29. Interpreting the Bible Part 2

And here we go. This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now here's your host, John Holyfield. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. We are here to give freedom to anyone who is out there wanting freedom. I'm your host, James Saferit. Our co-host, John Holyfield's here. And we've had a fun week. We've had a busy week. Both of us have. And, John, hope you're doing well. Go ahead and welcome the audience and let us know how things are going in your life today. Yeah, doing good. Like James said, we've been really busy. My wife and I had planned a Valentine's sort of getaway with no kids. And then the winter storm came. So we got to reschedule that. And we actually did that Monday, Tuesday of this week. And that was nice. Spent some time in Chattanooga. And ate at a fantastic restaurant with some great seafood. And so really enjoyed the time. Getting back at it to get people working at the house. We're doing some stuff upstairs, trying to create some more room. Right now, the baby is in the closet. So perfect. Perfect. We have a walk-in closet. We've stuck the baby in a crib in a closet. So we're trying to do some work upstairs and get some rooms made up there so we can spread out a little bit more. But, yeah, it's been crazy getting back at it with church work. And then the podcast. And so, James, how have you been? Oh, I'm doing well, John. I'm on the same boat as you with the renovation upstairs. Almost done. I started painting this past week. And we also were on a vacation to Pigeon Forge, Asheville area. You did the baby moon. We did the baby moon. We are less than four weeks away from our child being born, our third child. And, Lord willing, it'll be our final child born to the Safer Clan. Hudson. Right? Hudson? Baby Hudson. Yes. Yay, Hudson Taylor. There we go. So we're really excited about that. I know my wife is pumped. And we're starting to get all the stuff ready. Getting our room set up for the new baby. And it's just going to be pretty exciting. So. I forgot to ask you, what color are you going with upstairs? Is it like multiple colors? It's going to be one color. It's going to be. It's called a new gray. So Sherwin Williams is paint colors. And it's going to be. It's like a beige gray color. Bless God. That's wicked. If it's new, it's not true. Hey, man. That's right. A new gray. What are we going with next? Next, we're going to have a modern pink. Well, come on. Sorry. You just triggered my IFB in me with this new gray stuff. That's right. Oh. All right. So before we get into our topic, we've been discussing. Biblical interpretation. And we didn't finish it. So we were going to cover the final little bit of that. And then that will lead us into jumping into some legalism. And we have some interviews that we might be interjecting in there in between this series. But before we do that, let's cover our this week roundup. All right, James. Not a whole lot going on in the world this week. A lot of stuff. I think when I look around, I see a lot of people talking and giving their takes on the Ravi Zacharias situation. That seems to be a hot topic amongst the podcast world and just the evangelical world. And we've talked about it before, so I'm not going to really go into it. It was disgusting. It was ridiculous. And people need to call that mess out. But there was one thing that happened that I was looking at on the RFP fam page. RFP fam, not fan. But RFP family page. And it had me just rolling in the floor. And can you give a shout out to the person who actually posted that? Who was it? His name is John. I think I'm saying his last name right. Shrock. John Shrock. John Shrock. And he posted, you might be a fundamentalist. Was it grown up in fundamentalism? It was, you might be a fundamentalist if dot, dot, dot. And right now there are 70 comments. And so I want to read. Let's read 10. Let's just go with 10. We'll read 10 of these that just had me rolling and laughing. So here you go for this week roundup. We're going to give you 10 top comments on you might be a fundamentalist if. All right. One of them. This is the first one that was commented. You can't wear jean short skirt and flip flops to church without feeling like you have to explain why. And that's one of the women's side. I wear shorts and crocs to church. So now you do. You didn't in college. I didn't in college, but I did in my first ministry. I was able to wear shorts and then crocs to church. My pastor looked at me weird sometimes, but I still did it. I like this one. We'll talk about her about that whole modesty thing later on. Yeah. I like this one. It said, you lift your heels as you sing the blessed song. Love lifted me. Cause you gotta raise up. If not, you're not doing the obedience there. Oh yeah. I remember doing that as a song director, right? When I came here to the Tennessee and people were