Teaching: The Preparation of the Message

Now, once again, I appreciate each one that's come along. We want to start looking tonight at the preparation of the message, how to study the Word of God and some aspects of the Scriptures. You'll notice Ecclesiastes chapter 12, I think it's on the outline at the beginning of this section.

At the rate we're traveling, it doesn't look like we're going to get through the outline. But really, I'll explain a little of the purpose in giving you so many sheets of paper. It's because the material that I'm going to be covering, particularly tonight and tomorrow night on study methods and principles of interpretation, I wanted to leave you fairly complete notes so that you can refer to them and hopefully get benefit as you think about it and use some of these ideas.

And you might hear something and it might sound helpful and then by tomorrow morning it's sort of gone. So by having it down in writing, I hope it'll be a little more help. The only thing that I feel a bit of a detriment is that I could almost read it off to you tonight because this is what I want to say is what's already there.

So hopefully, that won't be a hindrance. So in looking at preparation of the message, the idea that's emphasized in Ecclesiastes 12, we'll start reading at verse 9, it says, and moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge. Yea, he gave good heed and sought out and set in order many Proverbs.

The preacher sought to find out acceptable words and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. Now, that's a very interesting little section that would help us to see that even back then, there was preparation, there was study, there was choosing words carefully to use, to set in order ideas to be presented. And of course, you read through the Proverbs and those Proverbs are just a whole sermon in a verse, aren't they? And that's why even though you might like to have a reading plan where you read a chapter in the Proverbs every day, that's a lot to try to absorb.

And it's almost better to read a verse from the Proverbs every day. I know when Becky and I were raising our boys, we had the habit of reading half of a chapter in the Proverbs every day with them. And we would just cover it that way and went through it over and over again.

So, that really emphasizes the importance of words and of good language use. Now, that brings us to the first thing that I want to think with you about, the challenge of language. This is becoming more and more of a problem for us today, especially as we continue to use the King James Bible.

As you know, in every field of knowledge, whether it's the medical field, whatever kind of scientific endeavor, whatever it is, when you first start into that field of knowledge, there are so many terms that you don't understand. And you just pick up little bits and pieces. It's like learning a new language.

And even though the Bible was intended to be understood by the common man, as they would say, not necessarily someone highly educated, yet inevitably, theology has its complications. Truth has to be developed carefully. And so, whether it's Bible knowledge, whether it's medical knowledge, there are certain key terms that must be grasped.

And so, anyone who is going to preach, and I would like to say this, I mean, even though I think the original idea of the focus of this week's ministry was particularly how to teach the word of God in the assembly, yet all of us who ever speak to anyone on behalf of the Lord, we're really taking this responsibility upon us. And so, it's important for all of us to try to be accurate in our understanding, to have a complete knowledge of what we're talking about. If you go and try to speak to somebody and they stump you in the first sentence that you open your mouth and you don't know where to go from there, well, it isn't very effective.

Now, we don't know everything all at once, and so we can't know all of it. That's why getting to know the word of God and being built up gradually in the foundations of knowledge are so important. But I'm just... I don't want to take too long on this, but we have the compounded complication of translation.

The Old Testament was primarily given in the Hebrew language, with a little bit of Chaldean in parts of Daniel and so on. The New Testament, there was a change from Hebrew to the Greek language. And that is why, I'm sure you have noticed this, sometimes quotations in the New Testament don't correspond to the verses in the Old Testament that they're quoted from.

And you think, well, did they quote it wrong? No, it's because they were quoting from the Greek translation that was in use in New Testament times. And so, it was called the Septuagint version, which was from the name Septuagint means 70, and 70 scholars translated from Hebrew into Greek. And so, there are sometimes the verses is...parts of the verse are flipped from one language to another.

Part of this is simply that the language structure from one language to another is not identical. That's why if you go to a Spanish area and you start speaking Spanish and you think you're doing pretty well, they know you're not native because you're probably giving some English structure in your Spanish and so on. And we can pick up someone who's from a different language background very quickly because there are certain words that they will use which literally are correct, but we don't use them that way.

And so, you may recognize some words that I use, that I'm one of those people from Canada. You know, there's just those differences that happen in language. And what we have come to, especially in relation to our use of the King James Bible, is that the English language itself has changed very significantly from 400 years ago.

The King James Version just had its 400th birthday last year. And I have read some of the translations that the King James Version was actually a revision of, and I'm awfully glad that we have the King James Version and not those previous ones because I would be totally lost to figure out what was being said. Now, one of the problems that we have today is we have a proliferation of translations.

