt with quite harshly. I think in some way we have maybe done a little bit of overemphasis in trying to apply that same kind of prescribed pattern in the New Testament, because in the New Testament we have very little prescribed pattern.

Why do we break bread on the first day of the week? We're not commanded to, but we see the example, and so we follow it, understanding that this is the custom that was established. We understand the suitability of it, being the resurrection day and so on, and I have no hesitation in thinking that that is what was intended. But it's not prescribed.

The times of meetings, the kinds of meetings, some have gone to great lengths to try to prove what is an assembly meeting and what isn't an assembly meeting, and have gotten tied up into knots about what can be and what can't be called an assembly meeting. The New Testament does not give it in a prescribed, set order like the feasts of the Lord in the Old Testament or rituals of the temple. It's not given in a prescribed way.

There is a maximum flexibility and lack of detail, and I think that is by design, because this is going out to all nations. There's no prescribed kind of dress, even though you would never know that. Often among us, because somehow we've come to think that there is, and just think about it.

In the times of the persecution of the believers, do you think they would give themselves away by some special little something as they walked down the street? They would have to, they would just blend in with everybody else, and so there are things that are, there's a lack of prescribed pattern. That's all I want to say about that, without making issues about it. And so I think it's important to see an important distinction from Old Testament to New Testament in that, and that's why I suggest that we need to avoid the extremes of forbidding anything not specifically spelled out in Scripture, and I'm thinking about things like Sunday school, children's work, and so on.

Then we also need to avoid the opposite extreme of just ignoring the Scriptures and ignoring the principles of the Scriptures, and just doing whatever we want, regardless of what the Scriptures teach. Now, one more that I will try to say, and I think I'll have to just leave the rest until tomorrow night, make a few comments on the last few, but the law of distinction, this might seem so obvious to us, but I am personally very grateful for the understanding of the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The difference between law and grace.

The difference of understanding between teaching that's for Israel and teaching that relates to the church. I have grown up with that understanding, and the Bible clearly makes that distinction. And yet there are so many evangelical Christians who have it very much confused, and it is the source of many false systems of confusing law and grace, Old Testament and New Testament.

And I have talked to people who are determined that we're still under the Mosaic law, and it is just amazing what they do with certain verses in the New Testament. You show them this verse, you show them that verse that is just as plain as you could possibly be, that we're not under that law, we're not under that covenant, and yet they will work it away and work it away and work it away, and it's because they have a wrong framework. And so the law of distinction is just recognizing, and we have a term for it, we call it dispensational teaching.

It's simply the recognition that God has revealed himself, and he has worked with man in different ways at different times. In the Garden of Eden, when sin came in, the law did not come into effect until Moses, and that distinction is made clear in the New Testament as well. And then you have clear references, the law was until, and so you get these terms and these expressions that show us that there's an important change.

So I'm going to have to leave it there, and we'll just touch briefly tomorrow night, Lord willing, on practical application and guidance from the Word of God, and then try to get into a little bit of help on the actual presentation of the message, principles to effective preaching. Let's pray. Our Father, we draw near to Thee and thank Thee that Thou has carefully sketched the plan of redemption, looking back from the fulfillment of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross and his resurrection and his ascension to glory.

There are so many things that are made clear to us, which must have been a riddle to those of the Old Testament times, who had in their hands the revelation of a coming Messiah, a coming Christ, a coming king, and in some passages it seemed that he would be one who would suffer and die, and others that he would reign forever. And we think of all of the different facets of Thy program that has interposed the church, set aside the nation of Israel for the time being, and will later remove the church from this world and reintroduce the program of Israel and the nations and the establishing of the kingdom here in this world. Our Father, we thank Thee for the understanding that we have been given from Thy Word about these important things.

But we pray that we may never forget that the essential thing is that we come to know Thee through the Lord Jesus, that we come to appreciate that the Lord Jesus is the fullness of Thy revelation of Thyself to us, and in him we have access to Thee in the most wonderful, intimate way. And so we pray that we may gain in our spiritual life in the enjoyment of the presence of the indwelling Christ, and that Christ in us might truly be the prospect of glory in our hearts. We commit ourselves now to Thee and ask that Thou would graciously bless the opening up of Thy Word and the comments on the ideas of interpreting Thy Word.

Help us to be those who can rightly divide the word of truth. We ask Thee for this in our Savior's name. Amen.

Let's try singing together 420.