looking at me like I'm an idiot. And I'm like, okay, we'll be doing that again. Yeah. Hey, this is a good one. Ready for this, John. You've never watched the Superbowl because it takes three to thrive, baby. Three to thrive. You're not going to cancel Sunday night for that wicked Superbowl. That's right. That's right. Embrace, embrace the, the, the wickedness of the world. Yeah. Hey, this is a good one. The movie houses causes you to sin and accuse others of sin. Think about that. The movie house causes you to sin and accuse others of sin. Yeah. You know, I was, I was listening to a podcast this week about that. And when the guy was on there, he said this, he said, you know, if the movie house is so bad and we're going to preach against that. He said, if someone wanted to know what I was watching, they could follow me in the movie theater, follow me down the hallway and see what movie I'm walking into. You know, if they really wanted to, he said, but if that's so bad to be in a movie house, movie theater, whatever you want to call it. He said in my own house, I've got a TV that I can do anything. I can watch whatever I want on it. He said, so to those same preachers, they have TVs in their houses too. He said, so would it not be even more of a stumbling block to have a TV in your house that you can literally shut the blinds, do whatever you want in there. And no one's going to know what you're watching in your house. They could follow you in a movie theater and watch whatever you're watching with you. Oh, yeah, that's an absolutely ridiculous standard. All right, go continue on. This is going to kick back to maybe some, maybe a trigger warning right here. So just brace yourself. If you knew every word to a patch to pirate song as a kid. That's a good one. That's a good one. I'll patch the pirate. John, I think I may have heard you do this one time. Tried to get at least eight powers in the song. Power in the blood. That one made me laugh. I remember reading that one. It was like, there's power, power, power, power, power, power, power, power, power. This guy said, this one guy commented and said, I tried getting 16 one time and it was really hard. Oh, the things we do, the things we do. Where are we at? Is that five? Oh, sure. I'm not keeping count. I'm just reading. It's funny to me. Percussion instruments are the devil, but not pianos or xylophones or dulcimers or snails. Anything that symbols, those are okay. Hand bells, but anything else percussion wise is of the devil. But Tony Hudson has his tambourine. That's right. Oh, I've got to pull that clip out. Next week, I'm going to have the clip of Tony Hudson going off about his tambourine. Oh, yes. Yes. I've got a whole CD of Tony Hudson singing in North Valley. It's so good. I listen to it every once in a while. Oh, here's a good one, John. You ready? You go to the ocean, not the beach. That's right. That's right. Yeah. You can't go to the beach. That's wicked. Yes. Here's a good one. You order steak. Well done because wicked people eat blood. Is that why you order your steak? Well done, John. That sounds so. That sounds so I have been. I mean, I can remember my college days and think of, you know, a man getting up and just going off. Bless God. And then saying that. Well, that goes along the lines with like what I've heard Tony Hudson say for the pulpit. He said, I'm so against alcohol. I'm so against alcohol that if I'm at the Mexican restaurant and I know that they're cooking it and alcohol, I won't eat it. Bless God. I don't ask what they cook that in because if I know it's cooked in alcohol, I won't eat it. Bless God. That's right. Same ideology. Yeah. Here we go. You cough and clear your throat every three seconds, just like Jack Howells did. We definitely heard guys that did that in college. Yes. Yes. Very much so. I don't know how many more we've got. Your pin number is 1611. I'm also going to go a step further. Your username or your Twitter hashtag. Your Twitter tag has 1611 in it or your Facebook tag has 1611 in it. Dude, I have such a personal story with that one, which is why it made me laugh so hard, but I can't say it in there. Okay. All right. One more. Give me one more. One more. Your first kiss was at your wedding and it was announced that it was your first kiss as if everyone couldn't guess that that was your first kiss. Oh, man. They should have put a tag in there like, yeah, but we were lying about it the whole time. Yeah. No, that's great. All right. My first kiss wasn't at the wedding. Wicked. Wicked. Okay. We'll move on from that topic. There we go, guys. Little humor for you. Thanks to the RFP family on the RFP fam. Thank you, Recovering Fundamentalist, for letting us jack your page. Yes. For our podcast use. Disclaimer for today. The RFP is not sponsoring this episode. The RFP is not sponsoring this episode. We have to do these disclaimers. Last week, it