We've got many, many modern translations. That has become a confusing issue for many people. And I'm just going to make a few comments carefully because I don't want to stir up debate.

Unfortunately, it is becoming a divisive issue among Christians in assembly fellowship in many places. Should we keep with the King James? Should we adapt to a modern version? If we do, what version should we go to? Is it all right to use you in addressing God or is that a failure of reverence to address God? I want to just make a few comments to clarify some things so that we are thinking accurately about this. Maybe I'll take the last one first just to clarify something.

You know, to be very direct about it, the issue of reverence has nothing to do with the use of thee and thou in the King James Bible. And I'll explain what I mean by that. The original languages, Hebrew and Greek, have no distinction between speaking to an ordinary human being or speaking to God as to the term you.

There is no special reverential form for talking to God. And so, in the time of the King James version in English, I would use thou when I would be talking to anyone in the singular. Thou is simply you, singular.

Thee is the object form. Thou is subject, thee is object. And if I said, I'll come to thee later.

I'm coming to you later. Thee is simply the object form of the singular. And if you look in your King James Bible, ye is the plural when it's a subject.

You was always the plural object. That's the consistent use in the King James Bible. And yet, I find it really ironical.

Many Christians today are completely baffled when this is explained. Because we have become so used to reserving thou and thee for address to God that we think that the King James Bible is specifying that kind of address to God in distinction from ordinary human beings. Whereas, in the days when the King James English was there, that was just the way they talked.

How has it come to be the way it is today? It's because the language has changed, but we have continued over four centuries to use the King James Bible as the standard version of the English language. And so, it has built up and maintained this vocabulary. And because we don't talk that way anymore, it has become reserved, in a sense, in speaking to God, in praying to God, in the beautiful hymns that we have.

And so, for many Christians, it's a matter of conscience. And I have to confess that that's what I am used to, but it does not bother me when I hear someone else speaking to God as you. Because I understand that it is not an issue of reverence.

It is actually just what language you have been used to. And so, whether it is recent converts, whether it is people who are from other church backgrounds who have never used the King James version, it is becoming more and more of a hindrance to communication. And unfortunately, I feel that it is almost inevitable that we are going to have to bite the bullet at some point and move to a more modern English.

And I have very mixed feelings about it because my comfort zone is the King James version, and I have studied in it, and I understand verses, words, and so on. This is my language of the study of the scriptures. And so, I'm not advocating for change by any means, but I'm recognizing there is a transition that is almost inevitable today.

Now, one of the other problems is that there is not the same emphasis today in education on grammar, and there are many people. We had a fellow from India profess to be saved in our area last year, and he couldn't make head or tail of the King James Bible. So he uses an NIV, which wouldn't be my preference, but someone from another church had already given him that Bible, and so I wasn't gonna make an issue about it.

And so that's what he reads, because it's easier for him to understand the language. Now, I will make a couple of other comments about the issue of the basis of translation. You probably have heard the expression exact equivalent, or literal equivalence, and dynamic equivalence.

Now, this is talking about the principle upon which the translators work. Dynamic equivalence is much more of a free-flowing method of translation. They are not so concerned about getting that original word and its equivalent exactly into the English language.

They try to absorb the meaning of it, and then put it out to you in maybe totally different words. And that is why something like the NIV, or there's a new living translation, or if you want to go way off to the extreme, one called The Message, which I would never advise anybody to buy. I happen to get it included in a four version Bible.

And there's no connection between what the more literal translations will give and how this one presents it. And so the advantages of these dynamic equivalent translations is that they're easier to read in English, and that's appealing to many people today. The downside is they are not as reliable, they are not as accurate.

And I would take the stand that accuracy is more important than easy reading. It is the word of God. We want to know what God has said.

As closely, as accurately as is possible to be translated into our language, we want to know what God has said. If we are going to put our faith and build our life upon the very words of God. And so I certainly would subscribe to what's called the exact equivalent or literal equivalent, and the King James Version follows that.

The New King James Version also follows that. And that, if you were to choose a modern version that is the most completely like the King James, it is called the New King James. It basically just modernizes the language, but keeps exactly the same principles of translation.

And you could read it and listen to someone reading, and you would hardly notice a difference, it has a very same flow of thought. Another one that has become quite highly recommended, and you'll notice it quoted quite often in Truth and Tidings, is the English Standard Version. It's fairly new, it seems to be quite accurate.

There's maybe one or two places where I would disagree with the choice of words, but it is, I would consider, quite a reliable translation as well. There's another one called the New American Standard Bible. Some believe it's possibly the most accurate translation existing today.

So I didn't want to spend that much time on this, but it really is significant, and it's becoming more significant today. And I hope that somehow we can work through this important aspect of issue concerning translations with the least amount of contention and upset and stumbling of saints. So the preacher sought to find out acceptable words.

Words that would be correct, and so this is the big challenge that we have today, and I particularly am sympathetic to brethren and sisters who are working in children's work and in gospel outreach. Where you're working with people who have, the King James is almost like another language to them. And so it's very difficult for them, and it's very important to try to make it as understandable as possible.

Now, there is on this outline something very simple, and yet, I think extremely important, starting under study methods. Observation leading to interpretation, leading to application. Now, observation is simply what you notice in the text, what do you see? And again, because of the failures, you might say, of the educational system, the lessening amount of reading that people do today.

Reading is becoming a handicap for many people in grasping the scriptures. You need to read. You need to work at it.

And one of the biggest things that you need to strive to do is to be paying attention to what you're reading. And on the back sheet of this bunch of pages, page 12, I picked up some of these hints from a book called Living by the Book by a man named Howard Hendricks, who I believe probably is retired now from the Dallas Theological Seminary, I believe it is. And this whole book is about basically how to read and study the Bible for yourself and how to get into it.

He gives ten strategies to first rate reading, and it's worth looking at, read it a few times, ponder it, and pick up some ideas. There are some very helpful things that are said in it. And there will be some overlap with what I am going to be saying to you.

But it's really in his book that he emphasizes this principle. We have to start with observation. In fact, he gives an illustration of a very famous science professor who was famous for his discoveries.

And when this science professor had his students, first thing he would do is bring them into the examining room and he would put this big fish in front of the student. And he would leave it with him for the afternoon and tell him to write down as many things as he could observe about that fish. And so he'd come back and ask him how he was doing.

Well, the student would go through this list, there may be 35 or 37 things that he noticed about the fish. And he'd say, excellent. The next day, the same thing.

And he would leave him there day after day to observe that fish. He was teaching him to learn to notice more and more detail, more and more significance of detail. And so I'm just making that emphasis because there's an important thing that if you miss something as you're reading, you're not really paying attention to it.

You're not going to end up with understanding the meaning as accurately as you could. And then when you want to apply it, your application may be defective as well. So accurate interpretation, proper application of the scriptures starts out with careful observation.

So you need to read, and there's a dear older preacher who has passed away that used to tell us over and over again, Christian, read your Bible. And notice what it says. So that's very, very important as the foundation.

So observation is what you see. Interpretation, figuring out what it means. And application is how does it work or how does it apply to me? So let's look then at the outline on how to study the Bible, method to achieve a purpose.

And actually, I have given this out in another series that I have used a number of times called the Christian Life as a Stewardship. And so I've given out a number of times. It's an outline that I developed a number of years ago.

So I've just included it in the middle of this, and I hope you'll be able to get some benefits from it. In 2 Timothy chapter 2, a well-known verse, verse 15 says, study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

The most important person that we need to be concerned about when we are preaching the word of God is God. It's a sobering thing to recognize that all that we say, as we are teaching the word of God, we are doing it in his sight, and we're speaking on his behalf. We want to be right.

We want to be accurate. We want to be faithful to everything that God is as we speak on his behalf. And so it comes upon us the responsibility of being diligent, to study carefully.

Now in these little statements that we have here, there's some, Psalm 1 is a good psalm to look at, to gain an appreciation for the blessedness of meditation, of pondering the word of God day and night, making it part of your life. The question of should we bother with the Old Testament, I have a reference down in 1 Corinthians 10 verses 11 to 14, which is referring back to the history of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. And it says that all those things happened for our examples.

They're written for our warning, that we would not fail in the same way that they failed. So the Old Testament, while it is not directly to us, as far as the covenant of law, it does not apply to us. But there's such a tremendous amount that God has revealed about himself, that he has revealed about people, that is lived out in the Old Testament time, that it's written for our warning.

In Romans chapter 15 and verse 4, it also says the things that were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. And so as you read the word of God, you will gain both patience, endurance, and comfort. Now, one thing that I have learned, and I can only basically tell you the things that have been a help to me, one of the key things for me is writing notes.

I started writing notes when I was a teenager. And a number of years ago, I looked back at some of my old notebooks, and I got a little bit of a chuckle out of it. Because often, all it was was just writing out a verse in a chapter that appealed to me.