was an energy company. This week, it's the RFP. We have too much fun. If you didn't know, this is a normal conversation that me and John have. We're just recording it so you guys can enjoy the fun things that we talk about. No, we could not record a normal conversation we have. We would be blackballed. Okay. All right. Let's get into the next topic. We're covering hermeneutics. Just some review of what we covered last time. We covered the idea that there is hermeneutics, which is the technical term for the science of biblical interpretation. We also covered the term exegesis. Exegesis. And no, according to what was that clip, that Rock of Ages guy? I don't know. Spencer Smith. No, no, no, no. The IFP preachers love to have their little cutdowns on exegesis. But exegesis is pulling out of scripture what is there. I said Jesus is reading into it something that is outside of the scripture when interpreting it, reading something into it to gain some meaning. And it can lead to many different interpretations. Okay. And so we want to stay away from that. All right. Sorry. Sometimes I like to go off into other accents that I've been working on with my kids. So I don't teach them foreign languages. I just teach them accents. We also talked about narsegesis a little bit. And I like that term. Yes. We talked about the narsegesis. And we talked about these guys that like tried to read themselves into the Bible. And they're narsegesis. Yeah. And man, did you see that clip that I sent you this week? I mean, prime example this week. Stephen Burdick. Watch it. Mr. Stephen Burdick. Yes. Watch it. But I saw you send it to me. Oh, okay. So here's what he says. He gets up there and the clip says, whenever God said from the burning bush to Moses, I am. He was trying to get Moses to realize. So are you. Yes. Yes. Yes. How narcissistic is that? Oh, man. The blasphemy that is included in that statement. But just like, oh, it's all about us. It's all about you. I think I posted on Facebook. I was like, no. So much. No. When you go through the Bible, it is not about you. God is never trying to get man to understand that they are on the same plane. It is always a communication of trying to get man to understand how low he is compared to his God. Yeah. So true. So true. All right. From there, we went to how to study the Bible and interpret the Bible. And then we spoke on some gaps. We talked about filling in gaps. Yes. Yeah. Whenever you're talking about the Bible, it's an ancient book. So you have to fill in these gaps. Right. Yes. So we talked about the gaps and what they were. Language gap. Culture gap. Culture gap. Historical gap. Those types. This is what we're going to take today. We're not going to be. We probably. I don't think we'll go an hour today. But five principles to close these gaps. All right. I've got to stop. I'm sorry. It just it just my mind is there. OK. All right. Five principles to close these gaps. We should edit this like majorly. Five principles to close the gaps. Let's do. All right. First. Sorry. Underly. Underly. All right. First one, John, is. Yes, go ahead. Literal principle gap. The literal principle. And this is you interpret the Bible literally. There is no hidden meaning. You're not trying to figure out what does the number two? What does the number 85 in this passage mean? You're not trying to figure out what what what is what's hidden behind these words. You're just a lot of your Bible. A lot of your Bible codes and all kinds of junk like that. Just throw out the door. There is no like hidden Nostradamus in this. OK. This would be a good place to insert a numerology clip. Hmm. Did you know from Psalms one oh from Psalms one verse one to Psalms one oh two, the very last verse, how many verses is in one oh two? Twenty eight. You know how many verses are found right there? I'll give you a wild guess. One thousand six hundred and eleven. You say that's not right. Figure it up. I had a guy tell me that. I think it was Brother Stocker. I know it was. Brother Stocker told me. I go. Yeah. All right. I figured it up myself and I said, huh? He's right. It's one thousand six hundred and eleven verses. You got a 1611 King James Bible. The middle says bless his holy name. There you have it. Yeah. We need to stay away from the numerology stuff, guys, because that is not exegesis from the Bible. Plus, the interesting thing is that God didn't actually write the Bible originally with all the verse numbers and the chapter numbers. Oh, you're trying to make things out of what Catholic. Priest inserted into the Bible. Hold on, John. So you mean that when it's Psalm 1611, that isn't the actual middle verse of the Bible that God wanted us to always look at for the middle verse? Is there really a Psalm 1611? Yeah. And that's the I want to say that's the middle. I want to see what it says. I want to see what Psalm 1611 says. It probably says King James Version. The only authorized version. Oh, we do. We do. Now, here's what it says. I'm reading the New King James, though. All right. Here we go. Psalm 1611. You will show me the path of life and your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand. Our pleasures evermore. All right. You ready for this? I'm going to go on impromptu. Impromptu. I said Jesus numerology interpretation of this verse. If I was a King James only. All right. Listen, everybody. Right here in the middle of your Bible. Psalm 1611. I'm just making this up, guys. Okay. So this is not like me. What do you call it? Impersonating an actual thing I've heard. Psalm 1611. This is what I think they would say. You will show me the path of your life. See, therefore, if we want to know the path of life, we go to the 1611. The King James Version. In your presence is fullness of joy. In the presence of the King James Version of 1611 is fullness of joy. And whenever you're in the King James Version of 1611 at your right hand, there are pleasures evermore. You want to experience pleasures evermore. You go to the 1611. Is that really the dead center of the Bible? No, but they use that verse a lot. I did make that up. Okay. The actual dead center of the Bible is Psalms 103, 1 and 2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is with me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his benefits. There's got to be some kind of numerology twist for that. I'm sure it is. But see, that's only in the King James is that verse because it's the way the wording is. When you change the wording of the ESV, it changes. And so we're no longer blessing the Lord. Oh, and see, that's why the modern versions are wrong. That's right. That's right. Also, under this literal meaning is you want to look at figurative language is figurative language. You also want to look at symbolism, and the symbolism in the Bible should not be hard to identify. So if it's talking about a symbol of whatever in the Revelation time. Right. A lot of prophecy language. So I'll talk more about this when we get to the grammatical. But yeah, I mean, you interpret the Bible literal where it begs a literal interpretation. When you get to, you understand there's different genres of literature in Scripture. You have poetic genre. You have prophetic genre. You have narrative genre. Or historical genre. And so you have different areas of literature. And so you have to understand that whenever you're interpreting it as well. And so whenever you get to poetic language, there is going to be poetic uses of that language. There's going to be figurative language. And prophetic. There's going to be figurative language. Here's one for you. And we're going to cover this one day when we do the Ruckmanism episode. But Peter Ruckman tries to use Zechariah 5 by teaching that God has UFOs and little green aliens that come down. And that Zechariah 5. This is not funny, man. This is not funny. This is Bible. That's right. Don't laugh, James. This is Bible. Oh, man. Bless God. All right. And wipe it, lump it, take it across the street and dump it, baby. And then flush it. I shouldn't have said that. Sorry. Anyways, we're going to title this episode Squirrel. Okay. So Zechariah 5.1 says, then I turned to raise my eyes and saw there a flying roll in the King James Version. And basically, you go through Chapter 5, and he tries to describe that this flying roll. That you see is a UFO. A flying saucer. A flying saucer we saw up in the sky last winter. It had bright lights, and it just disappeared really quick. Okay. And so this would be, this would complete. Now, the new King James changes this to, then I turned and raised my eyes and saw there a flying scroll. The King James Version is the only version that interprets that word, and it is the word, and I'm going to, like, anybody that listens to this that actually knows Hebrew, let me apologize firsthand. And I'm going to obliterate this. But the actual Hebrew word is Megillah. Megillah. Megillah. However, I don't know. I still probably haven't got it right. But anyways, it basically means a volume. All right? A rolled volume. It's a scroll. What he saw when he looked up was not a roll. It was a flying saucer. It wasn't a UFO. It was a scroll. And this is a prime example, I think, of just straight-up gross eisegesis. Because what are you doing when you see that and you say, well, it's a roll. What could a roll be? And you start grabbing things, not that you've taken from Scripture or done a word study, but you actually start grabbing things that you've seen outside of the Bible and try to fit that in there of what it might be and what makes sense to you. You've just committed eisegesis, and you've just taken a modern-day telling of what has been described as an unidentified flying object and said, oh, that must be what it is because it sort of looks like a roll. What about a