But you know what, at least I was noticing it. It was impressing something upon my heart. And so to write it down, when you write something down, it becomes more firmly fixed in your memory.

It's an important part of memory retention, is writing something down. And another thing that I have found very much, for myself at least, is that writing the thoughts that you get, writing them out, makes your thoughts more definite and more clear. It helps you crystallize your thinking.

It becomes more concrete, and I don't mean stuck in the cement, more solid, more firm. And it usually means that when you express yourself, you express yourself more clearly as well. Now, I think I have jotted down here somewhere just a saying that preaching makes a fluent man, writing makes an exact man.

Now, preaching makes a fluent man, someone who can speak freely, fluently from the practice of speaking. The practice of writing helps to make us accurate in our language, in our words. Now, all of us have our own preferences for learning.

Some struggle with reading. Some struggle with comprehension. And I'm sympathetic to people like that.

There are a lot of ways in which you can be helped today. Many, many ministry series are on audio, whether on CD or on mp3. If you learn best by listening, you can get an awful lot of help from downloading series of meetings and so on, and listening to it.

Now, I try to incorporate things that I would be doing in my ordinary course of life. I like to go for a walk every day. And so I usually have an mp3 player, and I'm listening either to scripture or to ministry.

And I will just listen to it when the time goes. I'm not bored. I'm enjoying the walk.

And if I can't go out, I have an elliptical trainer at home, and I'm able to read. I have a one-year Bible, which gets you right through the whole Bible in one year reading program. And I can read, you know, in the half an hour that I'm on the elliptical, I can read the day's reading.

So if you can incorporate it into things that you would be doing anyway, make use of the time efficiently if you can. We all struggle with discipline of life, with making something that is good and helpful for us a habit of life. So we do need to gain overall familiarity with the scriptures by reading consistently, consecutively, chapter by chapter, through the Word of God.

Now, one thing that I have found helpful as well is if you follow the assembly Bible readings. Now, I've actually picked up this for memorizing as well, if you want another little hint for aids in memorizing. I discovered that when I had studied a passage carefully, intensively, in preparation for the Bible reading, I could virtually memorize it from doing that.

And so you can use that as a way of ongoing memorization, just as you do your ordinary studying for the weekly Bible reading. And I'm not sure how many verses you cover every week here, but often in many assemblies, it's not much more than about five or six verses. So that's a way that you could do it.

And it would help you through the week to be thinking about the passage. And something I will say is that you will always get more out of the Bible reading if you've been thinking about the passage, if you've been reading it yourself. And so that's another suggestion.

Now, from point number six down, that one primarily is when you get into more intensive studying, if you're going to be studying one particular book, such as an epistle. Now, you will hear this often, that you should read the whole letter through at a sitting. And some suggest reading it through four or five times.

Now, if that seems like too much of a burden, try an alternative, reading it once a day for a week. If it's a book of Ephesians, read Ephesians each day for a week. And each day, jot down the thoughts that impress you.

This will help to gain an overall idea of what the book is about, the way it develops. And this is something that, unfortunately, is not always cultivated in the way we study or the way we handle our assembly Bible readings. We don't often do a survey through a book, but it's actually very, very helpful.

And another study system that I've got just on the next page, probably, will actually suggest a daily study method that helps to achieve that. So I think that's an important thing to do, to get an overall idea of the line of thought. And, of course, in most of the epistles, you have doctrine in the first part and practical living in the second part.

And then the next point is that the key hangs by the door. Very, very often, a key verse that really, really captures what that epistle is about is given in the first few verses, maybe the third verse. Ephesians 1.3 is the key to Ephesians.

And you can go down through book by book, and if you read it through a few times, you'll start to see what is being developed. And often, the key to it is given. Romans, the whole epistle of Romans, you just have to go to Romans 1.16, and you've got the key to the book of Romans.

And so those are important things to help us to get, you know, if you can use the key to get in, well, you start getting somewhere. You're going to make sense out of it. Now, something that I have practiced for quite a number of years and find it very, very helpful is to put headings.

Put a heading, either a word or a phrase, for the chapter. And you could do that if you went through the epistle several times. You could probably put a heading for each chapter that would just summarize the contents of that chapter.

And then as you read the chapter and you sort of see how the chapter breaks down, the sections of it, and then verse 1 to verse 5, and put a heading for it that summarizes what's in that part. As you do this, you are really just discovering the structure that is there in the chapter. Now, I'm not going to tell you you have to do this, but for myself, I find it very, very helpful to keep working more and more detail to each verse.