bread roll? Maybe he saw a big piece of bread. Or toilet paper. And God was trying to tell him to clean up their act. Come on. There you go. Okay. So when we're talking about the literal principle, we take it literally, but we also understand that there's also figurative language. There's symbolism. There's different genres of Scripture. So it's not like we take everything extremely literal, but we start with a literal principle. The next one is the historical principle. The historical principle. And this takes work. And you know what? That's what it is. And the reason why I think a lot of people get off is because, and they go off in the left field, is because of just laziness. Because what do all these things take in order to find out the right interpretation? Study, time, looking at commentaries, looking at previous pastors and what they said and thought and historical notes and research. Bible atlases, history books, cultural books, ancient civilization books. I mean, it takes work. Mm-hmm. All right. So you established the literal principle. Now you go to the historical principle. You have to do the research to find out what's going on in the history of the passage. Yeah. What was ancient Egypt like? What was the Babylonian Empire like when Nebuchadnezzar ran it? You know, you have to do, what was the Roman Empire like? What was it like for Paul to travel on these roads? How was the Roman courts done in the New Testament? How did they run their proceedings like whenever you're discussing how Paul was arrested or Jesus was arrested? Yeah. So doing that. Find what it means to those it was spoken to them because whatever it meant to them is what it means now. True. That's what I tell everybody. You want to know the meaning of Scripture. You got to get to what it meant to those it was written to at that time, and that's what it means to us today. Yeah. All right, James. All right. This next one is the hardest one for me. It's the grammatical principle. This is sentence diagramming, reading the passage, finding the main point, which usually is connecting to the main verb. If you know me and you grew up with me in college, you know that I am not an English guy. I took bonehead English and I barely passed it, which is an English class where you get zero credit for. And then I had my wonderful wife, who was an English major, help me, but then she didn't really even help me much at all. So I had her best friend, Lauren, who actually wrote all my papers. I wrote them and then she would proof them. And then that would become part of the time where she would just rewrite them. And believe it or not, John's wife, Mary, actually helped me. She tutored me one of my first years at Champion because I am not a grammatical guy. I'm not an English guy. Literature is what was taught for me in high school. And so grammar wasn't taught. I barely know what a noun verb is. And so this part of it, when I get to the grammatical side of it and studying, it takes the most part of my work because I'm not good at it. And so I have to study at it. Well, it's not just it's not just English grammar either. You have to think about whenever you're in the New Testament, you have to understand the inner workings of Greek grammar or if you're in Hebrew of Hebrew grammar. There are study tools to help bridge those gap for the for us today. There's there are some commentaries that are word based commentaries that do some of that work for us. And then there are tools like Bible software tools like Logos that really does a lot of the help for you in parsing Greek verbs and and understanding the tenses of those types of things. So there are again, it takes work. You have to understand the passage. What is the sentence structure? What is the main point? What is the subject of what going? Who's the direct address? Who's the direct object? Those types of things help when understanding, interpreting language. And this is where I think understanding the grammatical principle comes back. And I hit this last time and I hit it again. The main thing when understanding the meaning of the Bible or a given passage is context, context, context. Do not be guilty of ripping something right out of its context. Yes. Yes. Correct. Did you hear that? I did on my end. Well, everybody in podcast world are going to hear my dings. No, I don't. I don't think it does. I think it's because when I was recorded, when you recorded in mind, would ding. I didn't hear it on the podcast. There you go, everybody. You got a quick little bit on how podcast things come through the episode. I am not editing that out. I don't have time. I do not have time this week to do editing. So you're getting the raw footage today. This might be the last podcast episode we ever do. We're going to call it quits after this one. All right. The next one is the synthetic principle. The synthetic principle is the idea of understanding this is pulling it all together. Understanding that scripture is a book as a whole. How does it fit into the whole story of scripture? The Bible has a theme. It's a thread going from beginning to the end. So how does it work? And this is this work has to be done. It is so evident even through the gospels when you're talking about the life of Christ, because you've heard you've heard. Probably preachers say and different things that. The best commentary or scripture, the best way to interpret scripture is the scripture. The originator at that quote, but it is the idea of we do this a lot with cross referencing, cross referencing and the treasury of scripture knowledge, which comes with most Bible software programs for free. Is it great with understanding how this different words work throughout the Bible and different phrases and how does it link to other things throughout scripture? So the synthetic principle pulling it all together. What is other passages of scripture say about this? And this is this is very, very key and understanding the whole of the Bible, because another place you can get into left field is pulling out a a section of scripture and trying to interpret it by ignoring maybe what its counterparts say in either the Old Testament or another part. All right. All right. So, James, move on to, I think, our last point, our last point. And this is really whenever you're preaching or teaching, you must get to this point. This is the point of giving the practical application of the principle, giving the practical principle. The main emphasis of the Bible study is to grasp the principle. And when that principle becomes a conviction, then it will show up in every area of our life in every practical scenario. We must be able to say this is a story of David and Goliath and be able to practically apply it and say, yeah, there's going to be giants in our life. But God is there and he's a big God he's going to provide for us and we've got to be able to practically apply what we're preaching and teaching that main thought so that they can be able to apply into their life. This is the basic principle of conviction. So that that is the practical part of it. Yeah. And, you know, I think of this from the perspective of a preacher. One of the men that have helped me as I've came out of the IFB and training my and teaching me how to preach through reading his books and watching his lectures online is a guy named Steve Lawson or Stephen Lawson. And he told a story of whenever he was in seminary and preaching the preaching class, the homiletics class that he had, his professor would have them always sort of they had to preach in chapel and he would grade them. So he said he got up there and he started preaching and the homiletics professor was not in there. He said he got started in his message about five minutes into his message. The homiletics professor entered through the side door, came in and sat down on the front row and held a little handheld whiteboard. And he saw him writing something down on it and then he turned it around. And the only one that could see it was him because he was on the front row and nobody else could see what the whiteboard said. And he said he was up there preaching away and he looks down his eyes glance and see what the whiteboard said. And I said, so what? And he was getting the point of you can give all the Bible you want. You can give all the theology you want. But when it comes down to it, where is the application? Why does this matter? And that's not a knock against faithful, textual, expository, biblical theological preaching. It is putting the hole on all of that. Because if you have theological preaching without an application, it's incomplete. You haven't finished the job. And this has been so helpful for me when it comes to doing my study for biblical counseling. Because how do we apply the Bible to our life? Now, you heard me say just a little bit ago that the Bible means to you what it meant to those it was spoken to at the time it was written. That is right. And somebody might object and say, well, then how can it mean anything to me? How can I get anything out of it? Because there's one interpretation of Scripture. There can be many applications to Scripture. Now, let me qualify that. Just because there's many applications to Scripture doesn't mean that you can have any application you want. I mean, you can't apply just any passage of Scripture to whatever situation you want it to mean and just twist the application to whatever you want it to be. Now, the application has to be derived from the text specifically. And so there can be application from the Scripture. And that's what we try to do in the whole of our podcast as we're talking about correcting areas of legalism and giving the application of what it is. Or we're talking about those that have experienced abuse or spiritual abuse, giving