Try to write a little heading over each verse. And then, as well as doing that, I develop the system of writing a question or more than one question on each section, on each verse even. Just asking, what does redemption mean? Just questions as you think of them.

Now, in the assembly in Timmins, we actually adopted this method for the assembly Bible readings. And I believe it was very, very helpful. Everyone was interested and their attention was kept.

Whoever was leading the Bible reading, and we always alternated chapter by chapter. Different brethren would lead the Bible reading. That brother would be responsible to write up possibly a page of questions.

Photocopy them, give them to everybody in the assembly. Then, when we come to study the chapter, we would have all of these questions. And as we go down verse by verse, we would also answer the questions.

And as you learn how to do this and sort of develop in the skill of it, by the time you write a heading for the verse and questions, now that's a lot of work. And you might think that's getting a bit extreme. But you will basically have the grasp of the passage by the time you do that.

And you will see how it goes together. You will see it in its context. And you will have had a good, really to me, it really just aids in that initial necessity of observing, of noticing, of grasping what is there in the passage.

And so, then you get into word studies as you analyze verse by verse. And I've suggested a couple of Bible dictionaries and concordances here. Vine's Expository Dictionary.

There are other ones that are newer ones, I guess. I haven't got them, but Vine's is very helpful. And then, try to do your own meditating.

Try to grasp and enjoy the passage yourself. And then, look at a commentary. Now, most of us do it the opposite way.

We read the commentary first. And I'm not really despising that. I think there are stages of our own spiritual development and knowledge.

And if you can get help from men who have studied the Word of God for years and then they put their thoughts down in writing, I don't despise that at all. But somehow we have to also learn the joy of personal discovery. Getting into it, grasping it, seeing where it fits, and getting its meaning, enjoying it in our own souls for ourselves.

Somehow it's more meaningful. We retain it better than just reading it in someone else's writing and saying, okay, that's what it means, and so on. Now, another thing that I think is important on point number seven is the principle of being devotional.

All of us, I'm sure, have time pressure problems. Well, preachers shouldn't have that, of course. I'm actually thankful that I learned to study when I was a dairy farmer, when I didn't have all day to waste.

I had to be very disciplined. When I began to study the Word of God more seriously, I was probably in about the mid-years of high school. And I made a choice.

We did chores on the farm. We were milking cows by six in the morning and all that kind of stuff. But I made a choice to do as much of my school homework as I could at school.

And then I did whatever I could do after chores or whatever before chores up until nine o'clock at night. And then from nine o'clock at night until eleven o'clock at night, I devoted to studying the scriptures. And I have no regrets for making that my personal emphasis at that stage of my life.

It really was the foundation for getting to know the Word of God and seeking God in my own heart and learning from him. And I did use commentaries. But the one set that I did use, and it's an old set and you probably could hardly even get it today, it was Darby's Synopsis.

Now, some of you will smile at that because Darby is not known as an easy writer. In fact, I got his whole collected writings once because I thought he was the best author to get. And I hardly ever read them because they were just so wordy.

But his Synopsis was like a running commentary. It was very different in character. It was somewhat like William MacDonald's commentary in that it captures the flow.

The Synopsis was somewhat different from that. But something that catches the flow, weaves in the passage in a synopsis, which is just kind of gathering it all together. And that actually was very, very valuable for me for giving to me a foundation of just grasping how the passages really flow together.

So studying devotionally is really the principle that you need to study for yourself first. You need to study to devote yourself to God in worship, in service to Him. You need to apply the Word of God to yourself first before you set out to teach other people.

That principle is certainly found in 1 Timothy 4 where the apostle exhorts him to be an example to the believers and then to teach the Word of God carefully and accurately. And so I like to think of the Old Testament example of Ezra. Ezra was a skilled scribe in the Word of God.

But it says in this important sequence, Ezra set his heart to seek the Lord, to seek the Lord, to do His Word, to obey His Word, and to teach statutes and judgments in Israel. And so that's the accurate way in which we are to do it. Now, memorizing.

Memorizing is actually very, very beneficial. Unfortunately, most of us get away from it and don't get back into it until we get shamed into it by some good sister. That's a good thing to do.

I would encourage any of you and all of you to do what you can to get the Word of God into you. It's tremendously helpful for meditation. Again, what I used to do as a young person, and this is one thing that farming is good for, especially some of the jobs where you're out in the field and you don't have to think about everything else all at once, I would write out a number of verses on a little piece of paper, stuff it in my pocket, and carry it with me through the day.

And whenever I had the opportunity, I would whip it out and try to memorize it and try to think about it and just think about it and think about it. And make sure you turn the steering wheel at the end of the row, though. One thing I will have to admit is when I went into partnership with my father on the dairy farm, some of those things became harder because you're not just doing a job.

There's other responsibilities, and it's often the mental distraction that keeps us from being able to focus on this. Now, I think I did mention already that when you study a chapter intensively, you will find that it does become easier to memorize. Topical studies.

This is what you usually get when someone gets up and gives a word of ministry. They're giving you a topical study. They're talking about a certain subject.

They're handling a certain theme. And so when you do that, you have to gather together all the relevant verses and passages that relate to that subject. And so that's where a good concordance is very helpful.

You can look up a word and see its occurrences. And sometimes that even gives you some important clues as to the message of a book because you'll discover that the word law is used so many times in the Book of Romans and so on. And you just pick up some of those clues as to an emphasis in a book.

But as you do that, there is still the challenge to understand each reference in its true setting. One of the things that we sometimes fall prey to is finding convenient verses that support what we want it to say. But when you go back to it and read it in its context, it doesn't support it very well.

And so maybe I'm a bit of a stickler for this, but I have to see it in its context and to be able to honestly say, this is what this means here in this passage. And as I link it together with other passages, try to understand how it flows together in the subject. A lot of this is making an assumption that the Bible really is one book.

It is the Word of God, and there is revelation of God that flows through it, that progressively develops. And so I'm not going to get to it tonight, but I mention it here. The importance of first mention, progressive mention, and total mention principles, I'll try to mention and explain that tomorrow night, Lord willing.

You know, one of the things that I personally have a weakness in is in illustration. I spend most of my time explaining things. That's the bent of my style of teaching.

Some other preachers, and I'm sure it's probably the same here among you, some are very good illustrators. They will take one key idea and maybe give two or three illustrations that highlight it and emphasize it. And so we all have our own particular bent, and sometimes we need to learn how to improve our presentation of the Word of God by finding a good illustration.

Now, the one thing you do have to remember is an illustration doesn't prove it. It just illuminates it. It makes it more understandable.

And so we need to recognize its benefit and limitation. Now, I see that my time is just about gone. The next part of it here, a personal study system suggested by Sam Jennings.

I heard it on a cassette tape many years ago. And I found this very, very useful, and I would suggest that it is particularly an excellent way for a younger Christian starting out to build a working knowledge of the Word of God. And very simply, the idea of it is to set a time, try to be disciplined, try to be consistent, whether it's a half an hour.

If you manage an hour, that's wonderful. And cover one chapter a day. The next day, go to the next chapter, the next chapter.

Try to write down at least a page, maybe two pages of notes on that chapter. And so the idea is to look at a chapter and try to gather things that are in the passage and then keep going. Don't get bogged down because you're going to be all your lifetime getting through it.

And the idea that he suggests is that by doing this, over a period of time you will develop a good understanding of the overall messages of the various books of the Bible. And I've done it at different times and found it very useful. Unfortunately, I've gotten away from it again too.

But I think it would be worthwhile doing this. I'll have to leave that and just let you read it for yourself and see some of the benefits of it. Lord willing, tomorrow night we'll try to look on page five on principles of interpretation and we'll try to develop some of those ideas.

Let's close in prayer. Our gracious Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast given to us Thy Word. It is amazing that it has been preserved down through so many generations, even through times of fierce persecution, when the enemies of Thyself sought to obliterate the Word of God.

Yet we are thankful for men and women of faith who risked their lives to preserve the Word of God, to proclaim the Word of God, who treasured it, who died for it. And so we would pray that we may not take it lightly, that we may acknowledge that Thy Word is truth. We can have complete confidence in its reliability, in its honesty.

We are so thankful that we can have a knowledge of God. So we draw near to Thee and pray that Thou would help us to learn some practical ways in which we can excel in studying the Scriptures and understanding it, to be better equipped to be able to communicate it to others. Our Father, we ask for Thy grace upon us.

Help us to walk in Thy truth. Help us to bring joy to one another in encouragement and strength as those who fear the Lord and who spoke often one to another. We remember the remnant of Malachi who brought joy to Thee and strengthening to one another by their faithfulness to Thy Word.

So we commit ourselves into Thy hand tonight, asking for Thy grace. In our Savior's name, amen. Let's try singing together 397.

In the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. Every tongue confess Him, King of glory. Now, it is the Father's pleasure we should call Him Lord, who from the beginning was the mighty Word.

397.