them truth from Scripture and helping bridge that gap of applying that truth to their everyday life. And that's what the goal of working with biblical counseling is and doing that. And so that is a lot of work. You think about it. Let's summarize that up. You have the literal principle, the historical principle, the grammatical principle, the synthetic principle, and the practical principle. I mean, establishing the literalness of the Bible, interpreting it like that, using your study tools, studying the languages, using the historical part, understanding the historical context, looking at the grammatical part, seeing how it fits in the entirety of Scripture, and then the application of that passage. And James, that's what we do every week when we prepare a sermon, is it not? It is. And a lot of times when we do that study and we start looking at the history, I'm a history buff. And so I get caught up sometimes, and I have to actually caution myself because sometimes I'll get up and I'll just give a history lesson. And that's not the point of preaching. The point of preaching is to get down to this conviction point to say this is the practical application of this Scripture. And so we've got to make sure that we're having a balanced approach to studying it, but also a balanced approach to giving it and delivering it and making sure that we are delivering something that is well thought out, that is biblical, that is not our own thoughts, but also is giving the point of application at the very end. Okay. That's exactly right, and that's why it takes time. You know, sermon prep, whenever you're trying to accomplish this and you're trying to be faithful and you're trying to work your hardest not to give people what you thought up, but what directly comes from the Bible and what the Bible teaches and do it faithfully and do it right, it takes work and it takes time. And so that's why I encourage those that maybe not be in the pastorate, whether you're in the church and plugged in or you're looking for a church, find a pastor who is dedicated to that time. Most people get distracted, and I believe it's the shepherds, the pastorals, responsibility. We're going to talk about the pastor's role. We're going to do an episode on pastoral authority, and we're going to talk about the role of a shepherd, the role of a pastor. And I like to summarize it in a threefold way. The pastor's role is to feed the sheep, protect the sheep or guard the sheep, and to care for the sheep. All right? You feed the sheep by studying and presenting Bible, Scripture-filled, Holy Spirit-filled messages and Bible teaching to your people. You protect them by giving them the truth and explaining the truth as contrasted with error. So you expose them to what error is, and then you prove why that's error. All right? It doesn't mean you shield them from that. You have to explain to them why this is wrong, and then also you care for the sheep. And so I think that there is a pastoral role of you being out there with the people, caring for the people, going to the hospital, checking on them, calling, making phone calls, those things. That's part of the pastoral role. But first and foremost, we've got to be doing the work of feeding them, and that takes time. And I think so many times people want their pastor to jump every time they call. And I'm saying that's part of his role, but sometimes that may not be the preeminent thing that he has to be doing. He's got to get this work done. For simplification, why don't we just alliterate that, John, because alliteration is always key. The job of a pastor is to provide, to protect, and to pour in. Ooh. Come on. You need to write a book now. Come on. I'm thinking. We're praying about it. No, I'm not. I would never write a book. Don't. Never say never. Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber. Never say never. Justin Bieber. That's his song. Never say never. Never say never. Is that how it goes? Exactly. Just like that, John. I've never heard the song. I just always know that Justin Bieber sang it. Oh. See, when I hear never say never, I think of the terrible, crappy James Bond movie, Never Say Never Again, where they paid Sean Connery a book of money to come make a low-budget James Bond movie that was terrible. It should never be included as part of James Bond movies. Sorry, I'm a James Bond nerd. All right. Okay. We need to close the shop. All right. That's all we got. Now, we're going to jump into legalism, and we're going to start covering some specific areas of legalism, and I think we got some other things we're going to line up, so we'll be interjecting, breaking up that series, just coming up shortly. But until then, James, why don't you just go ahead and sign us off today? And until next time, to God, not the... Peter Ruckman. Be the glory. Thank you. Thank you.

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